4
After Beauvais’ accident, it was 1 October 1942 before a V2, fitted with two Jumo 004 jets but still lacking a nose wheel, was ready to proceed with the programme of test flights. At 09:23 hours that day Fritz Wendel made a twenty-minute circuit over Augsburg, the first of numerous satisfactory flights with this particular aircraft which continued well into the spring of 1943. During this period there were no noteworthy occurrences.
Despite Milch’s directive in August 1941 suspending all further work on the Me 262, it would appear that at some time in the succeeding year Reich Air Ministry contracts were placed with Messerschmitt AG for both the jet and the Me 163 rocket fighter. Milch himself remained sceptical and inflexible. After listening to Willy Messerschmitt deliver a report about progress on the Me 262 to a Development Conference at the Ministry of Aircraft Production on 13 November 1942, he refused to give the aircraft any financial support on the grounds that in view of the growing Allied air superiority over the Reich he wanted to concentrate on conventional fighter and bomber production.
The repaired V3 re-entered service for test flying in early April 1943 and Wendel as chief test pilot enlarged his flying team by the addition of a proven young colleague, Oberfeldwebel Wilhelm Ostertag. This was done with a view to shortening the period of Me 262 testing and have the machine in series production ahead of schedule.
After a few flights, Ostertag flew the V2 as well as Wendel. The problems with the powerplant appeared to be diminishing but had not yet been fully eradicated. Nevertheless, at Messerschmitt the time was considered ripe to discuss with the Ministry of Aircraft Production the question of an early start to series production, and the appropriate report was submitted to the Reich Air Ministry. The Berlin office despatched young Hauptmann Wolfgang Späte to Augsburg to fly the Me 262 and make his evaluation. He appeared a suitable man for the task, for he had been involved in the flight testing and preparation of the Me 163 for operations and had been selected to command the operational test unit Erprobungskommando 16. After his first Me 262 flight Späte wrote:
What was immediately obvious was that this was a leap forward in aviation such that it was bound to bring us, as a nation at war, an unimaginable advantage, provided it was possible to produce the aircraft in time in sufficient numbers . . .
Continuing his test programme a few days later, he lost power in both engines at 9,000 feet. From an examination of the earlier flight data – principally in flying at slow speeds – it could be seen that he had throttled the engines back gradually to 2,000 revs. At the end of this experiment he attempted to regain thrust by pushing the throttle levers backwards and forward repeatedly, but neither engine responded, the rev counter remaining at 2,000. A brownish-black banner of smoke streamed astern from the jets.
The engines would not restart and after several more desperate attempts to regain control he had lost so much height that his only alternatives were abandoning the aircraft or crash-landing. Suddenly he recollected Wendel’s instructions for such an eventuality. Wendel had once told him that in this predicament the thrust levers had to be restored to neutral and the engines restarted by the same procedure as if on the ground. At this juncture this advice was clearly not without its perils. If Wendel’s advice was wrong, Späte would have lost so much altitude during the attempt that it would be too late to escape by parachute and he would be forced to crash-land. This might succeed but an explosion was a possibility. Fortified by the philosophy ‘Nothing is known for sure’, Späte decided to stake all on Wendel.
Meanwhile the aircraft had sunk down to 4,500 feet and Späte had no more time to lose. Putting the thrust levers to neutral, he made an injection of fuel and pushed the left throttle very slowly forward. Suddenly there came the short explosive sound that was music to his ears, accompanied by an increase in speed which confirmed that the left turbine had ignited. The engine rev counter climbed to 4,500, a little later to full thrust.
The altimeter read only 1,350 feet, but already Späte no longer needed to concern himself with the question of baling out or crash-landing. On one engine he could maintain at least this height. The starboard engine responded similarly and he made a normal landing.
This extremely unsettling state of affairs for pilots was typical of what had to be endured when the powerplant of a new aircraft was not unconditionally reliable. Jet flight, particularly as regards the engines themselves, was still very much in its infancy. The works engineers had neither the necessary experience nor, as previously mentioned, access to the best materials. The investigation into Späte’s almost disastrous flight came up with the explanation that if the Me 262 yawed when running at low revs, the strong lateral airflow could stop the compressor wheels and extinguish the ignition flame.
On 18 April 1943, the V2 was back in service. Späte drove with test-team leader Gerhard Caroli to the runway while the Me 262 was towed to the starting position by an aircraft-tug. This procedure was followed not only to save fuel but also to ensure that flying time was not reduced by wasting fuel taxiing to the runway.
