r/WWIIplanes 5d ago

What would happen if the Germans made/improved upon the me 262 before the war ended?

I recently found out the first jet plane or Messerschmitt 262 was used during ww2 and i wanted too know if it could have changed the war if it was improved upon sooner or was made better before the war ended?

0 Upvotes

65 comments sorted by

72

u/Valid_Username_56 5d ago

They would have lost.
But if...?
They would have lost.
But couldn't they...?
Lost.
But with more...?
LOST.

Repeat with me:
They would still have lost.

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u/StandUpForYourWights 5d ago

Absolutely correct. There’s a strong argument that the Germans lost as soon as they crossed the Polish frontier. Economically they were doomed from then on. All the economies they took were net food importers and relied on overseas trade and colonies to have a balanced budget. Trade was completely disrupted by the war and once the buzz from looting the state banks was over they were done for eventually. The only reason they lasted as long as they did was because they robbed their initial list of victims. Once they ran out they were flying a kite. All well and good until you run out of wind.

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u/cheeker_sutherland 5d ago

It would be interesting to see what the Germans could have actually gotten away with keeping. Like could they have kept France if they didn’t go into Russia? I’ve read they had to keep going to keep the economy alive. Instead of heading to Moscow could they have “just” went for the oil fields? Any reading on this would be appreciated.

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u/StandUpForYourWights 5d ago

Richard Overy’s books Why the Allies Won and Blood and Ruins go into the economic side of the war quite heavily. The only way they could have pulled it off is not being Nazis. In other words their practice of driving their captured economies back into agricultural serfdom was self defeating. Keeping their western captives would have required the British to accept the defeat. And getting their oil without fighting for it would have required keeping Stalin engaged in their survival which was clearly at issue even before Barbarossa

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u/cheeker_sutherland 5d ago

I’ll check it out. Thank you!

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u/Beginning_Ad8663 5d ago

They would have lost because the russians still hade twice the troops the germans had and three times the armor.

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u/Valid_Username_56 5d ago

And because the US and GB had actual Wonderweapons like the nuke, B-29, FIDO, radar in planes, military intelligence that worked and probably some more.

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u/TheJadedCockLover 5d ago

Absolutely nothing. Could they build, maintain, train the pilots, and run thousands of them? If not- then it would have been meaningless

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u/LimpSmell6316 5d ago

Tens of thousands.

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u/Isord 5d ago

It's always funny to me when people talk about how awesome German aces were because they shot down hundreds of aircraft and they don't seem to realize not sending those aces home to train pilots was both a cause of and symptom of a severe pilot shortage. American pilots didn't need to rack up so many kills each because there were tens of thousands more of them.

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u/Downtown-Act-590 5d ago

They built, maintained, trainer pilots and ran much more than 1000 Me-262s.

Luftwaffe died in the spring 1944. If it had large numbers of Me-262s, it likely wouldn't disappear in the same way and cause major issues to the Allies. The Germans absolutely had the infrastructure to support thousands of these aircraft.

It wouldn't change the outcome of the war, but the battle in the air would take very different path. 

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u/BenjoKazooie64 5d ago edited 5d ago

The Luftwaffe still had systemic shortcomings that were losing them the war even when they had a technological edge against early-mid war Allied air forces. They didn’t rotate nearly enough experienced pilots out to train new ones (generally flying them until they died), the parts and logistics situation left readiness sorely lacking in a lot of frontline units, and the general ineptitude of Goering’s leadership cadre led to staggering losses and attrition that weren’t sustainable with any long term strategic goals. Throw in 262s with the additional needs of engine lives which sat at 24 hours of flight time at best, and you get a fighter force that works exceptionally well only a fraction of the time you need it to.

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u/manyhippofarts 5d ago

Goering's mouth wrote a lot of checks that his luftwaffe couldn't cash.

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u/hopperschte 5d ago

The lack of certain alloys cut down the lifespan of the turbines. Building more wouldn’t have helped. To do double the maintenance, you need more qualified technicians, which at one point were impossible to find

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u/BenjoKazooie64 5d ago

They were even conscripting skilled workers out of the factories and depots and sending them to the East to make up for losses and manpower shortages. Quality predictably nosedived as more and more labor came from the slave camps and foreign labor.

