Read Online Hitler's Jet Plane by Mano Ziegler - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Mano Ziegler
Tags: History, World War II, Military, Military Science, Aviation, Engineering, Engineering & Transportation
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altitude in ninety seconds or so. This was sufficient for a brief attack on any enemy formation sighted from the airfield. Speeds of 900 kph were obtained giving the Me 163 the same superiority as the Me 262 if only very temporarily. It was planned that operational Me 163 units would be dotted all along Germany’s western border from the sea to Switzerland, from where they would shoot up to intercept incoming enemy bombers with their fighter escorts. It was not a bad plan so long as the weather held good. With a low overcast the practice would be for the pilot to abandon the aircraft after the attack and descend by parachute. In good visibility, conditions of high cloud or clear skies, the Me 163 had to glide back to the airfield once its fuel was spent. In a glide the Me 163 was at the mercy of any passing enemy aircraft as was the Me 262 when landing.
Consideration was given to using the Me 163 as a ram fighter but nothing ever came of the idea. The strength of the German fighter arm was entrusted to the Me 109 and its famed successor, Kurt Tank’s Fw 190. The consequence of the visit by Milch and Udet to Augsburg in August 1941 had been a new aircraft production programme whereby the planned output of the Fw 190 exceeded by 250 per cent that of the Me 109.
5
The Me 262 as Bomber The Crucial Lost Year
T ens of thousands of bombs fell on German cities and centres of industry in the six months between General Galland’s first flight in the Me 262 jet and the Insterburg airfield exhibition of November 1943. The German people were exposed to a rain of fire which claimed its victims young and old without mercy. The neglected Reich air defences were poorly equipped to prevent it. Many former leading senior Luftwaffe command and fighter-arm officers maintain today that the deployment of the Me 262 could have reduced substantially the extent of the catastrophe, and not a few of them consider that it would have turned the tide. The jet fighter success in the last months of the war proved that the Me 262 might have brought the incessant flow of Allied bombers over the Reich largely to a halt.
Unceasing operational missions and a high casualty rate had made the air-war critical for both sides. Initially the Allies were short of fighter escorts and suffered almost intolerable losses on bomber operations. As time progressed it became clearer that the Luftwaffe was short of materials and fuel. Its ability to defend Reich air space was weakening, and this gave Allied fliers the hope that total air supremacy was just around the corner.
On the German side, fighter and bomber crews alike operated as a force hopelessly inferior in numbers and stretched to the limit by the excessive demands made upon them. Enemy bomber streams were becoming ever larger, fighter escorts faster and by virtue of longer ranges able to protect the bombers far deeper into Germany than hitherto. The Luftwaffe fleet of obsolete bombers and mainly obsolete charismatic fighters was simply no match for their opponents. They knew it and it affected their morale: only a flier who has experienced the sensation personally can know the sickening dread before a hopeless mission with the odds stacked against him.
To put it in a nutshell, there were too few pilots, too few machines, those machines in service were too slow and fuel was scarce. In the air Luftwaffe fighters had to chance the enormous field of defensive fire of the four-engined bombers, yet they knew the enemy’s airborne radio and radar technology was superior. But despite it all a miracle happened and in these six months hundreds of enemy bombers were destroyed in raids on Berlin, Schweinfurt, Bremen, Münster and Marienburg.
Regarding the American losses alone Galland commented in Die Ersten und die Letzten :
Of course, with the increase in squadron strengths the losses also rose. According to US statistics their bomber arm lost 727 aircraft over Europe in the first ten months of 1943 . . .
This
Consideration was given to using the Me 163 as a ram fighter but nothing ever came of the idea. The strength of the German fighter arm was entrusted to the Me 109 and its famed successor, Kurt Tank’s Fw 190. The consequence of the visit by Milch and Udet to Augsburg in August 1941 had been a new aircraft production programme whereby the planned output of the Fw 190 exceeded by 250 per cent that of the Me 109.
5
The Me 262 as Bomber The Crucial Lost Year
T ens of thousands of bombs fell on German cities and centres of industry in the six months between General Galland’s first flight in the Me 262 jet and the Insterburg airfield exhibition of November 1943. The German people were exposed to a rain of fire which claimed its victims young and old without mercy. The neglected Reich air defences were poorly equipped to prevent it. Many former leading senior Luftwaffe command and fighter-arm officers maintain today that the deployment of the Me 262 could have reduced substantially the extent of the catastrophe, and not a few of them consider that it would have turned the tide. The jet fighter success in the last months of the war proved that the Me 262 might have brought the incessant flow of Allied bombers over the Reich largely to a halt.
Unceasing operational missions and a high casualty rate had made the air-war critical for both sides. Initially the Allies were short of fighter escorts and suffered almost intolerable losses on bomber operations. As time progressed it became clearer that the Luftwaffe was short of materials and fuel. Its ability to defend Reich air space was weakening, and this gave Allied fliers the hope that total air supremacy was just around the corner.
On the German side, fighter and bomber crews alike operated as a force hopelessly inferior in numbers and stretched to the limit by the excessive demands made upon them. Enemy bomber streams were becoming ever larger, fighter escorts faster and by virtue of longer ranges able to protect the bombers far deeper into Germany than hitherto. The Luftwaffe fleet of obsolete bombers and mainly obsolete charismatic fighters was simply no match for their opponents. They knew it and it affected their morale: only a flier who has experienced the sensation personally can know the sickening dread before a hopeless mission with the odds stacked against him.
To put it in a nutshell, there were too few pilots, too few machines, those machines in service were too slow and fuel was scarce. In the air Luftwaffe fighters had to chance the enormous field of defensive fire of the four-engined bombers, yet they knew the enemy’s airborne radio and radar technology was superior. But despite it all a miracle happened and in these six months hundreds of enemy bombers were destroyed in raids on Berlin, Schweinfurt, Bremen, Münster and Marienburg.
Regarding the American losses alone Galland commented in Die Ersten und die Letzten :
Of course, with the increase in squadron strengths the losses also rose. According to US statistics their bomber arm lost 727 aircraft over Europe in the first ten months of 1943 . . .
This
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