Recently, the author came across Oleg Kaptsov's material "Me.262 jet fighter: shame and degradation of the Luftwaffe." The first thought was a critical review, however, after reading it more closely, he (the author) realized that this does not make sense: the strange methods of assessing the potential and effectiveness of the Me.262 are visible to the naked eye.
In general, the article can be regarded as a very typical (at least in the Russian-language literature) example of the assessment of the Messerschmitt Me.262, the first serial turbojet aircraft and the world's first turbojet aircraft that took part in hostilities at all.
There are two extremes here:
a) Me.262 - an incapacitated "log". It didn't need to be serialized at all;
b) Me.262 is a wonder weapon. He would have let Hitler win if he showed up a year earlier.
It must be said right away that the comparison with the British Gloster Meteor is incorrect for many reasons, in particular, the "Briton" did not fight in the air against enemy combat aircraft, limiting himself to intercepting "V" missiles and reconnaissance. In a word, not a lot. Me.262 is by no means more effective: historians believe that he has about 150 shot down enemy vehicles on his account.
And here, as noted above, propagandists of all stripes come into play. In Russian-language literature, the emphasis is traditionally placed on the "childhood diseases" of the fighter. However, the authors are modestly silent that they occur in general in any modern (especially revolutionary) technology. And you also need to understand that many of the new cars of the anti-Hitler coalition had a lot of similar problems that were eliminated over the years.
So, in the somewhat tendentious book "Falcons, Washed in Blood: Why the Soviet Air Force Fought Worse than the Luftwaffe?" historian Andrei Smirnov writes that the first Soviet La-7 fighters, due to the low build quality characteristic of all La fighters, often did not differ in any way from the much earlier La-5FN. Well, very early "Benches" were often a real curse for pilots. And one could only dream of achieving at least approximately the speed of Bf.109F / G. In general, the Messer is a very dangerous opponent. At any time during the war. Not every country participating in World War II could boast of having created a fighter similar in its qualities. And excessively critical assessments of Bf.109 in Russian-language literature do not paint their authors.
Also, those who wish can familiarize themselves with the problems of the British "miracle weapon" Hawker Typhoon, which, to put it mildly, was not at all what was originally planned. It was only in the form of the Hawker Tempest that it became a truly formidable combat vehicle. Such examples can be given endlessly, but does this mean that the Me.262 is a real weapon of victory? Not at all.
Me.262: a breakthrough to nowhere
It is all the more strange to hear the arguments of some Schwalbe fans. Let's make a reservation right away that we will not consider the strike version of the aircraft - Me.262 with the possibility of suspending two 250-kilogram bombs, carrying not four MK 108 cannons, but two. To carry out horizontal bombing at a speed of, say, 700 kilometers per hour, without any sighting devices, and hitting the target is an almost impossible task. Something, of course, succeeded, but the Me.262A-2 is definitely not the best weapon of victory, but the fruit of Hitler's escapism, to which the Fuhrer was too exposed in the last years of the war.
If the Me.262 played a role in the war, it was as an interceptor. Terrified bomber pilots in Britain and the United States. Contrary to the opinion of some authors, the armament of the 262 was one of the best in World War II, which is quite rightly noted by Roman Skomorokhov in his material "On the displacement of the Me-262 fighter".
Indeed, the Messerschmitt Me.262A-1 Schwalbe had four 30mm MK 108 cannons, even one shell of which could send a heavy bomber to the next world. For comparison, the 20mm German MG 151 cannon sometimes took 20-30 hits to shoot down a B-17 or B-24. It is significant that even the best Soviet and American fighters had several times weaker armament than the Me.262.
For example, the Yak-3 was armed with only one 20-mm ShVAK cannon and two 12.7-mm UBS machine guns. Frankly, such weapons for 1944 did not hold up to criticism at all. However, the Messer was not much better in terms of firepower without additional outboard weapons, which drastically reduced the vehicle's performance. He, like Soviet cars, was rapidly becoming obsolete in 1944, despite all its original merits.
Separately, it should be said about the "unsatisfactory ballistics" MK 108. Critics of this gun should read the memoirs of the aces of the Second World War, who preferred to hit the enemy from a minimum distance, when "spherical maximum range in a vacuum" played almost no role. In general, it is very, very difficult to hit a remote air target with cannon fire by default. It is better to approach the enemy as close as possible.
Hitler's wasted chance?
Finally, we came to the most important thing: could the Messerschmitt Me.262 interceptor be the key that would help Hitler open the door leading to victory? The obvious answer to this question is no. Even if the 262 had appeared a year earlier, it would not have been able to prevent the raids on Germany, the offensive of the Red Army and the total deficit in the Reich of literally everything. It is worth saying that Germany already managed to build fifteen hundred Me.262 -other enemy vehicles. In practice, the plane was about the same problem: for both the Allies and the Germans. It would take much more time to bring it to mind than the Reich had at all. And completely different conditions, under which, say, there would be no problem of constant raids and related delays in the supply of spare parts.
However, time would not have saved the Reich anyway. Germany, which was gradually decrepit in the second half of the war, was unable to produce aircraft at the level of the Anti-Hitler coalition by definition. And provide them with everything they need: fuel, ammunition, etc. And, most importantly, trained pilots. Suffice it to say that the United States produced 18 thousand (!) Four-engined heavy bombers Consolidated B-24 Liberator during the war years. The B-17 was produced in the amount of 12 thousand units, and the British Avro Lancaster was released in a series of 7, 3 thousand copies.
And what about the German industry? A conventional analogue of these machines can be called the German Heinkel He 177 bomber, which was produced in a batch of 1000 aircraft throughout the war, and which they could not bring to mind. Even if we look only at the fighters that were more relevant for Germany in the second half of the war, we will see that the Third Reich had critically few pilots and aircraft to fight the strongest world powers of its time. Moreover, on two fronts, the conditions of an air war in which are completely different: high-altitude battles - on the Western Front, battles at low and medium altitudes - in the Eastern theater of operations.
From this point of view, the discussion of the "dry" characteristics of the Me.262 loses all meaning. With very high flight performance and the most powerful weaponry for its time, the Me.262 under no circumstances would have become a "miracle weapon" capable of bringing victory. After all, victory in any war is a complex of technologies, methods and capabilities. The very ones that the Reich did not possess after Stalingrad and Kursk.