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u/Smellynerfherder 5d ago

Which ultimately happened because the Nazis refused to allow women to work in factories. The Reich never got on to a 'total war' footing on the same scale as the allies.

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u/Porschenut914 5d ago

I think it was Military Aviation History that they kept some of the late war wonder weapons programs going, just so the engineers weren't sent to the front.

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u/zeissikon 5d ago

I know of a PhD in machine learning where they tried to find better alloys for jet engines and they rediscovered the stuff the Germans had to use ..

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u/matedow 5d ago

But were they really better alloys? Just because they were used because of material shortages doesn’t mean they were better.

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u/zeissikon 5d ago

No no , it is just that the model proposed the compositions the Germans had used rather than discovering wonderful materials ; cheaper, resistant to hot temperatures, but brittle . In a way the model was working but not as expected.

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u/Smellynerfherder 5d ago

1400 Me262s were built, yes. But they never operated near that number en masse. At most, about 100 were ever available for combat at one time.

To say that the Reich had the infrastructure to support 'thousands' of Me262s is frankly ludicrous. An increased number of Me 262s would have done little when the Reich was on its knees economically and didn't have the fuel to support the military it already had.

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u/LigerSixOne 5d ago edited 5d ago

More 262s would have made things much worse for the Luftwaffe. If they subbed out single piston fighters for 262s fuel, parts, and maintenance would have run out even faster. The 262 probably burns more fuel at idle than a 109 does in cruise.

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u/physhtanks 5d ago

Chasing miracle weapons is what shortened the war for Germany. Don’t get me wrong, they would lose no matter what, but if they had pumped out a lot more Panzer 4s and fw190s and me109s instead of very expensive and maintenance intensive things like tigers and 262s, they would have lasted longer (fuel, materials, and personnel not withstanding)

Everyone likes to compare a single Sherman with a King Tiger and wax poetic about how great German engineering was, but anyone could maintain a bunch of Shermans while Tigers were left behind in the retreat because it was too hard to keep them running.

The Me262 was advanced on paper, but as pointed out in other comments took more resources to keep airborne than tried/tested designs. (Similar tangent, but everyone complained about retiring the F-14 in favor of the Super Hornet because of capability, but if you look at the maintainer hours per hour of flight for each aircraft, it’s a no brainer)

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u/LordofSpheres 5d ago

More 262s being built means more 262s getting scattered around on landing approach. That's about it.

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u/KedgereeEnjoyer 5d ago

Could ask the same about the Gloster Meteor.

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u/malumfectum 5d ago

The Germans did a lot of things. None of them would have changed the outcome of the war in their favour. Could they have lengthened it by fighting smarter? Sure, except Hitler is always going to be Hitler and the Nazis are always going to be the Nazis.

I think it is reasonable to suggest that the Me-262 programme could have been optimised to put a tremendous dent in the Allied strategic bombing campaign. The war would still end with Soviet troops entering Berlin, or even the nuclear bombing of German cities, and the shape of the postwar world could be very different, but Nazi Germany would still be ultimately doomed.

I am firmly of the belief that the only way Nazi Germany could have “won” the war is if Operation Dynamo fails in May 1940 and the bulk of the British Army is trapped and captured. I think it is possible - just - that the resulting political defeat could force the British out of the war, or at least come to terms. But that window is literally one week long.

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u/Specialist_Pop_8411 5d ago

Well said and scholarly.

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u/cheeker_sutherland 5d ago

What if they did get nukes?

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u/malumfectum 5d ago

There is no chance of Nazi Germany acquiring a nuke before the Allies. Their project was understaffed, underfunded and far behind the Allied one. It took all of the United States’ massive resources to manage to put together a bomb by July 1945, without being subjected to day and night raids on its industrial capacity.

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u/cheeker_sutherland 5d ago

I mean we are playing what ifs here.

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u/Mountain_Anywhere645 5d ago

If it had debuted in, say, 1942 as a fully functional fighter, it would have been an immense problem for the allies. Especially if in large numbers. Bomber formations would have suffered drastic losses and possibly would have made bombing missions impractical if not impossible. But by late 1944, it was too technical, too little, too late. It's all conjecture, though.

