Free Hitler's Jet Plane by Mano Ziegler

notable success was achieved by German fighter men operating under the severest combat conditions, and most of them were not flying the modern Fw 190 but the Me 109 and at night the slower Me 110 two-seater. It is difficult to estimate how much greater their success might have been if throughout they had had faster fighters with longer range, the Me 262 especially, which though present in smaller numbers was certain to have swelled Allied bomber losses. But the wrangling over the aircraft went on and on. By the time that Erprobungskommando 16 was testing the Me 163 rocket fighter operationally at Bad Zwischenahn near Oldenburg in July 1943, there was still no talk of series production let alone operations.
    There was a number of reasons for this state of affairs. Hitler’s trust in Goering had wavered. When the Reichsmarschall obtained an audience with Hitler, he no longer had his former influence. It was therefore not to be expected that Goering might achieve a higher priority for Me 262 series production. Probably the most telling blow against the aircraft, however, came from a most unexpected source, Willy Messerschmitt himself. In a conversation on 27 June 1943 at Obersalzberg with Hitler, Messerschmitt warned him of Milch’s planning errors particularly with regard to the latter’s ideas about future aircraft production and choice of types. He even went so far as to caution Hitler against mass-producing the Me 262 on the grounds of its enormous fuel consumption. It seems incomprehensible that he would have offered such advice but the fact is confirmed historically by two sources: Rakan Kokothaki, who was present when Messerschmitt reported back to his directors on his conversation next day, and David Irving ( Die Tragödie der Luftwaffe , pp 294 – 5) quoting Kokothaki and the Soviet interrogation of Messerschmitt postwar.
    After Messerschmitt’s statement to the board, Hitler and Speer expressed doubts about making the Me 262 the mainstay of the German fighter arm. Actually there had never been talk of such a thing. What was being asked for was the addition of this superfast and superior machine to the Reich air defence force alongside the Fw 190 and the Me 109 as soon as possible. Neither Milch nor Galland nor anybody else from the Reich Air Ministry or Luftwaffe could have intended to make the Me 262 the mainstay of the fighter arm overnight. It would have been in any case many months ahead, for the opportunity simply would not have existed to retrain fighter squadrons for the new jet nor create the infrastructure for the aircraft at squadron level. The assertion about the fuel was correct so far as it went, but jet fuel is not costly kerosene but a type of diesel oil requiring less refining and so subject to less reduction in preparation.
    Though not referring to it specifically, Rust and Hess argue cogently in their article ‘The German Jets and the USAAF’ (1963) that Messerschmitt’s outburst of 27 June 1943 was undoubtedly the turning point for the aircraft’s future. Hitler’s primary fear was that a lightly damaged Me 262 might make an emergency landing in enemy-held territory whereby the secrets of the aircraft’s construction and its turbojets would be forfeited. It was not known in Germany at the time that the United States and Britain were only one year behind in the development of similar jet aeroplanes. When Hitler was informed what difficulties were to be expected from operational flying at low level, such as reduced speed, high fuel consumption, vulnerability to enemy fighters and so on, this would explain his decision that the Me 262 was not to be used as a fighter, they say. Unfortunately for the argument, the Me 262 fighter would not have run the risk of crashing on enemy-held territory if it had been operational over Berlin, for example.
    Obviously there was some other reason why the aircraft was wanted in the bomber role. On 2 November 1943 Goering went to Augsburg to investigate whether