Hitler's Jet Plane (8 page)

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 notable success was achieved by German fighter men operating under the severest combat conditions, and most of them were not flying the modern Fw 190 but the Me 109 and at night the slower Me 110 two-seater. It is difficult to estimate how much greater their success might have been if throughout they had had faster fighters with longer range, the Me 262 especially, which though present in smaller numbers was certain to have swelled Allied bomber losses. But the wrangling over the aircraft went on and on. By the time that Erprobungskommando 16 was testing the Me 163 rocket fighter operationally at Bad Zwischenahn near Oldenburg in July 1943, there was still no talk of series production let alone operations.

There was a number of reasons for this state of affairs. Hitler’s trust in Goering had wavered. When the Reichsmarschall obtained an audience with Hitler, he no longer had his former influence. It was therefore not to be expected that Goering might achieve a higher priority for Me 262 series production. Probably the most telling blow against the aircraft, however, came from a most unexpected source, Willy Messerschmitt himself. In a conversation on 27 June 1943 at Obersalzberg with Hitler, Messerschmitt warned him of Milch’s planning errors particularly with regard to the latter’s ideas about future aircraft production and choice of types. He even went so far as to caution Hitler against mass-producing the Me 262 on the grounds of its enormous fuel consumption. It seems incomprehensible that he would have offered such advice but the fact is confirmed historically by two sources: Rakan Kokothaki, who was present when Messerschmitt reported back to his directors on his conversation next day, and David Irving (
Die Tragödie der Luftwaffe
, pp 294 – 5) quoting Kokothaki and the Soviet interrogation of Messerschmitt postwar.

After Messerschmitt’s statement to the board, Hitler and Speer expressed doubts about making the Me 262 the mainstay of the German fighter arm. Actually there had never been talk of such a thing. What was being asked for was the addition of this superfast and superior machine to the Reich air defence force alongside the Fw 190 and the Me 109 as soon as possible. Neither Milch nor Galland nor anybody else from the Reich Air Ministry or Luftwaffe could have intended to make the Me 262 the mainstay of the fighter arm overnight. It would have been in any case many months ahead, for the opportunity simply would not have existed to retrain fighter squadrons for the new jet nor create the infrastructure for the aircraft at squadron level. The assertion about the fuel was correct so far as it went, but jet fuel is not costly kerosene but a type of diesel oil requiring less refining and so subject to less reduction in preparation.

Though not referring to it specifically, Rust and Hess argue cogently in their article ‘The German Jets and the USAAF’ (1963) that Messerschmitt’s outburst of 27 June 1943 was undoubtedly the turning point for the aircraft’s future. Hitler’s primary fear was that a lightly damaged Me 262 might make an emergency landing in enemy-held territory whereby the secrets of the aircraft’s construction and its turbojets would be forfeited. It was not known in Germany at the time that the United States and Britain were only one year behind in the development of similar jet aeroplanes. When Hitler was informed what difficulties were to be expected from operational flying at low level, such as reduced speed, high fuel consumption, vulnerability to enemy fighters and so on, this would explain his decision that the Me 262 was not to be used as a fighter, they say. Unfortunately for the argument, the Me 262 fighter would not have run the risk of crashing on enemy-held territory if it had been operational over Berlin, for example.

Obviously there was some other reason why the aircraft was wanted in the bomber role. On 2 November 1943 Goering went to Augsburg to investigate whether the aircraft was suitable for use as a fighter bomber. Three weeks later at Insterburg Hitler enquired of Messerschmitt about the aircraft’s bomb-carrying capability and he used the term ‘Blitzbomber’ specifically. Rust and Hess then continue:

Hitler saw the Me 262 as a Blitzbomber. He did not realize that converting the Me 262 into an effective two-seater bomber aircraft with the necessary bomb-aiming apparatus and bomb-release gear, not to mention adequate range, involved completely redesigning the aircraft. A conversion of this kind would have put back the operational readiness of the Me 262 by many months – certainly beyond when the invasion was expected.

This assumption by Rust and Hess seems to go a little too far, for being informed of all the complaints about the Messerschmitt set-up and their causes, Hitler had Goering issue an order of the day on 5 December 1943 to the effect that:

The Führer wishes to draw our attention urgently to the enormous importance of the production of jet aircraft to be deployed as fighter bombers. It is imperative to ensure that by the spring of 1944 the Luftwaffe has a sufficient number of these fighter bombers operational. Any difficulties caused by raw-material and manpower shortages are to be overcome by the transfer of Luftwaffe supplies and personnel so that anything which might lead to a prolongation of the manufacturing period is removed. The Führer makes it known that all delays in our jet-fighter programme will be tantamount to irresponsible negligence. The Führer requires that with effect from 15 November 1943 a written report is submitted to him every two months regarding the current progress on the Me 262 and Ar 234 programmes.

This order, though not the result of Goering’s visit to Augsburg, signified the final classification of the Me 262 as a fighter bomber and not the pure fighter which Messerschmitt had constructed and which the German fighter arm needed so desperately. After the loss of North Africa, the end of the alliance with Italy and the shrinking perimeter of the various fronts, the most powerful weapons of attack were now necessary on land and in the air to defend against the enemy. One of these weapons would have been the Me 262 fighter.

The only plausible reason why Messerschmitt might want to protect himself against a full-scale production run of the Me 262, or at least to defer it, lay elsewhere.

