I was reading some books on WW2 and the Luftwaffe , and it said that the germans had decent jet fighters as early as 1942 , but Hitler refused to deploy them , can anyone shed light on this ?
hitler ordered the me 262 to be the blitz bomber he always dreamed, and that doomed the early presentation of the sturmbird, against the objections of adolf galland , who was behind the me 262 as a fighter
From what I have read the real problems was the engines. The worse problem was while the Jumo 004a had a pretty good life span of 200-250 hours the Jumo 004b had a life of around 10-25 hours. The 004b had 1/3 the high grade steel alloys the 004a had. It took until the last half of 1944 to make the 004b work well enough for a combat plane. The short engine life is why the He 162 had an airframe life of about 10 hours. It's BMW-003 engines had about a 10 hour life. The plane was as maintance free as they come. Any problems and throw it away. The Me 262 was made for quick engine changes.
Metalurgy had more to do with the late intoduciton of the Me-262 than Hitler did. Germany just didn't have the materials or technical skill to make a good jet engine in 1944. It was difficult enough in Britain and the US. Only the desparate situation led to the Me-262 entering service as early as it did.
The only addition to this could have been the Heinkel He280, which flew in prototype form around the time the CSP is refering to (Sorry to use abbreviations, but I really can't be bothered to type "Canadiansuperpatrior" every time I have to refer to you, if that bugs you though let me know and I'll make an extra effort! ) That said prototype to production fighter is generally a fairly lengthy process, even if they could have persuaded the RLM for the possible need for one. Even then as Canambridge said, metalurgy would have held the project up, possibly for as long as it did the Me262. The engines for the He280 prototypes were apparently highly unreliable though, and the Jumo 004s as used on the Me262 were apparently too heavy. It wasn't that Hitler refused to deploy the jets, they simply weren't there, although an aircraft could have been developed into a production model by say mid-1943-ish the engines to power it would still be absent until about a year later.
Even the inadequate Jumos were better than nothing. When they did function properly, nothing in the Allied inventory could match the Me 262 in combat.
I wouldn't say that the Jumos were inadequate as such, just unreliable in production for the Me262 - here the German scientists exceeded their own industry and technician's ability to build and maintain the powerplants, and they were too heavy for the He280. When they did function properly, nothing in the Allied inventory could match the Me 262 in combat. Not strictly true, Mustangs and Spitfire MkXIVs gave a fairly good account of themselves against Me262s, Galland himself was wounded flying an Me262 which was bounced by a Thunderbolt. One pilot summed it up quite neatly saying that if the Me262 say you first he could just open his throttles and would be gone. However if this wasn't an option, such as attacking a bomber formation, even the Me262s speed could be negated in the short term by the Allied fighters having an altitude advantage, if the Me262 could then be drawn into a dogfight with a fighter the advantage went firmly to the Allied pilot. Quite a few Me262s were downed in proper combat that way. (Proper combat meaning instead of being bounced taking off or landing) I'm not saying that the Me262 was useless, far from it, when everything worked properly it was probably the best bomber interceptor of the war, but saying that nothing in the Allied inventory could touch it is not true. The Spitfire MkXIV, Tempest, Mustang and Thunderbolt all could take on an Me262 perhaps not quite on equal terms but if it came down to a dogfight their manouevrability could provide a balance for the Me262s speed, had the Meteor F.4 and P-80 Shootingstar seen combat against the German jet I doubt the Me262 would have been as legendary as is now the case. The P-80 was deployed to Italy in the closing month of the war in the ETO, not to counter the Me262 but to counter the Ar234, clearly the Allies saw the latter as a greater threat than the former.
I understand the Thunderbolt could even follow the Me 262 into a dive, it wouldn´t gain on him but could still get a good shot at him when the German pulled out of the dive.
