What if the Germans Introduced the Me-262 and others listed below in 1943

The Me262 has been discussed a few times recently on AHF. To pick up on a few points from the last page of posts...

It wasn't that they though so much of them....but rather tha the 262 was so damn vulnerable landing and taking off, particularly the former. It "landed long" - took off by achieving a high speed on the runway - THEN retracting its undercarriage so that it was in the air a few feet! Only then could the pilot accelerate more and climb away - on slow throttle openings 'cos of the Jumo's legendary flame-out issue.

Landing was the same - a long, slow approach over many miles in a straight line lining up with the runway...at which point the Allies could very simply knock them out of the sky. A lot of RAF 262 kills were made this way with Tempests and Typhoons, sans rockets/ordanance after their initial tasking, simply stooging around known fields! The number of 262s limping home on one engine and unable to accelerate away didn't help either!!!

This flight profile ALSO meant that as well as major known issues with the nose wheel and strut, the 262 was ultra-sensitive to runways. It COULD use sod runways - but vastly preferred hard surfaces. And those sod runways had to be DRY and HARD; the vast majority of German fields were grass, including the majority of factory fields and those cleared for the "forest" assembly lines that 262s were built on - in April 1945 there were a number of major USAAF raids on 262 assembly areas that destroyed over a hundred completed 262s on the ground....simply because the runways were too boggy for any to be flown of in time!

Turkish chromium was problematic by the end of the war, from mid 1944; the ideal route was across the Balkans and up the inside of the Adriatic I.E. via Yugoslavia....but IIRC only one trainload EVER reached Germany this way; Tito's partisans fought long and hard over many years to deny this railway to the Germans. Instead, supplies had to come through the Balkans....until the Red Army's advance into there eventually cut that route too.

Spanish (and Portuguese) Tungsten was also problematic....but by 1943-44 the Spanish were coming under VERY great financial and political pressure from the USA to cut supplies to a minimum. Prior to that - the British had sought...sometimes sucessfully, sometimes not...to deny Germany Spanish/Protuguese tungsten simply by buying it up on the open market by the Ministry of Economic Warfare.

Very late in the war - the start of March IIRC - a Luftwaffe test pilot named Heinrich Fey defected to the Allies, bringing his 262 with him. He was a factiory test pilot - flying with a unit that tested 262s then delivered them to combat units; he told his interrogators that the Luftwaffe was having awful problems with spares....they were nearly non-existent. It was far more common to simply fit whole new engine units when the Jumos failed (with monotonous regularity and often very early) for dozens of engines once pulled simply sat there awaiting spares that never came. He also recounted occasions when he and others were reduced to sneaking off by night with a truck to the nearest 262 assembly area and bringing a couple of engines back to the unit themselves!

The Allied air interdiction campiagn was making any movement around Germany very problematical by the last two months of the war....not only of fuel of course, but as we can see - engine parts and whole engines. At the end of the war the Allies took possession of dozens of grounded 262s, hidden away under trees etc. and paralysed by want of spares - while they ALSO took possession of dozens at factories sitting completed except for Jumos!

You cannot underestimate the trouble that the engines gave the Luftwaffe in those last few weeks of the war.

Galland had a flight of prop fighters of his own atached to his unit, flying a mixed bag of spare and limited-series 190 types (after his falling-out with Goering he certainly wasn't at the top of the list for stuff fresh off the production lines!). The "airfield defence flight" must have been a sh1t of a job...flying an aircraft painted underneath with red and yellow or red and white stripes so your own flak didn't hit you mustn't have been much fun in a dogfight! It was a job for an exerienced, veteran pilot....but by March/April 1945, that's what Galland's unit was made up of!

 

Tungsten in Germany is problematic simply from the German point of view. One company in Germany controlled the entire supply: Hartzmetallzentrall controlled by Krupp. It manufactured three grades of tungsten carbide and only one grade was permitted for use by any company other than Krupp. Hence every company in Germany except Krupp made very limited use of tungsten for anything. This is why all those squeeze bore guns and other tungsten carbide rounds were Krupp products. Nobody else could get the supply of tungsten to make them.

 

Axis History Forum • View topic - Why was Nazi Germany short of Tungsten?