At the starting position, Caroli offered Späte a cigarette. The two men conversed while smoking, eyeing the tug with the V2 in tow trundling slowly up the approach lane. When the aircraft arrived, Caroli signalled for his guest to get in, but Späte wanted to finish his cigarette (at the time cigarettes were rare in Germany). Just then a young test pilot, Wilhelm Ostertag, who was responsible for the maintenance of the V2, climbed into its cockpit and began to secure the straps of the aircraft’s parachute pack over his shoulders. When Späte made a questioning gesture to him from the ground, Ostertag pointed an index finger to his head as if to say ‘I just want to check the machine over.’
Späte was annoyed but could hardly complain about the flight-sergeant’s sense of duty and so he finished his cigarette while the V2 started up, took off and shortly disappeared below the horizon. Caroli, Späte, the ground technician and the tug driver waited patiently for Ostertag’s return; it would not be more than twenty minutes before he reappeared. He had enough fuel for twenty-five minutes, but had to keep five minutes’ worth in reserve in case the landing went awry and he had to go round again.
By the fifteen-minute mark they were watching the horizon with keen interest. After twenty minutes a certain disquiet had begun to creep in. After thirty-five minutes there could be no doubt but that Ostertag’s flight had run up against some kind of snag. They revised the possibilities: emergency landing, baled out by parachute, landed at another airfield. Nobody wanted to suggest the fourth possibility.
Forty minutes had passed when the flight control vehicle came racing up the approach road to the starting point. A young man leapt out in haste. ‘Are you missing a Ju 88?,’ he shouted to Caroli. ‘No, an Me 262,’ Caroli answered, his face as white as chalk. ‘You’d better follow me then!’ The car sped back while Späte, Caroli and the technician bundled themselves aboard the slow aircraft-tug. Soon they knew the worst: young Ostertag had crashed. A vertical dive into the ground from 1,500 feet at full throttle.
The crash site was a deep crater with numerous scattered pieces of engine, ribbons of fuselage and bits of wing. The remains of Wilhelm Ostertag had already been collected by the ambulance people. Späte stood wordlessly before this picture of utter destruction. He had over one hundred kills to his credit as a fighter pilot and had seen dozens of such craters. He knew that any day it could be his turn. ‘A few less puffs on a cigarette and they would have been picking bits of me out of there,’ he muttered.
In May 1943 Späte and Willy Messerschmitt both contacted General der Jagdflieger Adolf Galland in Berlin, Späte to report his impressions of the new aircraft, Messerschmitt to invite Galland to fly the machine himself in the hope that it would inspire his advocacy in high places where it mattered and bring about the production of an Me 262 pre-series. He added that should the General obtain a positive feeling about the aircraft, perhaps he might then recommend to the Reich Air Ministry an order for one hundred. These could be delivered relatively quickly and would serve for conversion training and trials with operational units.
It was about this time that the idea became current – put forward in the main by Hitler himself – that the new jets should be used as bombers instead of as fighters. How this came about at a time when nothing was more urgent than an effective defence against enemy bombers will be explained in due course.
Galland accepted Messerschmitt’s invitation and flew at once to Augsburg to try out the Me 262 for himself. In his book Die Ersten und die Letzten [The First and the Last] he described his first encounter with a jet aircraft:
I will never forget the 22 May 1943 when I flew a jet aircraft for the first time in my life. Early that morning I met Messerschmitt at the Lechfeld experimental airfield near the Augsburg factory. Together with his aircraft designers, engineers and the Junkers engine specialists were the commander of the Rechlin Luftwaffe Test Station and the head of his fighter testing team, Behrens, killed shortly after the war in Argentina when he crashed a Pulqui II jet fighter. After introductory lectures by the expert engineers involved in the design, there was tense expectancy as we drove to the runway. There stood the two Me 262 jet fighters, the beginning and centrepoint of our future and at the same time our great hope. A strange sight, these aircraft without a propeller. Hidden in two streamlined cylinders below the airfoil were the jet turbines. None of the engineers could tell us exactly what horse-power they developed. In response to our questions they got busy with their slide rules and would only commit themselves to such-and-such hundred kilos of thrust at this and that airspeed at a given altitude which was equivalent at the corresponding flight weight to an expenditure of so much horsepower airscrew propulsion. This made us piston-engine pilots very sceptical at first, for we were not yet tuned in to the peculiarities of this unknown thrust. But the engineers and their bizarre calculations were right. Essentially there really was no comparison with the power output for propellers. If the data they fed us, based on their calculations and to some extent already proven in flight, was even only more or less correct, then it opened up undreamed of possibilities. And everything depended on it!
