Me 262 should have been used as a bomber?

[bassamnamani]

Alfred Price mentions that Hitler wanted to use the Me 262 as a bomber against the expected landing of Allied troops in Europe, implying that Hitler was right and Adolf Galland was wrong (who wanted to use the Me 262 exclusively as a fighter). Its use against bombers or fighters of the USAAF was a waste of its potential, because, ironically, its high speed would make it clear away past its opponent without giving it much time to fire and inflict lethal damage. Why not, therefore, add, that the Me 262 should have been used offensively against ground air targets in Britain, where it could have attacked and then escaped its pursuers with ease? Remember that the Me 262 was used in Operation Bodenplatte.

[CJE]

Only I./KG 51 took part in "Bodenplatte".
The use of fighter-bombers against Britain had no effect on the outcome of war. Why would have the Me 262 been more effective than the Fw 190 or the Bf 109 (or even the V-2) in this rôle?
Pinpoint bombing could not have won a war that was already lost everywhere else.
That's just not realistic.

[Graham Boak]

Hitting the UK would have had little effect, not least because of the shortage of airfields. Whenever the Germans did try to gather a bomber force capable of hitting British targets, Allied airpower concentrated on their airfields to knock them out. Read the writings of Roly Beamont for an example. Had a large number of Me 262 bombers, with trained crews, been available to penetrate the Allied fighter cover over the beaches and hit the landing ships and troops hard, in co-operation with Panzer divisions in the right place at the right time, then maybe the invasion would have failed and opened possibilities for the Germans. That's a lot of suppositions, and such a fleet of Me 262s belongs in Dreamland. You might also bear in mind that the likeliest result of a failed invasion and protracted war would have been an atom bomb on Berlin or Hamburg.

[George Hopp]

It was not Hitler who first envisaged the Me 262 as a bomber, but Willy Messerschmitt, who at least twice told Hitler what a great bomber the Me 262 would make and that it would take just a few weeks to convert the a/c to a bomber. After the 2nd time he told this to Hitler, Hitler gave a Fuehrer Directive for this to be done, but Messerschmitt did nothing. I think that was in either late 1943 or very early 1944. Then in April 1944, when Hitler asked about this Blitz bomber, and found out that Mtt had done nothing, he gave his order that no more fighters would be built until the bombers were completed, and even this order was partially ignored.

[Nick Beale]

The refusal to allow the 262 below 4000 metres over enemy territory until late October 1944 didn't help (and then only for "important targets"). At that altitude without a bomb sight, effectiveness would be rather limited, I'd guess.

[Roger Gaemperle]

This is a difficult topic. Hitler actually already ordered in the first quarter of 1943 that every fighter aircraft must be capable of carrying bombs. Due to this order Messerschmitt engineers planned a maximum capacity of 500 kg for the Me 262 already in early 1943 (project drawing II/141). Hence, the optional use of the Me 262 as a fighter bomber was planned long before the famous Insterburg "Airshow" in November 1944 or the meeting on 23 May 1945. Messerschmitt told Hitler at the Insterburg airshow that the Me 262 could be used as a fighter bomber. The reasons are that first he knew that at least some work had been done already to use the Me 262 as a fighter bomber and secondly he wanted to avoid that the program Me 209 was stopped in favour of a fighter aircraft Me 262. His estimations for conversion time were very optimistic, however: 14 days (2 Nov 1944). However, the electrical wiring diagram and the bomb racks were not designed yet. A Messerschmitt memo of 30 April 1943 mentions that it was decided to install the necessary equipment only in V-9 and later V-aircraft in order not to disturb the construction of V-aircraft and to assure useful starting conditions at the introduction of the Me 262 at operational units. In July 1943 the preparations for the pre series production were almost completed and the focus should - according to another memo from July 1943 - be on the fighter bomber conversion. At the beginning of 1944 work on the bomb installations were progressing and it was intended to introduce bomb installations from the 6 serial production Me 262 onwards. Hence, in my opinion it was just a matter of priority. Messerschmitt did work on the bomb system for the Me 262 but only after the preparations for the pre series production were completed and probably also then not with full capacity as there were still a lot of other problems to be solved (e.g. the feeding mechanism of the Mk 108 had severe problems). It might have been possible to have the bomb system ready earlier if Messerschmitt focused 100% on this, but then the pre series production might have been delayed and with it also the operational use of the Me 262.