....apart that is from the very realproblems that the Allies and the course of the war gave them

 

A more obscure source is Machinery's Handbook 24th Edition pg 712 that gives a short history of the grading and manufacture of cemented tungesten carbide in Germany and the US.

 

I am not sure what scares me more, the fact that there is a Machinery's Handbook 24th Edition, that a 'handbook' has over 700 pages or that T.A. Gardner has appently read the bloody thing!

 

That rather implies you are unfamiliar with CRC's Handbook of Physics and Chemistry and other such books. Not reallly reading material but stuffed with huge amounts of essentially raw data.

 

How you guy's put yourself to sleep at night is your business, I don't judge!

 

I spent over 15 years running production shops manufacturing sheet metal, steel, aluminium, and electrical products for the Navy. You end up actually having to use books like that alot trying to find stuff and do stuff. I had a reputation for being the "nobody else will do this" guy to go to for the impossible cheap. Given a set of 20 + year old drawings of something I'd come back with a quote in a week or two on what everybody else said they couldn't make.

So, I have alot of books like Machinery's Handbook (2 different editions), stuff on rubber molding, plastics, machine tools, welding, and all sorts of other manufacturing stuff as a result.

 

My, I really do love these What-if's in which "if" Germany introduced these she "might" have one, and blah, blah, blah.....


How about this, what if Soviet Russia greated Germany's Blitzkrieg with 30,000 T-34's and not just 3,000?? Many more lives would be saved, and the "good" guys would win faster!
Pointless really as it never happened.

At least make an interesting scenerio based on fact and not by just rolling the clock back 6 months to a yr.

My opinion at least.


What if ET fought alongside the Allies in 1942?!

 

I agree with you in a general sense Slonik, however this particular thread has some merit as a topic for discussion, as the me-262 could quite realistically have been introduced earlier.

As a justification for this 'what if?' this thread led to an interesting discussion about strategic materials, that is not often brought to light in detail.

 

The Soviets could also have produced a proposed KV prototype armed with a high-velocity gun, as well as many other types of advanced weapon systems. There were so many good unimplemented ideas on all sides, giving Germany the benefit of hindsight really looks like a highly intellectual and speculative enterprise of somewhat dubious usefulness.

 

Could it? I've yet to see a good clear single POD that would logically produce a useful Me-262 substantially earlier than it was historically.

 

I believe it is well accepted that Hitler's orders relating to bomb carrying ability slowed up the introduction of the plane, and the decision to focus on it's introduction was taken late. It is not beyond normal possibility that these two decisions could have had different timelines or outcomes.

I also don't see how the technical hurdles and problems would have been any harder to overcome a year or so earlier.

 

My impression is that this has been pretty well discredited. I.e. the bombing capability requirement had little impact on the planes introduction. Indeed engines were on the critical path and the engineers were not satisfied with them (and justifyably so) when they were introduced.

Indeed but the question is how much and in what direction.

What's your POD? It's well known that trying to force technological projects at some points will slow them down rather than speed them up. So what changed and when and how much of an impact do you think it will have? and why?

 

I would be interested to see that discrediting. Most opinions I have seen still seem to accept the interference of Hitler as a major factor. (I'm not saying you're wrong - I just haven't seen any evidence either way and opinion seems to fall towards the 'Hitler's fault' theory)

Here is a fairly representative one;

"It would be nearly two years before it could be put into service, but it was not the fault of the aircraft. The wait was brought on by Hitler himself.

Driven by a desire for vengeance against the Allies, he decreed that the Me-262 should be used as a bomber. No matter that its speed would allow it to best the fighters escorting the Allied bombers destroying the German homeland; he wanted a fast bomber that could evade Allied interceptors. He cared not that it could carry little in the way of useful bomb load; all he wanted was to take the war to the enemy homeland. Many tried to dissuade him, but the Fuhrer would hear nothing of it. The Me-262 was to be a bomber and that was final. When he finally relented in mid-1944 and allowed every 20th aircraft off the production line to be built as a fighter, the war was already well on its way to being lost."

From;
New Me-262 Reproduction lands at the Museum « Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum


I do not challenge the fact that there were problems with the engines - that much is quite clear from the actual operational history. What I believe is that if production had started earlier, work on solving those problems would have sped up earlier, and the slightly less chaotic industry and general situation in 1943 could have made that work more likely to succeed.

