What if the Me-262 was created earlier?

Does your handling abilities include the Russians as well?

I see what you mean about the little glitches as well. Yes the engines were new, the firm in Seatle that built the four 262s used a new modern engine of about the same size and had no problems with the planes. At least not major ones.


Tanning is for sissies.

 

Oh yeah we can out cold them. On average the city of Ottawa is the 1st or second coldest on the planet!

Lets see thos russians beat us on that? If you are russian I appologize but I have no offence intended! LOL

 

[threadjack]
Careful how you pee or you'll freeze your pecker
[/threadjack]

 

The individual I knew that could handle the cold best wasn't Canadian he was Hawaiian!!

Now are we going to seriously hijack this thread or let it get back on topic? I can see arguments both ways.

 

Ooops! Your right I see that we did indeed go off topic!

Well Getting back to the 262. How many where actually produced. I was told only 1 squadron (Lufftwaffe equivilant) but others tell me that an entire wing was of 262's.

Can anybody clarify

 

Off the top of my head, I think there were about 1,400 262s produced in total, counting all the airframes and prototypes. However there were never enough engines to go around, and I doubt there were ever more than 300 deployed to actual combat.

I’ll have to look up some more stuff to give you better numbers. Those are just "rounded off", don’t know if they are up or down by too much though.

 

We have built a total of about 1250 of this aircraft (Me-262), but only fifty were allowed to be used as fighters - as interceptors. And out of this fifty, there were never more than 25 operational. So we had only a very, very few.
- Adolf Galland

 

Wiki is actually a pretty good place to start looking for this sort of info/
The page is: Messerschmitt Me 262 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Looking through the rest of it there were apparently at least 2 Me-262 squadrons that were all Me-262 and another that used them as night fighters. It's not clear if that was an all Me-262 outfit.

 

Speaking from personal experience here?

I believe that JG 7 was all jet. I would assume that that would be 262s. No there were never too many available.

 

I., III. JG 7 all single seat Me 262's with two seat trainers. II./JG 7 was a propaganda paper unit, some say Bf 109G equipped which is nonsense, the unit cadre actaully some went to Bf 109G-10 unit IV./JG 301 in 1945.

JV 44 squadron all Me 262's.

portions of KG 51 and 54 designated with a (J) = Jäger or fighter but also did jet fighter bomber missions.

Kommando Welter/ aka 10./NJG 11 which I am writing a book on, squadron of Me 262A-1a's later in spring of 45 4-7 depending on sources, twin seaters with radar and radar operator, all 262's in the unit, had really nothing to do with it's Bf 109G and K-4 mother unit NJG 11 which also flew at night.

forget Wiki please..........

 

For B-17s flying deep penetration raids in to the German Reich, how far could P-80s escort them e.g. the Spitfire was fine as an escort fighter if you weren't going further than the French Coast.

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

 

The P-80 Jet, First flight 1944, deployed for service in 1945 arrived in Europe 1946, P-80?

Here are some ranges of planes we know for comparison.
P-80 1930km
P-51 1650km or 2755km with drop tanks
Spitfire 760km
P-38 2100km
p-47 1290km

 

K, so i looked around in all my books (and trust me, i got a lot of books) and its preety clear that almost all of them agree that by VE Day some 1400 Me-262 had been made. And again they almost all agree that less than 300 saw service since the Me-262's original flight on July 18th 1942 (solely on jet power).

Most of the jets were aparently destroyed by heavy bombing on Messerschmitt factories so the actual number will probably never be sure. So a estimation to about 1400 jets could be completely off as far as we know, only time will tell as we uncover new info

 

The reason so few saw service has little to do with Allied bombing. It has everything to do with the economic situation in Germany at the time.

As I pointed out on page 2 of this thread an Me 262 requires about 2 metric tons of fuel per sortie. This is roughly four times the amount an Me 109 or Fw 190 requires. With an engine life of just a few hours an Me 262 could be grounded after a single flight for lack of a replacement engine.
As it is, production ate about half of all the Jumo 004 engines produced during the war. When you throw in other aircraft using it like the Ar 234 there really isn't much in the way of replacement engines left to take.
Basically, most Me 262 would never see service due to lack of spares and fuel.