The problems later arose due to technical and tactical shortcomings: the two main tanks of the initial design did not hold enough capacity and the range of the Me 262 with bomb load would have been too little. This required a new fuel tank (600 liters). Through this increased weight the landing gear had to be strengthened and two of 4 MK 108 had to be removed. Since the 600liter tank was in the rear and the weight of 2 MK108 in the nose was removed the aircraft was now extremely tail heavy after releasing the bombs. In addition, an appropriate gunsight had not yet been developed and in the end led to the use of the standard Revi 16B and the development of the Lotfe Me 262 with a seperate bomb aimer.

To come back to the original question: The range was too low without the additional fuel tank to fly it over England. Even with the fuel tank, it hardly flew longer than 1 hour. And even if it was possible the result would have been almost nothing.

Regards
Roger Gaemperle

[CJE]

The Me 262 couldn't have been introduced into service earlier for the simple fact that there were not enough turbines. BMW and Junkers experienced a lot of troubles with this new technology and lack of nickel and chrom for the turbine blades had a negative effect on the mass-production.

[CJE]

I surely missed an episode. Were WGr. 21 fitted to 262s?

[RT]

You are right difficult to understand the non use the low technology weapon like rockets, if we use the cumbersome Wgr.21, but further against bombers after the satisfactory use at year end of the R4M, during for example the Korean war it was used cannons. Before the advent of the guided-rockets the cannon was certainly the best compromise, the americans re-introduce it in the F4 even.

An other explanation is that idot-rockets are not german-weapons, Germany in the first part of the century was the show-window of the world science they stole 60 % of the nobel prices in the scientific categories, the french quite achieve this figure too ...but in litterature.

rémi

[Richard T. Eger]

Dear All,

Guess I can't resist putting in my two cents worth. Actually, another researcher, Daniel Uziel, has proposed that the Me 262 was a mistake and that Germany should have concentrated on building improved piston engined fighters instead. I sure hope I've got that right. Anyway, on first blush, one might think what a crazy idea. But, I've given it some thought and I think he has a point.

I recently downloaded an American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics paper, no. 80-3039, Evolution of the F-86, by Morgan M. (Mac) Blair of Rockwell International back in 1980. On the very first page Mac gives a bar chart with figures I find pretty unbelievable. Mac shows that 968 P-51's were shot down during the war by Axis airplanes. In contrast, he claims that 55,514 Axis airplanes were shot down by P-51's. Is that anywhere near close to accurate? Even if we cut that number by a factor of 10, it is still an overwhelming number of Axis losses to P-51 losses. There is no way the Me 262 could have been produced in time and in sufficient numbers to make a difference and, regardless, it wasn't any good in close air-to-air combat with a P-51 or P-47 anyway due to its wide turning radius. As we have seen, its forte, only discovered late in the war, was to knock down Allied bombers and did so effectively with the R4M. But, by this time, the war was long over for the Axis in Europe.

However, if one plays what if, the story might have been different. Suppose that early on it was recognized in Germany that, with America's entry into the war, and projecting an almost unlimited American manufacturing capacity to turn out bombers, that a strategy was needed to prevent the Allies from even getting going on a bomber campaign in the first place. Perhaps Germany was lulled into a sort of complacency when early escort fighters had to turn back short of the target, leaving the bombers to fend for themselves. Losses of bombers in those days were likely near the tipping point of being simply too high for sustained operations. The advent of the drop tank changed all that.

Had Germany concentrated on making superior piston engined aircraft in large quantities in 1942, that tipping point would have been reached. It would also have allowed Germany to build up its forces even further, making the life of the escort fighters, even with drop tanks, miserable.

As for the Me 262, the latter half of 1942 was probably its lowest ebb in terms of priority. It was only in 1943 that the program gained momentum and by the second half it was extremely bullish. At the same time, a huge amount of effort was being wasted on the development of the V-2, a weapon whose efectiveness didn't warrant the huge expenditures being applied to it. Only mated up with an atom bomb in future developments did the concept of an IRBM or ICBM make any sense.

As to the inevitability that, had Germany resisted, it would have seen the first atom bomb, well, that presupposes that an Allied bomber carrying one could actually have made its way to the intended target. If, on the other hand, Germany simply had developed air defenses that made bomber losses prohibitive in the first place, then one can't assume that the atom bomb would have been employable. Even if the Allies were willing to risk huge losses to deliver the weapon, there was also the possiblity that, rather than exploding as intended, the aircraft would have become disabled and the bomb then fall into German hands. This same reasoning prevented the first Meteors arriving on the continent from flying over German-held territory. It was only when the Luftwaffe was clearly not a threat, nor ground fire, that this restriction was eased.

Anyway, there are some thoughts to ponder.

Regards,
Richard