The – at the time – fantastic speed of 850 kph in level flight meant a jump of at least 200 kph ahead of the fastest piston-engined fighter anywhere. Moreover, the aircraft could stay up from fifty to seventy minutes. For fuel it used a less costly diesel-type oil instead of the highly refined anti-knock kerosene which was becoming ever harder for us to obtain.
First the works chief test pilot demonstrated one of the two warbirds in flight. After it had been refuelled I climbed in. With numerous hand movements the mechanics started up the turbines. I followed the procedure with great interest. The first engine ran smoothly. The second caught fire. In a trice the turbine was in flames. Fortunately we fighter pilots are used to getting in and out of a cockpit rapidly. The fire was soon extinguished. The second Me 262 caused no problem. We set off down the 50-yard wide runway at ever increasing speed. I had no view ahead. These first jet aircraft were fitted with a conventional tail wheel in place of the nose-wheel gear which the type had in series production. Additionally one had to step on the brake suddenly. I thought, the runway is not going to be long enough! I was going at about 150 kph. The tailplane rose at last. Now I could see ahead, no more feeling that you are in the dark and running your head into a brick wall. With reduced air resistance the speed increased quickly. I was over 200 kph and some good way from the end of the runway when the machine took off benignly.
For the first time I was flying under jet power! No engine vibrations, no turning moment and no whipping noise from an airscrew. With a whistling sound my ‘turbo’ shot through the air. ‘It’s like having an angel push you,’ I said later when asked what it was like. But war-conditioned, sober reality allowed me little time to savour the new experience of jet flight. Flight characteristics, turning ability, top speed, rate of climb – in just a few minutes I had to form an opinion of this new aircraft.
Just then the four-engined Messerschmitt [by this Galland must mean the prototype Me 264 transatlantic bomber then undergoing flight trials. Translator’s note.] came lumbering over Lechfeld. She became the target for my first practice jet-fighter attack. I knew that I had been put into the air more for a technical opinion than a tactical one and that my manoeuvres would be viewed with some disquiet from the ground. Raw eggs were handled with less circumspection than these products of a hybrid technology. But already I knew that what these aircraft promised surpassed all previous notions and ideas to such an extent that whatever uncertainties might still remain could be utterly disregarded.
After landing I was impressed and inspired as never before. What was decisive was proven capability and character. This was a great leap forward!
We drove back to the factory for a closing discussion. There behind us on the apron, glinting silver in the sunshine of this May day, stood the Me 262. And it was like ‘a ray of silver on the horizon’ in the figurative sense too.
Today I remain convinced that my optimism was not misplaced in expecting that the deployment en masse of the Me 262 would have brought about a fundamental change in German air defence. My only fear was that the enemy would catch up or even beat us to it. This worry was one of the few which were unfounded. The deployment of the Me 262 en masse failed to take place for other reasons. I could not have anticipated those reasons as, immediately after my first test flight, I sent the following telex to Feldmarschall Milch:
‘The Me 262 aircraft represents an enormous leap which secures for us operationally an unimaginable advantage if the enemy continues with piston drive. In the air the machine makes a very good impression. The engines are completely convincing except at take-off and landing. The aircraft opens up fully new tactical possibilities.’
Shortly before Galland’s arrival, Späte had also experienced a fire when starting up. Perhaps he had moved a thrust lever injudiciously. After the Me 262 flights by Opitz and Galland in May 1943, Milch changed his opinion about the jet and at a conference in Berlin on 2 June he agreed to run an Me 262-0 pilot series ‘because of its superior speed as well as its many other qualities’. When Milch announced that fighter manufacture would be increased to 4,000 machines per month, Galland pleaded for a production ratio of 3,000 conventional Fw 190 and 1,000 Me 262, extra capacity for the jet being created by rejecting the less promising Me 209. Milch stated that he could not approve developing the jet in such numbers at the expense of conventional fighters because ‘the Führer considers the risk to be too great’. Personally he would heartily welcome a planned series production of such magnitude but as a soldier he had no option but to follow orders and ‘if the Führer orders caution, we must be cautious’.
A few days after this meeting Hitler watched an Me 262 exhibition flight and saw the aircraft’s impressive qualities for himself. On 27 August 1943 the Ministry contracts division ordered Messerschmitt AG to set up the Me 262 in series production.
