I'm reading about the development of Me-262 and something caught my eye. Early protoypes flew as early as in 1941...

I'm reading about the development of Me-262 and something caught my eye. Early protoypes flew as early as in 1941, and the definite version was first flown in summer 1942, but for some reason Hitler authorised the production only in November 1943, and the aircraft officially entered service in summer 1944.
Too much precious time was wasted when the type could easily be introduced earlier, and it was too late to do anything with it.

My question is, do you think Me-262 would''ve made a major impact on the air war if introduced somewhere around 1942-43? It was the most modern design of its time and basically forged a path for all future aircraft.

>My question is, do you think Me-262 would''ve made a major impact on the air war if introduced somewhere around 1942-43?
No.
The only effect it would have would be to galvanize the American and British efforts to field their own jet fighters sooner, like the P-80 and Gloster Meteor.

As I recall, the big bottleneck was engines.

They were expensive, and they were first generation and wore out after like 8 hours.

Based

I have read that 1st generation jet fighters were actually less effective than latewar prop fighters because they required obscene levels of maintenance.

This.

Not to mention it takes time to train your air men to fly and fight in them.
-how to aim
-how to take off
-how to maneuver
-how to land

All essential to being capable to use in war.

British air force and American Air Force had been giving the Germans hell. And though this might have put them at an advantage earlier, if they just set men in the sky with little training no matter how fast they were or how more efficient they were, if they can't fight, well then it would have just been throwing money into the sky, because thats just target practice for the Boys.

Also have never heard much about the production process of the ME-262. I have no idea if the production or training was behind schedule. If you have any knowledge on that user it may support your question as to would it have had a significant impact in changing the tide. If Production was behind key points in air might have been winnable for the Germans if jets were used sooner.

Find out and cross reference dates to see.

Fun fact, after the war Me-262 was produced by Czech Avia factory under licence and flown by Czechoslovak airforce as S-92 model. It was used until 1951 when Soviet models began to take place.

short answer: no, and the reasoning was already given earlier in the thread.

but Germany was in a real catch 22 when it came to technology and weapons in general, especially in tanks and aircraft.

We know Germany kept upgrading and redesigning tanks as the war went on, but this was disastrous for wartime production, as precious resources got moved towards designing and producing parts for these new vehicles and diverted away from producing parts for the vehicle fleets already present. Splitting the resources between different tanks hurt the overall production of all variants.

but the catch 22 part was that the original German arsenal of Panzer III and IV's were not sufficient to effectively fight the allies, especially the Soviet KV-1 and T-34 that were practically immune to all German firepower in 1939.

So new technology was necessary to keep up the war, but constantly making new models and new vehicles with parts that are incompatible with other models severely hurt the production of all German vehicles.

In short, Germany had to upscale and take a hit to production to account for the new parts manufactured, meanwhile the allies only had to double down on what they had, avoiding the confusion of phasing out old parts and developing new ones on a mass scale.

It should be considered that the majority of the Me262s were shot down while starting/landing. They had little to fear from the fighters of the day because they were too fast for them if handled properly.

That being said, they obviously lacked the numbers to make a major impact, and the engines were still lacking, not to mention that the war took its toll when it came to quality and you were probably more likely to die from your engines catching fire due to not handling the throttle gently enough than from enemy fire.

It's not just that. The extra speed was great for achieving interception, but in an era before there were sophisticated targeting computers, it was hard to hit anything when you're zipping around at jet speeds.

Furthermore, at least from the German point of view, your late war targets were usually big, lumbering 4 engined bombers, B-17s and Avro Lancasters and the like. If you're in a 109, or a 190, you're already quite a bit faster than they are. If you get a 262, now you're a fucking lot faster than they are. At a certain point, more speed doesn't help much.

Not the guy you're responding to, but the majority of EVERY single engined fighter of WW2 was destroyed on the ground. The Me-262 was hardly an exception when it came to that.

I think the problem is that you're mistaking this for avoidable delays in the development of an airplane.

If for example, Hitler had authorised the production in November 1942 instead of 1943, it still would have gone through all the same development problems it would have anyway. It's not a case of paperwork holding things back.

