[John Vasco]

In discussions with Schenck he told me that part of the reason for the 262 not being successful as a fighter-bomber was due to the fact that the pilots flying the 262 Jabo were either fighter pilots or bomber pilots. At first, that might seem a strange assertion to make, but the reason he said that was as follows.

Schenck had been involved in Jabo operations since September 1940, and, basically, knew the game inside out. He pointed out that it required a special type of training to cultivate a successful Jabo pilot, and that was simply not afforded to him when he set up Kommando Schenck. According to him, the fighter pilot mentality was not instantly conditioned to low level accurate attacks (witness the naming of certain USAAF fighter ground attacks during the Battle of the Bulge - they were sarcastically called the 9th Luftwaffe weren't they, due to so many incidents of friendly fire), and the bomber pilot had been trained in the relentless discipline in keeping flying formation - fine over England in August/September 1940, but fatal in 1944/45. As Nick says, KG 51 ended up doing blanket bombing, and got malletted in the process. Schenck told me that when he saw the KG 51 losses several years after the war ended, he was saddened but not surprised, as those bomber pilots simply were not trained to throw a jet fighter around the sky once attacked by an Allied fighter.

Given the inability of the 262 to materially affect the ground war, in hindsight the use of the 262 might have been better employed 100% as a pure fighter. But, Kommando Schenck tested the first jet as a fighter-bomber, and what is the primary strike aircraft in every air force today? Yep, the jet fighter-bomber.