Substantial delays occurred in the execution of the order. On 17 August, USAAF bombers had attacked the Messerschmitt works at Regensburg. The factories were severely damaged and the valuable rigs for the Me 262 fuselages destroyed. Junkers had advised that the Jumo turbojet 004, 109 – 004B of 900 kilos thrust, would not be ready for fitting in the engine nacelles until October. Finally there were concerns about the known weaknesses of the Messerschmitt AG management – the works had already found itself in difficulties over smaller contracts and with its inadequate structure might fail altogether with a major order. In this regard senior officials at the Reich Air Ministry were aware that Professor Messerschmitt often made promises about developments and delivery schedules which he was subsequently unable to keep. This would ultimately prove to be the case with the Me 262.
On 2 November 1943 Hitler involved himself directly in Me 262 production by sending Goering in person to Augsburg to find out from Messerschmitt whether the aircraft could be fitted out as a bomber. In response to the Reichsmarschall’s question, Messerschmitt stated categorically that the original plans contained bomb retention and release gear for two bombs of 250 kg or one of 500 kg. Goering – surprised by Messerschmitt’s welcome answer – responded by saying that the Führer had only mentioned two bombs of between 50 kg and 100 kg, but it would be so much the better if the Me 262 could carry two bombs of 250 kg or one of 500 kg. In conclusion he enquired when the machines of this type would be available.
The question embarrassed Messerschmitt. He was anxious to avoid provoking a controversy during Goering’s visit but a mealy-mouthed answer would not now avail him and he was forced to resort to the truth. The fact of the matter was, he said, that the bomb gear had not actually been developed yet, adding hastily that there would be no special difficulty fitting it to the test aircraft immediately after the device had been manufactured. Annoyed at this sudden change in the situation, Goering retorted, ‘You said that the aircraft was to be fitted with the bomb gear from the beginning!’
Messerschmitt struggled vainly to extricate himself by rephrasing his original statement. What he had meant to say was that all accessories had been provided for in the production plans, he said. The now sceptical Reichsmarschall demanded an unequivocal answer to his question exactly what the delay would be. Messerschmitt made the unconvincing response: ‘Oh, not very long. Perhaps two weeks. It’s not a big problem, we still have to make a sort of cover for the bomb claw.’
Here was the conflict: the machine was entering series production as a fighter bomber, i.e., based on original plans containing bomb retention and release gear. This gear was not available although Messerschmitt had implied that it was. Goering received another shock when he learned that not a single model from the pilot series was available for test flight as a bomber. There were only two original prototypes still extant, Messerschmitt said: one of the first three had been destroyed in a crash and the other two were both badly damaged. From this moment on, Goering realised that the production management team at Messerschmitt AG needed to be closely monitored and accordingly he appointed Oberst Petersen, head of the Rechlin Test Centre, to form a commission which would have responsibility for Me 262 development.
On 12 November 1943 Milch asked the Technical Office Chief of Staff, General Vorwald, for his opinion of the Me 262:
The only doubt we still have is the question of whether the turbojets have been tested sufficiently so that we can go into full production in the coming year. What is your opinion on that?
Vorwald expressed no doubts himself but Major Knemeyer of the Rechlin Test Centre warned of the catastrophic situation at Messerschmitt AG ‘where everything had run into a bottleneck’. His opinion was based on a bitter complaint by the Chief of Procurement and Supply about the worrying extensions to agreed production periods and the juggling with figures, statistics and delivery dates by the Company.
Since his first jet flight, six months had passed during which time General der Jagdflieger Adolf Galland had spared no effort attempting to have the Me 262 fighter scheduled for series production. He considered it highly favourable therefore when Goering arranged to present Hitler with an exhibition of the latest aircraft and weapons at Insterburg in East Prussia on 26 November 1943. With a great hoo-ha and in the presence of a great host of high officials, officers and NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party) people, the Reichsmarschall appointed himself – and not without the odd faux pas – master of ceremonies.
When the assembly arrived at the Me 262 aircraft and Goering had ended his introduction, Hitler asked suddenly, ‘Can this aircraft also carry bombs?’ As to the response there are various accounts. David Irving wrote in his book Die Tragödie der Luftwaffe:
Hitler repeated his question if this fighter could also carry bombs. Before the others could stop him, Messerschmitt stepped forward and said, ‘Jawohl, mein Führer, it can take a 1000-kg or two 500-kg bombs without a problem.’ Hitler thanked him: ‘This is finally the Blitzbomber, this is finally the aircraft, that I have been asking the Luftwaffe to provide for years. Here it is, and only one man has recognised it!’1
A slightly different version appears in General Galland’s book Die Ersten und die Letzten:
. . . the Me 262 jet fighter attracted special attention. I was standing close to Hitler when he surprised Goering with the question: ‘Can this aircraft carry bombs?’ Goering had already discussed the matter with Messerschmitt and left it to the Professor to answer: ‘Jawohl, mein Führer, in principle yes. As regards a 500-kg payload certainly, maybe even 1000-kg if strengthened.’
