Me 262 should have been used as a bomber?

[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