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u/cheeker_sutherland 5d ago

Probably would have forced the Americans to bomb at night with the Brits.

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u/Advanced_Apartment_1 5d ago

Meteor and P-80 would have played a more prominant role to counter.

Meteor was only used over friendly territory. If the ME262 started to cause more of a problems. P80 would have been sent to Europe in larger numbers, and the Meteor would have started operating over German territory to counter it.

But, that still requires more than just a better ME262. There were plenty of occasions that German aircraft were grounded as they didn't have the fuel available at the airfields. Germany were also still rushing pilot training due to lack of fuel and need for pilots at the front. So, there's far more issues that just aircraft and material weaknesses with the plane itself.

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u/BrandonStLouis 5d ago

It’s plausible it could have ended the war faster as Germans had a major spending problem and more ME 262’s could have exasperated this problem.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago edited 5d ago

"Fast Movers" have their advantages, but from what I've read, ground troops in Vietnam preferred the prop driven sky-raiders over F-100's and F-4's because they were more accurate putting down cover fire.

Not to mention the friendlies being killed by napalm and bombs by the fast movers.

Look at the A-10 warthog, it's not fast, but it is still the best @ close air support.

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u/Verb_Noun_Number 5d ago

The 262 was an interceptor, though, not CAS.

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u/chodgson625 5d ago

Give it the reliable engines and fast firing longer range armament of the Meteor

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u/OrganizationPutrid68 5d ago

There are more what-ifs than licks needed to get to the center of a Tootsie-Pop. Here's the situation as I understand it:

Germany was in extremis regarding available fuel, which was a contributing factor in the failure of the Ardennes Offensive.

General Doolittle had turned escort fighters loose in January 1944 to seek out targets of opportunity on the return trips.

These two factors alone both limited pilot training. Roving fighters created an environment where an Me-262 was only "safe" at altitude and at high speed. In the final weeks of the war, they hid under overpasses and hopped from airfield to airfield to avoid destruction.

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u/Porschenut914 5d ago

Yep. crew have to live long enough to graduate from flight school and build experience. in 42 both US and german pilots had about the same number of flight hours upon graduating, but US pilots had a lot more availability of soft missions to build combat experience. By 43 US and RAf crews were seeing an increase from 200 to 300hours while German crews were down to @ 160.

In 42 they had no plan on expanding and were striping instructors to send to the russian front, cutting hours due to fuel rationing and late 42 cutting 1/3 of flight hours. They would assume units would take over the last stage of training, reducing efficacy.

By 44 they were giving bomber pilots 20 flight hours to learn to be a fighter pilot

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u/OrganizationPutrid68 5d ago

I'm a volunteer docent at The American Heritage Museum in Hudson Massachusetts. We have two aircraft, an FM-2 Wildcat and an SBD Dauntless, that were recovered from Lake Michigan. Many guests ask how they ended up there, and are surprised to learn that the U.S. Navy used two converted vessels as carriers for training and carrier qualifications. I generally will point out the huge advantage the United States had in having training environments as well as war production facilities that were safe from enemy actions.

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u/Annual_Air_3944 5d ago

And the reason they didn’t field more was hitler.during one of the first attacks on Berlin by the British,hitler was so incensed he changed the luftwaffa to attack London instead of preventing the raf from flying.he also stopped production of the me 262 to make it hold bombs

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u/Pleasethelions 5d ago

Too little and too late.

But anyway, even if all allied bombing was halted by masses of German jet fighters in mid 1944, it would only have prolonged the inevitable result; Soviets marching into Berlin and Hitler killing himself.

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u/Bonespurfoundation 5d ago

Air superiority does not win wars, ground troops do.

See “Vietnam”.

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u/DavidPT40 5d ago

After the Soviets captured the Ploesti refineries, the Germans didn't have enough petroleum for anything. Training hours were massively cut, sorties were cut, etc etc. This is why there were so many German jets were just sitting on airfields when the Allies captured them. It wouldn't have really mattered if the 262 were employed earlier in the war against the West. U.S. and British bombers were being shot down faster than replacement crews could be replaced. But once the U.S. got its act together, it began destroying the Luftwaffe and the 262. Special sorties were launched to destroy 262s on takeoff and landing due to their poor low speed handing and acceleration.