Galland commented:
It was a carefully formulated and straightforward response to which one could hardly object. Among airmen this answer would have raised no eyebrows. For every expert knew that it was purely hypothetical. The Me 262 was not equipped with retaining or release gear for bombs, nor fusing installation, nor bombsights. Its flight characteristics and the panorama from the cockpit made it unsuitable for aimed bombing. The only possible bombing tactic was some sort of dive, but this would have involved the aircraft exceeding its permitted maximum speed. Above 950 kph the aircraft was no longer controllable. At low altitude the fuel consumption was so great that no useful penetration over enemy territory was possible, therefore low-flying attacks did not enter into it. All that actually remained was horizontal bombing from altitude. However, under the given circumstances the target needed to be the size of a large town to be certain of obtaining a hit.
But who would have wanted to offer a dissertation of this kind to Hitler at such a moment? How would one know that the argument had even been understood, let alone accepted? I admit that the Reichsmarschall, with whom Hitler had been speaking previously, might have had the duty to make him aware of all this. If he actually did do so I have no idea. In any case, Hitler allowed Messerschmitt and the rest of us no opportunity for explanations but continued, ‘For years I have been asking the Luftwaffe for the fast bomber which, whatever the enemy fighter defences, is certain to reach its target. In this aircraft, which you tell me is a fighter, I see the Blitzbomber with which I will repulse the invasion in its initial and weakest phase. Ignoring the enemy air umbrella it will strike into the masses of material and troops which have just come ashore and sow panic, death and destruction. That is finally the Blitzbomber! And naturally, nobody has thought of it as such!’
A third account appears in copious file notes made by Professor Messerschmitt himself following a telephone conversation with his brother-in-law Professor Madelung in 1971. They were discussing David Irving’s version (the notes in square parentheses clarifying Messerschmitt’s remarks are the author’s).
Messerschmitt: The 262 was not built to be a fighter. When Hitler asked me in East Prussia if the 262 could also carry bombs I said, ‘Of course.’ Firstly I fitted [probably he means here ‘I was the first to fit’] bomb retention gear to a fighter [Me 109]. From the very beginning the 262 was always thought of as suitable for modification into a fighter bomber. During the Polish campaign I had the idea of hanging a couple of bombs [to the Me 109] and went with Voigt [Chief of Projects Office] to Berlin and visited Udet, who was then chief of the Technical Office, Lucht [General Staff Engineer at the Reich Air Ministry] and Reichenbach [General-Engineer in charge of Development at the Ministry of Aircraft Production]. When I suggested what I had in mind they thought I was joking. On the way home I said to Voigt, ‘We will just make a little something, it won’t cost much and we’ll hang a 50-kg bomb below an Me 109.’ We did it and a few weeks later tried it out and it was a complete success. Then we rang Berlin and said we wanted to demonstrate it. Suddenly we got the contract to fit bombs to all Me 109s. With the 262 we envisaged it from the very beginning, it was included in the design sketches. I thought of putting the bombs in front of the retraction mechanism [the undercarriage shaft] for the wheels a little forward of the centre of gravity.
Madelung: Where was Hitler’s error? Messerschmitt: I don’t know. It was purely an operational question. I didn’t convert the machine and if anyone says I did that is a distortion and a lie. Where the machines we built went to I have no idea.
Madelung: Up to now it has always been said that Hitler prevented the proper use of the 262 because he ordered it to be converted to a bomber.
Messerschmitt: One can’t speak of conversion because the fighter was planned as a fighter bomber from the outset. My 200 [Ha 200, a light fighter and trainer developed by Messerschmitt in Spain after the war] and the 300 [Ha 300, a modern fighter aircraft developed by Messerschmitt in Spain, the prototypes of which were sold by Franco to Nasser in Egypt; further work was carried out on the type under Messerschmitt’s supervision] were also designed as such.
