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The Me 262 was the only jet fighter to see combat during the Second World War, when its impressive top speed made it the fastest thing in the air.
We start with a couple of accounts of what it was like to fly the Me 262 in combat in the battles of 1945 – a desperate time for the Luftwaffe where even the technological advantage given to them by their jets wasn’t enough to balance superior Allied numbers, and in which every sortie could see the jet pilots menaced as they took off and landed and having to avoid roving formations of American fighters as they attempted to get through to their real targets, the heavy bombers.
Although the Me 262 officially entered service late in 1944, it soon becomes clear that this was somewhat misleading. Although it was used by several test units over the winter of 1944-45, it didn’t really enter combat in sizable numbers until the spring of 1945. Galland’s famous JV 44, formed after he was dismissed as commander of the fighter force, didn’t get its first aircraft until 14 March, far too late to have even the slightest impact on the course of the fighting. The larger JG 7 had entered combat earlier in 1945, but still too late.
The combat accounts reveal that the Me 262 wasn’t quite the game changing technological masterpiece that it is often described as. It was much faster than anything else in the air at the time, but that also meant that its pilots only got a very brief chance to shoot at their target before rushing past it. To make things worse its very heavy cannon had a slow rate of fire, reducing the chance of getting a hit. It lost speed quickly in the turn, so had to rely on straight line speed to escape from enemy attack. It also used fuel very quickly, causing two problems – fuel was in very short supply in Germany in 1945, and it had short endurance. Although there are several examples of Me 262s shooting down several four engine bombers in a single attack, most of these successes came at a cost – even when the Americans didn’t shoot down any of the jets, some always seem to have been lost in accidents or on the ground.
Having said that the Me 262 could do serious damage to bomber formations. When things went well its speed meant it could elude the fighter escorts and get into position to do serious damage with the heavy cannon and in particular with the R4M rockets. If the aircraft had been available a year earlier or in much larger numbers then it might have had some impact on the Allied dominance of the air.
This is an excellent account of the Me 262’s brief combat career, matching eyewitness accounts from both sides of the battle with the actual result of the relevant battle and non-combat losses from the same day to give an idea of impact of the Me 262.
Chapters
1 – In Battle
2 – Setting the Scene
3 – Path to Combat
4 – Weapon of War
5 – Art of War
6 – Combat
Author: Robert Forsyth
Edition: Paperback
Pages: 80
Publisher: Osprey
Year: 2023