Shifting production emphasis to the 262 may have had significant detrimental impact on other aircraft production, but that does not mean it couldn't have happened, nor does it mean the plane would have been any more or less effective in the first few months of it's introduction.

A 1943 intro of the 262 could quite easily have led to an 'a' version with different engines, or improvements to the original engines, or even a completely different successor by mid 1944.

This is another view of the same issue;

http://www.warbirdalley.com/me262.htm

 

Here is one site which shows that in spite of Hitler's order, work on the "Jabo" version was not implemented until he found out his order had been ignored.


…the Me-262's political troubles were far from over, and in fact were just about to take a very nasty turn. Hitler, alarmed by the success of Allied amphibious landings in Africa and Italy, was very concerned about developing a fast fighter-bomber ("Jagdbomber / Jabo") to pin down invasion forces on the beaches until reinforcements could arrive to drive them back into the sea.

On 2 November 1943, Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering, head of the Luftwaffe, and Milch visited the Messerschmitt plant in Augsburg. Goering asked Willi Messerschmitt if the new jet fighter could carry bombs. Messerschmitt answered without hesitation that the Me-262 had been designed from the outset to carry 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) of bombs, could possibly carry twice as much, and would be easy to adapt to the "Jabo" role.

On 26 November 1943, Hitler inspected the Me-262 at Insterburg, and asked the same question: Can it carry bombs? Messerschmitt gave him the same answer that he had given Goering. Hitler's prayers had been answered. He ordered the Me-262 to be built as a fighter-bomber, and the Me-262 "Jabo" featured prominently in his military plans from then on. There is little record of anyone contesting his decision. The reality was that Messerschmitt completely ignored the will of the Fuehrer and busily worked to put the machine into production as a fighter. (bold mine)

Milch, on reading intelligence reports that the Americans were getting ready to field new bombers such as the Boeing B-29 that would be a handful for existing interceptors, also pressed on with production of the Me-262 as a fighter. Though Milch made agreeable noises about building it as a fighter-bomber, little or nothing was done to that end. (bold mine)

Whatever the political issues surrounding the Me-262 program, the real difficulty was that the aircraft was still a long way from being a production machine. At the time, there was only one Me-262 flying, the "V4" prototype. The previous three prototypes had been wrecked one way or another, and the "V5" prototype was being rebuilt to use tricycle landing gear, at the suggestion of Adolf Galland. Given the aircraft's long nose, the tailwheel landing gear configuration made forward visibility on the ground extremely poor, and the downward-pointing jets also tore up the runway.

…Work muddled on into 1944, and then the political disconnect between the left and right hand finally led to an uproar. On 23 May 1944, Goering, Milch, Galland, other senior Luftwaffe officials, as well as Armaments Minister Albert Speer and his people, were called to Hitler's residence at Berchtesgaden to discuss the current fighter production program. The meeting was routine up to the point where production of the Me-262 as a fighter was discussed. Hitler was puzzled: "I thought the 262 was coming as a high-speed bomber. How many of the 262s already manufactured can carry bombs?"

Milch replied: "None, mein Fuehrer. The Me-262 is being manufactured exclusively as a fighter aircraft." After a chilly silence, Milch then pointed out that the aircraft could not be adapted to the "Jabo" role without major design changes, and even then it would not be able to carry more than 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) of bombs.

Hitler was shocked. Back in November, he had asked if the Me-262 could be adapted to the "Jabo" role, and received an unqualified positive answer. He had ordered that it should therefore be built as a fighter-bomber, and nobody had protested the decision. He had been including the "Jabo" Me-262 in his plans for the defense of the Reich against an amphibious landing by the Western Allies, which was expected any time soon and in fact would take place within weeks, on 6 June 1944.

Now Hitler was being told that not only were there no "Jabo" Me-262s, but that the assurances he had been given about its feasibility were false, and to make matters worse nobody had told him of any of this. This would have angered far milder men than Hitler, and he was furious: "Who pays the slightest attention to the orders I give?! I gave an unqualified order, and left nobody in any doubt that the aircraft was to be equipped as a fighter-bomber!"

Goering made excuses and passed the blame onto Milch, who was soon stripped of most of his powers. Hitler ordered that work now be focused on delivering the "Jabo" version of the Me-262, though he did consent to continued testing of the fighter version as long as it didn't slow down deliveries of the "Jabo" variant.

