Galland was also unable to comprehend the lack of reality from his superiors: “Not even he [Göring] could dismiss the swarms of Mustangs and Lightnings flying overhead. Having the jet as a fighter was critical, and despite Hitler’s bomber order, fighter testing was still allowed. It would most certainly not have changed the final outcome of the war, for we had already lost completely, but it would have probably delayed the end, since the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944, would probably not have taken place, at least not successfully if the 262 had been operational and in large numbers.”
Supporting Galland’s description of Göring’s response to Allied fighters roaming the Reich at will is Starr Smith’s data in the book Jimmy Stewart: Bomber Pilot: “I knew first that the Luftwaffe was losing control of the air when the American long-range fighters were able to escort the bombers as far as Hanover. It was not long before they were getting to Berlin. We knew then that we must develop the jet planes. Our plan for their early development was unsuccessful only because of your bombing attacks. Allied attacks greatly affected our training program too. For instance, the attacks on oil retarded the training because our pilots couldn’t get sufficient training before they were put into combat.”{14}
However, Göring also made statements to his American captors that were somewhat contrary to his position in front of Hitler regarding the jet and even in stark contradiction to what he stated to Galland and others in Hitler’s absence, as later reported by Galland. According to Göring’s postwar interrogation: “I am convinced that the jets would have won the war for us if we had had only four or five months’ more time. Our underground installations were all ready. The factory at Kahla had a capacity of one thousand to one thousand two hundred jet airplanes a month. Now with five thousand to six thousand jets, the outcome would have been quite different.
“We would have trained sufficient pilots for the jet planes despite oil shortage, because we would have had the underground factories for oil, producing a sufficient quantity for the jets. The transition to jets was very easy in training. The jet pilot output was always ahead of the jet aircraft production.”{15}
Adolf Galland, during his interviews, mentioned these factors, which corroborated Göring’s comments to a degree: “This could have been possible, since Kommando Thierfelder had been receiving the jets at Achmer since April. I certainly think that just three hundred jets flown daily by the best fighter pilots, even at a ten percent loss with a like replacement ratio, would have had a major impact on the course of the air war. This would have, of course, prolonged the war, so perhaps Hitler’s misuse of this aircraft was not such a bad thing after all.”{16}
On December 21, 1943, the operational feasibility of the Me 262 had been placed under Hauptmann Werner Thierfelder’s Erprobungskommando 262 at Lechfeld. The Ekdo 262 had received several of the early prototype Me 262A-0 aircraft, and these had their teething problems. As with any new weapon system, trial and error had to be part of the research and development.
Although the unit was not an operational success, the lessons learned were to reverberate throughout the jet community. Even after Thierfelder was killed in combat with 15th Air Force Mustangs over Bavaria on July 18 and Hauptmann Neumeyer had taken over temporary command, there was a new phase of the Me 262 being discussed. The jet was about to be lifted to new heights, with a new fighter unit soon to be created that would test Galland’s theories.
CHAPTER 8
First Encounters
I remember when I scored my first kill in the Me 262, it was incredible!
When the first Me 262s were delivered to the field units in April 1944, the primary fighter unit to receive the jets as a dedicated fighter was an ad-hoc group based at Achmer commanded by Hauptmann Werner Thierfelder. Officially designated Erprobungskommando 262, it was formed in April 1944 at Lechfeld to test the new Me 262. The unit was disbanded not long after Thierfelder was killed on July 18, 1944, reorganized as Kommando Nowotny, and relocated to Achmer on September 26, 1944, and given free reign to fly their missions and test their theories. Much was hanging in the balance, both politically and militarily.
The first serious encounter between an Me 262 and an Allied aircraft occurred on July 26, 1944, when an Me 262 from Ekdo 262, flown by Leutnant Schreiber (work number 130017) shot at a Mosquito.{1} The Allied plane disappeared, trailing smoke, but later safely landed in Italy. In August, Nowotny’s band of adventurers began interceptor operations in earnest. It was on August 8, 1944, when the unit scored its first confirmed kill, also a Mosquito.{2}
The Allies had heard of the Me 262 and even had secondhand reports smuggled out of Germany through the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) and underground. Many of these reports came from the forced laborers who were building the aircraft. What the Allies knew was best summed up by Gen. James H. Doolittle, the famed aviator who had been a stellar pre-war racing pilot and innovator and who led the famous Doolittle Raid against Japan from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet on April 18, 1942. His assignment to the Eighth Air Force Bomber Command provided him with access to all the available intelligence. Doolittle was especially interested in German aircraft technology, as he stated:
“We knew of the German rocket base at Peenemünde, and the rumors about these super fast aircraft were taken seriously. There were just too many corroborating reports from many different sources not to take notice, but many of the pilots almost refused to believe the reports coming back about these fast aircraft. What we needed was a visual, and preferably camera confirmation. I would have been ecstatic if we could have captured one, but that would have been high hopes indeed. It was the British who first confirmed what we feared.”{3}
Allied pilots were not slowly introduced into the jet fighter, they were rudely awakened, and to the American bomber crews the introduction was heart stopping. General Curtis LeMay, the retired bomber commander and former commander of Strategic Air Command, had this to say:
“In 1944, Hap Arnold called me, as I was stateside already, headed for the Pacific; just a chat I thought, but hell no. I was informed that we had lost some B-24s and B-17s, probably a dozen over the last several days, and the culprits were these new German planes, jets. The discussion was not a long one, but he said that Ira [Eaker] was very upset, more at the potential for bad morale than the actual damage inflicted. After a while, he asked if I had any suggestions. I said, ‘Yes, kill the bastards at their airfields. Better yet, bomb their fucking factories; do we know where they are?’ He said he thought so, and then I suggested he use an entire air reconnaissance group to get the damned evidence he needed. I called Doolittle, who was still in England and asked him to see what he could do.”{4}