This account by Professor Messerschmitt contains many true statements but also errors and lapses of memory. That there were early trials of the Me 109 as a fighter bomber is a fact. That the Me 262 could also have been used as such in the ground-attack role is proved by the later addition of the R4M rockets beneath the wings as is mentioned later. But in the opinion of all pilots and engineers involved, the Me 262 was definitely never designed nor fitted to be a bomber capable of carrying even a medium load. Messerschmitt’s response to Hitler that the 262 could carry a payload of between 500kg and a tonne can only be understood as the claim of an industrialist scenting an additional order. That was his right, of course, for operational matters were never his business. Had Hitler perhaps posed the question in the form ‘how long it would take to equip the Me 262 to carry a one-tonne bomb’, Messerschmitt would have had to say at least a year. Seen from that perspective, the Me 262 would have been a different, almost a new aircraft. Building the prototype, testing the machine and the bomb gear and sights in flight and preparing it for operational readiness would have taken at least another twelve months after the conversion to a two-seater. Galland, Petersen and, of course, Goering knew that. It will remain an unsolved mystery why – with the exception of Milch – nobody attempted to make Hitler aware of the fact. As Luftwaffe Commander-in-Chief and Reichsmarschall it was unquestionably Goering’s duty to do so, for there were no ‘proper channels’ for him to go through. But it is obvious that we have here an ‘unplugged hole’ that cannot be explained away by the fear of Hitler’s allergy to counter-argument respecting the Me 262 in the fast bomber role. Certainly if there had been an energetic resistance hats would have rolled if not heads. Yet twelve months later when the ineffective officers’ revolt reported by Steinhoff and Galland took place it went unpunished. The bull must occasionally be taken by the horns and the admirable operations of Jagdverband 44 which followed the said ‘revolt’ were by far more dangerous to health than tackling Hitler respectfully about the Me 262.
The real guilty party was Goering. He had fallen from grace and lacked the courage to chance Hitler’s now undisguised disfavour. He who barely eight months previously had refused Milch the use of fighter aircraft was now not only silent but – according to Irving – actually approved a variation of the jet-fighter project which meant a setback of months. Galland also kept a still tongue although at least he and his office were not inactive behind the scenes.
The Arado aircraft firm was turning out the Ar 234, a jet bomber not far behind the Me 262 in development. This would have been the right machine for Hitler’s bomber idea, but the pressures of time, difficulties in obtaining materials and fuel, crew training, the deteriorating situations on the various fronts and – as before – Hitler’s sensibilities, all combined to ensure that nothing came of it. In the event, in a telex dated 5 December 1943, Hitler ordered the Ar 234 to be used in the fast reconnaissance role for which it would be at operational readiness by the autumn of 1944. It was also turned out as a bomber designated Ar 234-B2, but this version did not make its appearance until the end of 1944. By the war’s end only about 200 Ar 234 jets had been built and used operationally. Many went to training units, others to bomber squadron KG76 and some were probably used as stop-gaps in the fighter ranks.
Hearing Messerschmitt’s reply to Hitler’s question regarding the possibility of making the Me 262 into the Blitzbomber, Oberst Petersen of the Rechlin Test Centre remarked in an undertone to his neighbour, ‘That’s torn it!’, and he was proved right.
Hitler, whom nobody in his entourage dared contradict, remained adamant that the Me 262 must be used as a fast bomber. Whatever difficulties and objections there might be did not interest him. He had, after all, solved more awkward problems. Aside from the weapons of reprisal, he had nothing more to add on the subject of the appalling and ever increasing bombardment of Germany’s cities and industry.
Thousands of tons of explosives rained down on Germany day and night. In the week when German fighters shot down 300 enemy bombers, the enemy took note of this fact and exacted revenge by destroying 700 Me 109s on the production line, together with large areas of the various assembly works. But the Me 262, which as the only superfast fighter in the world could have brought to a halt these lethal depredations, was not available. There was evidence that the Allies could not continue to operate over Reich air space at a 10 per cent loss rate in aircraft per raid. The first delivery of mass-produced Me 262 fighters was scheduled for May 1944. If this date had been kept, it would not have brought the turning of the tide overnight but it would – as would later be proved – have put a large dent in the air supremacy which the Allies enjoyed from the summer of 1944.
In this connection mention must be made of the Me 163 rocket fighter. This most modern fighter could also have been operational earlier if its final development stage to operational readiness had been given a higher priority from the beginning. Because of its very limited range the Me 163 escaped consideration for the Blitzbomber role. The Walter rocket engine had tanks for two tonnes of fuel which lasted five minutes. The aircraft could reach ten kilometres 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.