Also, like the other guy said, the Western allies had operational meteors and p-80s. They just never thought the me-262 threat was great enough to deploy them directly in more combat operations than they did.

possibly, if introduced in 42 and put to luftwaffe priority it would have dominated the skies over western europe, potentially taking down enough allied bomb runs to save a bunch of industry that would have helped the germans keep air superiority from the western allies and produce more shit for the war in the east against russia, which would have had to be taken out completely before even dealing with anyone else. had the battle of britain been won and the good momentum from the first half of operation barbarossa continuing without the added second fronts of africa and italy would have been key to winning the eastern front

i think 5 things were needed for the germans to keep their momentum up in ww2, early Me-262s, prioritization of the Stg-44, better focus and cooperation between the generals and commanders of the wehrmacht, not backing out of use of fallschirmjager, and someone convincing hitler to not pursue super heavy tanks like the maus and e-100 or other failed pipedreams in the blueprint stages that were a massive waste of time,

p-80s first saw use in the korean war

yeah, but they were flying during the early 40's.

oh yeah? what, like piston engine versions?

Well, not super early, but by the mid 40's.
The XP80 was designed in 143 days in '43.
Lulu Belle flew in '44.

>do you think Me-262 would''ve made a major impact on the air war

Assuming they had enough to blunt daytime bombing, it'd only by temporary. The B-29 was designed to operate at 40,000 feet for a reason.

Early jet engines performed horrible at high altitudes and even if that was fixed the ceiling for the 262 was under ~37,000 feet.

Engine were terrible.

Only had a service life of like 60 hours. They couldn't make quality engines because they couldn't source the necessary materials like chromium

it was an interceptor not an air superiority fighter
wouldnt change much

Supposedly for a brief period after their introduction the Me 262 was getting kill ratios that would have been necessary to make strategic bombing unsustainable. So in theory, having more of them earlier could have made a significant impact.

The real issue with that is it assumes that the Allies wouldn't react at all. The Allies reacted to the appearance of the Me 262 by performing more fighter sweeps and hitting them on takeoff and landing, and that alone was enough to reduce the effectiveness of the Me 262s to little better than anything else the Luftwaffe was using.

So while more Me 262s may have briefly made an impact, you'd just see the Allies adapt tactics better to counter it. Like you said, it was an interceptor - the four Mk 108s were great for killing bombers, but terrible at engaging fighters - so even larger numbers of Me 262s would struggle against any real fighter presence.

Don't forget the roughly 65% of all Me-262s built that were destroyed on the ground before they ever got pilots assigned to them.

Unless Germany can do something to straighten out their pilot training programs, earlier introduction of the 262 isn't going to do much.

Well it could be argued that they'd be a bit more effective if they'd gotten into service before the Luftwaffe had flown all of its experienced pilots to death.

> for some reason
The plane was not ready at the end of 1942. The engines had problems with high temperatures, and the solution to that generated new problems with vibrations.
In 1943 the muricans were landing in Italy, and hitler wanted to reconvert it to an attack plane in the belief that propeller fighters could already deal with enemy bombers.

He was also probably inspired somewhat by the British Mosquito; a light bomber that's faster than pretty much any plane sent to intercept it, something that could be very useful on defense where the enemy has air superiority in being able to provide CAS to your troops despite air inferiority.

He was more interested in stopping that production and moving the research into jet bomber's which was retarded

What's retarded about that? The Me-262 as an interceptor isn't substantially better than the FW-190; when your main target are 4 engine bombers whose top speeds are about 350 kph, going from 600 kph to about 900 kph doesn't help you all that much except insofar as avoiding fighter sweeps.

On the other hand, a bomber you can use to provide air support in places like Italy and France despite superior allied air forces, which might tie down lots of fighter assets trying to stop them, is a reasonable idea.

Wouldn't save em, might even make it worse. They didn't had enough active 262s to make large-scale attacks on the bomber formations until March of 45, and by then it was too late. Putting it in production earlier would have slowed work on getting the engines more reliable, so you'd see single 262s flying earlier in the war but there wouldn't be enough ever.

The Jabo 262 was probably the best chance Germany had for driving off an amphibious assault. Nothing slower would stand a chance of consistently getting through the Allied air interdiction. Enough of them could have kept it a two-front war (Italy and Eastern) rather than the three they had to fight.

Not him but I think Hitlers insistence of a jet bomber significantly delayed the 262 development.