"Luftwaffe 1946" Topic

"While I am a big fan of the 262, I also know that it was a terribly flawed weapon having little to do with it's weak engines and all of their restrictions as portrayed in the linked video! It was a terrible weapons platform. It's weapons were nearly worthless because of short effective range, incredibly fine and thus useless fragmentation and the third lowest MV in all of WW-II.

One point at a time.

First the controls were either too weak, or too strong. At slow speeds the pilot had to be very careful not to over control the plane. As speed increased, they became heavy and extremely hard to move, making the plane less maneuverable. Then there was the "P" effect of having two engines with the same direction of rotation which made a hard plane to point, much harder to point accurately…"
More here
link

Amicalement
Armand

Muzzle velocity of the 30mms was quite low, but the hitting power was enormous, and they had AP and explosive shells.

Only took an average of 3 hits to bring down a heavy bomber.

Throw in 24 – 48 underwing, R4M rockets, and the Schwalbes were bomber busters.

Fortunately for us, they came too late to be of much use during the war. 6 – 12 months earlier, and in greater numbers, and the daylight air war would have been very different.

Thanks.

Amicalement
Armand

The problem was that the Germans had lost the air war and were looking for some "wonder weapon" way to win it back. When the Germans were winning (1941) they saw no need for a jet fighter and development was going along at a slow pace. It wasn't until late 1943 when US/British bomber offensives were stepping up that the Germans started pushing the jets. The air offensive in March thru May of 1944 and the air losses that Germany took was what defeated the Luftwaffe.

The Me-262 was brought into production as quickly as possible. But with the shortage of fuel and trained pilots it just did not have any chance of an impact. The often quoted statement that Hitler demanded the ME-262 being a fighter bomber doomed the jet fighter is ridiculous. Hitler saw the ME-262 in October of 1943 and said he wanted a fighter bomber version. The fighter had it's landing gear completely changed and was still going through testing. When a query by Hitler was made in February of 1944 was made the fighter-bomber changes were still on the books. After the Russian summer offensive and D-day in 1944 there was no chance that there would be a major effect made by the Me-262.