 

We have built a total of about 1250 of this aircraft (Me-262), but only fifty were allowed to be used as fighters - as interceptors. And out of this fifty, there were never more than 25 operational. So we had only a very, very few.
- Adolf Galland
I think he would know what he is talking about.

 

I have seem quotes of up to 1433 built. But Galland was right. Very few were operational due to the lack of fuel, pilots and spare engines. Logistics. And then of course some of these Uber-weapons were being shot down .

 

If the 262 had been brought into service earlier I would imagine the British would have developed a jet fighter sooner and shared the technology with the US. It's not as though the Allies had no idea about jet power, the British Gloster E.28/39 first flew on 15 May 1941.
The US had been testing jet power. We chose to concentrate on building proved airframes and LOT'S OF THEM!!!
At any rate, Germany's greatest mistake was not in building too few ME 262's, it was failing to build long range heavy= four engine bombers and LOT'S OF THEM!!!!

 

JC you need to be careful whom you quote, Galland is incorrect in this very case. III./JG 7 had 35 262's operational and that is just one gruppe out of one JG

 

I believe the first 4 P-80's arived in europe by may 1945 and another going to Italian theater and could have been in squadron service by mid summer if there was a need. You would also have had the P-51H to combat the german jets. Also The vampire would have been in service by the summer. By that time the Heinkel jets would have been in service and possibly some other German jets. But imagine b-29's being escorted by P-80's and fighting off ME-262's and HE-162's. Would have been intresting.

 

This is true, here is an interesting section of a site devolted to the Lockheed P-80 "Shooting Star", and notice that the task-master logistics once again reared its ugly head concerning those 30 P-80As shipped to the Philippines in the summer of 1945. Those P-80s had their pilots, ground crews, and all the spare parts they needed, they just didn't have their batteries or the wing-tip extra fuel tanks!

"The service history of the Shooting Star begins in 1944, when the decision was made to deploy four service test YP-80As to Europe to demonstrate their capabilities to combat crews and to help in the development of tactics to be used against Luftwaffe jet fighters. 44-83026 and 83027 were shipped to England in mid-December 1944, but 44-83026 crashed on its second flight in England, killing its pilot. 44-83027 was turned over to the British government and modified by Rolls-Royce to flight test the B-41, the prototype of the Nene turbojet. On November 14, 1945, 44-83027 was destroyed in a crash landing after an engine failure. 44-83028 and 83029 were shipped to the Mediterranean. They flew some operational sorties, but they never encountered any enemy aircraft. They were both returned to the USA after the war."

"…In the summer of 1945, approximately 30 P-80As were sent aboard an aircraft carrier to the Philippines in preparation for the final assault on Japan. The planes were to be issued to the 414th Fighter Group, based at Florida Blanca. Unfortunately, the planes had been sent without their tip tanks and their aircraft batteries, so they sat aboard the aircraft carrier for 30 days waiting for this equipment. By the time that the batteries and wingtip tanks were delivered, the war in the Pacific had ended, so the P-80 never got a chance to enter combat in the war against Japan."

That is from the "Joe Baugher" section on the P-80 about 2/3 of the way down this site under the title "Service History";

The Lockheed F-80 "Shooting Star"

I cannot help but believe that the P-80 and its British counterparts would and could have been developed earlier than that if needed. That would have occurred if the Me-262s had shown up earlier, then the Allied jet development would also have been accelerated.

The western Allies had a fine track record of countering any new Axis/German equipment development with one of their own. The Mannchester-Vickers company suspended its own axial flow jet engine development in the early '40s when the Whittle centrifugal design was accepted by the government, and was proven more reliable than the axial flow style. This the Germans leared as well, and they never did conquer the turbine blade failure problem completely.