Messerschmitt engineers now belatedly began to fit the "V10" prototype as a fighter-bomber that could carry two 250 kilogram (550 pound) bombs. The result was clearly an improvisation, but since the Arado company was already working on an optimized jet bomber, the "Ar-234", the "Jabo" variant of the Me-262 could serve as an interim solution.

By late June 1944, a fighter-bomber unit, "Erprobungskommando Schenk", had been formed under Major Wolfgang Schenk. A month later, the unit was relocated to France with nine aircraft, in order to oppose the "real" invasion that was expected in the Pas de Calais, an expectation fostered by elaborate and comprehensive Allied deception programs.

The "Jabo" Me-262s in France accomplished little, and with the Allied breakout from Normandy they were gradually pulled back, to end up in Belgium at the end of August. With the invasion now history, Hitler rescinded the order to focus solely on the "Jabo" Me-262 version, and the focus of production returned to the fighter variant. The Fuehrer still insisted that any fighter variants that were built to be easily converted to the "Jabo" configuration on short notice.

Goto:

The Messerschmitt Me-262 Schwalbe / Sturmvogel

 

IF the 2623 had been introduced earlier, it would have encountered one major issue....remember what was discussed on the previous page about the sources of tungsten etc.?

If introduced early when Germany HAD access to the alloying metals required for the high-test version of the Jumo that was perfected....

What happens when the land war cuts off those supplies? What happens to a Luftwaffe SUDDENLY starved of quality engine spares and replacement engines that "now" only last for 12 hours' flying time or some....in an air force that has become reliant on the 262?

Which is "better" - a historically-small contribution to the air war....or a large air force suddenly paralysed by a rapid decline in the quality of its engines; imagine those hundreds of aircraft historically never flown at all for want of engines, or found parked up awaiting repair after engines wearing out...suddenly parked up at the side of runways in late 1943 or early 1944 when even regular sevicing and engine replacement suddenly finds "substandard" short-service life spares and engines being fitted?

What the shifting of the operational dates for the Me262 does is move the problem of poor engine life being something that ALWAYS affected it in service.....to a plague that hits it on the eve of D-Day

ALL that needs to happen to counteract the 262 is the Allies putting even more pressure and /or money into buying up stocks of alloying metals and breaking Germany's external supply lines.

 

Some interesting points:

The Me-262 was originally designed starting in April 1939;

Funding for the project in the first few years of the war was exceedingly limited, as the conservative upper echelon of the Luftwaffe - and even Willy Messerschmitt - thought it would not be needed;

First test flown in April of 1941;

Possibly could have been in production as early as 1942;

The production fighter-bomber version was very vulnerable during operations because it was a high-altitude performer being used at low altitude, with external bombs breaking up its streamline. In this configuration it was not much faster and less manouevrable than contemporary prop aircraft, resulting in most of its operational losses.

To those who are wondering why we are speculating on what might have been, I say: It's fun! It's mentally stimulating. Why do you go swimming, play football, baseball, surf the internet, or whatever you enjoy for recreation? Because it's fun.

 

With what engine? or are they just going to sit on the tarmac until a suitable one shows up?

 

If the Germans introduced all those items in 1943, their logistic system would collapse under the strain of delivering all the right spare parts!

Seriously, they had a lot of ideas, and it seemed like practically anyone with an idea for some new "wonder weapon" could get resources assigned to developing it - scientists, engineers, draftsmen, machine tools and operators, production of prototypes, etc. What they needed was to select a few of the most promising technologies, by which I mean not neat gimmicks but things with a discernable role in fighting and winning the war, and concentrate on making them operational.

One of my favorite speculations, and I admit that's all it is, concerns those jet engines and the V weapons, especially the V-2. Suppose the engineering and scientific expertise that went into the V-2 had been devoted to making the jet engines fully functional? Not to mention whatever rare metals were shot off into space on their way to London or Antwerp.

I'm also a bit puzzled by the Me-262 Jabo controversy. Practically every WWII fighter carried bombs, and as cited above, Messerschmidt made the usual provision for bomb racks in the design. There might have been an argument over how to use the planes once in service, but there was no big traumatic change in building it as a fighter or as a fighter-bomber.