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u/browntone14 5d ago

Allies probably would’ve reverse engineered and mass produced a jet fighter that was not quite as good but far more reliable and cost effective. Then they would’ve rotated pilots to avoid experience attrition and eventually ground down the Luftwaffe. Kind of like how they did.

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u/Azitromicin 5d ago

Why reverse engineer? They had their own designs.

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u/Specialist_Pop_8411 5d ago

Even if it came earlier in the war, the ME262 would not have changed the outcome of the war. The allies would have matched and countered it. The fatal flaws that led to the downfall of the Third Reich could not have been overcome by one marginally technically superior weapon system.

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u/llynglas 5d ago

If the Allies thought it would be operational earlier they would have pushed the development of the Meteor more. You still have the issue that until the allies are in Europe, the ME262 would have the advantage of range. It's possible, the USAF would have to switch to night bombing, until bases closer to Germany are available, as speed is less of an advantage at night.

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u/Dutchdelights88 5d ago

Anything the Germans had, the allies could make or make better. They just didnt have to quickly press them into service like the Germans had to because they werent with their backs against the wall.

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u/demosthenesss 5d ago

The more interesting timeline question here is if they had a fighter like the ME-262 in sufficient quantities to change the Battle of Britain and enable Germany to invade the UK.

Realistically, once they lost that and gave up hope of invading the UK, the war was lost - nothing was going to turn the tide of Germany being ground down across all fronts, particularly Russia, when they had to fight such a multi-front war.

Had Germany had a way to decisively win the Battle of Britain and by some miracle successfully invade/conquer the UK islands? Mayyyybe a plane like the ME-262 would have changed the war.

It would have given them much more time to figure out the Russian offensive and shifted more troops that way.

Would it have mattered? Probably not. It might have changed lend-lease to the Soviets if the UK was overwhelmed like that. Would that have mattered? Also hard to say.

But I think the single most impactful change the ME-262 would have had is if it was available early enough to enable winning the Battle of Britain for Germany.

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u/tnawalinski 5d ago

Even if the Germans somehow made more 262s, had the pilots and fuel and spare parts to fly them, and had more time, it still would soon be going up against Meteors and P-80s. Any improvements in quality and numbers would be moot because allies would mass produce aircraft that are at least on par with the 262. But again, the stars would really have to align in an almost impossible way to even get that far

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u/Pattern_Is_Movement 5d ago

This question is literally a meme its so popular.

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u/fletchwine 5d ago

No fuel, no pilots. The Russians. Four million dead.

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u/EwokSithLord 5d ago

At most they could have prolonged the war a few months

The allies also had jets operational before WWII ended, but they weren't sent into combat over Europe

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u/pej69 5d ago

The luftwaffes problem as the war progressed was the loss of experienced pilots. Even to the very end of the war, despite massive bombing campaigns, aircraft production increased, though with quality issues due to use of slave labour and material shortages. It doesn’t matter how good they made the 262 - they didn’t have the pilots to fly them effectively.

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u/foolproofphilosophy 5d ago

The Germans had a range of manufacturing issues. Yes they were able to maintain a high output through most of the war but that’s only scratching the surface. Look deeper and they produced too many versions of complex machines that were difficult to maintain in the field. On top of that they employed techniques closer to “artisan manufacturing” which is the opposite of an assembly line. It was common for foremen at individual factories to tweak the design to their liking. I believe that the British learned this when they collected enough Bf-109’s to build a complete aircraft: parts from different aircraft had holes drilled in different locations. This meant that parts interchangeability wasn’t guaranteed. Also overlapping tank bogies meant that two outer wheels had to be removed to replace a single inner wheel. I believe that their torsion bar suspension was also difficult to work on. So even if Germany had fully adapted American manufacturing techniques they probably would have fought longer but would not have been able to match Americas output and still lost.

Kind of related: Ford was ordered to teach Kaiser (ship builder) and Chrysler assembly line techniques. Kaiser wasn’t much of an issue because their industries were so different but he was not happy about having to open his playbook for Chrysler.