The fantastic success of the Me 109 had made Willy Messerschmitt into a celebrity worldwide. Its victories in 1939 and 1940 had endowed the machine with a kind of mystique. For its builder and his factory it brought almost a monopoly on fighter production confirmed semi-officially in a conversation between Udet and Ernst Heinkel reported in the latter’s memoir
Stürmisches Leben
.

Heinkel, whose doubtlessly more efficient He 112 had been completed a little later than Messerschmitt’s Bf 109, must have been bitterly disappointed to lose out when in 1936/1937 the Bf 109 was chosen for the standard German fighter. A year or so later Heinkel observed to Udet, with whom he was on the friendliest terms, ‘The next fighter is Heinkel’s!’ Udet demurred. ‘The official view now is that aircraft manufacturers should specialise in particular types. It is a rationalisation. On account of his success with the Bf 109, Messerschmitt will take over the fighters. And, after the He 111, you will develop only bombers. The Bf 109 will keep us going for at least four years. It will soon have the 1000-hp Daimler – Benz engine. That will give it about 550 kph, and with the improved version, 600. Meanwhile Messerschmitt is working on a new twin-engined fighter. We have no more fighter problems...’

Nobody could then have anticipated how heavy a cross to bear this last sentence would later become. No wonder therefore that Messerschmitt might feel as though his back were to the wall when the Me 209 and Me 309, successors to the Me 109 in 1942 and 1943, both drew the short straw and lost him the battle for the series contract. And he lost it not only to Kurt Tank’s better Fw 190, but also to his own Me 109G and the Me 262.

From the beginning of his career, Messerschmitt was known as an avid aircraft designer, an engineer whose inspirations gave him no rest. A fund of anecdotes depicts him in a coffee shop, on a train, in a car at traffic lights, fumbling through his pockets for a scrap of paper on which to scribble down a concept or draft a rough sketch. His staff had dozens of such stories to tell, but they also reported how the expenditure of capital for his work at Bamberg made his family nervous wrecks. After the move to Augsburg, under the partnership agreement with Bayerische Flugzeugwerke, the company’s accounts office picked up the tab for his numerous wide-ranging projects. It was a trait of his character that Messerschmitt would generally find the way to offset personal financial risk. The Me 210 disaster for which he was personally responsible cost Messerschmitt AG at least RM 30 million, a sum which would be difficult to claw back even in an epoch when the company was buried under an avalanche of armaments contracts.

Messerschmitt saw it as his moral obligation to recoup this vast sum but he was imbued by now with a greater degree of caution. Whereas the Me 262 was an outstandingly advanced machine, how it would behave operationally once it was in series production was an unknown factor. Moreover as yet the jet engines were not fully reliable nor had the airframe been tested to the parameters: test speeds had been restricted to the normal limits of propeller aircraft.

It had been a similar story with regard to the Me 163 which – contrary to many assertions – was designed and built by Alexander Lippisch. By his own admission Messerschmitt never had a finger in the pie and treated the project with disinterest if not disdain. The Me 163 airframe had proven flawless in tests over the range of speeds of which it was capable. The rocket motor on the other hand had some diabolical traits and occasionally incinerated the pilot. As an Me 163 glided in to land it was at the mercy of any lurking enemy fighter, a problem which would be shared by the Me 262 on its landing approach. Additionally if an Me 262 engine had to be shut down the aircraft could fly home but no evasive manoeuvres were possible if attacked.

Piston-engined aircraft were not vulnerable in this way. These drawbacks could not be lightly glossed over, least of all by Messerschmitt. Therefore preparation of the Me 262 for operations would not follow the same course as a typical propeller aircraft such as the Me 209 and 309 had done.

Unencumbered by problems of high finance, fighter men, their commanders and senior officers like Galland saw the situation more soberly and thus in a truer light. By 1943 they could probably have proved that the Luftwaffe was likely to lose out entirely to the endless stream of enemy bombers if Reich air defences were not strengthened significantly very soon. Many eye-witness accounts of the time, letters, file notes and diary entries, provide a confusing and grotesque picture of the altercations at Luftwaffe High Command and in the General Staff which by-passed Goering and went directly to Hitler. The Reichsmarschall of the very battered German Reich was already its saddest figure.

He had finished the World War I as a fighter pilot with an impressive twenty-two kills. He had taken command of the famous Richthofen fighter squadron (although not to the universal acclaim of its officers). A member of the NSDAP from 1922, he was one of Hitler’s ‘Old Guard’, became the most senior SA-chief and was seriously wounded in that role during the march to the Feldherrnhalle on 9 November 1923. As the ‘true Paladin of the Führer’ he became Prussian Minister – President after the National Socialist seizure of power in 1933, Prussian Interior Minister, the Reich Minister for Aviation, the Reich Minister for Forestry and Hunting and finally Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe.

It is clear that this vain and occasionally drug-dependent man never fulfilled his true potential. His staff, fighter men and officers who knew him or had conversations with him often spoke highly of his intelligence and good judgment. Nobody took amiss his extrovert personality, his fantasy uniforms, the theatrical arrivals, the extravagance of his title with the prefix ‘
Reichs-
’. They smiled and accepted him as he was. Among the people he was even loved, for he brought something of a monarchic flair to the otherwise spartan customs of Adolf Hitler. He had insisted that he be called ‘
Maier
’ – peasant farmer – if so much as one solitary bomb fell on German soil, but even when the air-raid sirens howled incessantly the people were not aggrieved at Goering. They simply called him
Maier
and left it at that.