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Me 262 A-2
Hello Geoff
Here is a short excerpt from the rather dated The Warplanes of the Third Reich by William Green concerning KG 51's raids against the Nijmegen bridge.
"The Me 262s of KG 51 now began to make regular attacks on the strategic Nijmegen road bridge held by British forces, and fighter patrols and anti-aircraft defences were ineffective in dealing with them. The Me 262s flew singly and during daylight approached at altitudes of the order of 25,000 ft., releasing their bombs at about 18,000 ft. in a shallow dive. At dusk when viability was poor they went in at about 1,000 ft., diving to 500 ft. to drop their bombs, and at night they approached at approximately 12,000 ft. and dived to 8,000 ft. before releasing their bombs. Under these conditions of high speed and rapid changes of altitude heavy anti-aircraft artillery was useless, although the bombing was quite indiscriminate. Even though the attacks were little more than nuisance raids the fact that the Me 262s could attack at will was intensely annoying, and both umbrella and radial barrages were maintained around the bridge in an attempt to solve the problem, but failed to knock down one Me 262. Spitfire XIVs and Tempest Vs were assigned the task of patrolling the bridge, but enjoyed little success, and on most occasions when the RAF fighters did succeed in "bouncing" the jet fighter-bombers, the Me 262s were able to half-roll and dive away, or to climb away at a much higher rate than their attackers."
Please remember that this is a dated source so perhaps new information will differ but perhaps this can help you.
Horrido!
Leo
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