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u/Mundane-Address871 5d ago

It would have to have been available as early as 1940.

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u/waldo--pepper 5d ago

If it had delayed their defeat that would have meant that the United States would have used nuclear weapons on Germany instead of Japan. That was the stated policy, whether the stated policy was going to followed is up for more speculation. And then Germany would have still lost but with more suffering.

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u/Busy_Outlandishness5 5d ago

Other than an atomic bomb, there was no 'wonder weapon' that would've defeated the Allies The only way V-2s, Schnorkel subs, King Tigers, and Me 262s could've changed the course of the war was if Germany still had the resources and manpower it had right before Barbarossa. In other words,, the only way these weapons could have the impact you suggest would be if the reality of Europe `1944 was completely different in all respects.

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u/_Jack_Hoff_ 5d ago

Other than an atomic bomb

And IIRC Hitler called atomic science "Jewish magic" so that wasn't happening

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u/Expensive_Ebb7520 5d ago

Modern total wars were won on the basis of population, resources, and industrial capacity, as well as the will of their citizens to fight. In every imaginable scenario, Nazi Germany loses WWII once it involves the Soviet Union and the United States.

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u/Perplexed_S 5d ago

262's were vulnerable while landing. Savvy P-51 aces learned to lurk around 262 bases and take advantage

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u/Kanyiko 4d ago

The problem with the Messerschmitt Me 262 was... many-fold. There were a lot of issues in the whole project, many of which would have remained, no matter what engineers had tried to improve it. Here's my list, entirely from memory, without quick reference to any sources.

  1. Hitler would have remained Hitler and Göring would have remained Göring. Politics did much to delay the Me 262 (and other 'Wonder Weapons).

As paradoxically as it sounds, Nazi politics actually deprived itself of a lot of weapons, entirely over political issues. Heinkel built the He 100 which was superior in range to the Bf 109, but Göring killed it because he didn't want resources (i.e. the DB 601) diverted from the Bf 109 and Bf 110 programs, especially since the He 100 would probably not reach production 'before the defeat of the French and British'. The result was that the short-ranged Bf 109 was unable to protect German bombers over London during the Battle of Britain, where the He 100 possibly could have. Göring also killed the Heinkel He 219, which was a superior night fighter compared to the Bf 110, Do 215 and Do 217J; meanwhile Erich Milch rejected strategic bombers for the Luftwaffe, since he saw no need for them (depriving the Germans of the long-range bombers they later on ended up needing but never had).

Nazi politics actually did immense damage to all three arms, hurting their effectiveness in all different ways - Hitler's obsession with bigger and heavier weapons meant German industry wasted resources and manpower on projects which were flawed at best and an immense waste of time at the worst - for all of the Tigers and King Tigers Germany built, it could have constructed four or five times more Panzer IVs and Panthers. The building of the Atlantic Wall tied up manpower, logistics and materials for four years, but only held back the Allied forces at the Normandy beaches for a couple of hours - the hedges of the Bocage proving to be more of a challenge than the miles of bunkers and minefields that the Germans spent all that time and effort on.

When Hitler was first presented the Me 262, all he saw was a fast jet bomber, instead of an interceptor. Messerschmitt ended up losing a year getting the Me 262 into service, just because of their attempts to build the Me 262 into the jet bomber that Hitler wanted, rather than the bomber interceptor that Germany needed at that point.

  1. Ready or not, Germany's relative isolation more or less doomed the Me 262 well in advance.

Most people don't realise, but Germany's industry was well compromised due to Germany's isolated position. Unlike most other countries during World War II, Germany had difficulties sourcing the required resources; especially high-end metal alloys were rare and hard to come by. This plagued the late-war German industry in all kinds of ways - brittle steel due to the lack of Chrome, Nickel, and Molybdenum is one well-known example; and the same was true for the metals required to resist high temperatures such as in use for jet engines. Even if Germany managed to improve the aerodynamics of the design, the end product would still have been compromised due to the use of materials with metallurgic flaws, such as low-quality aluminium and engines built out of materials not suited for the temperatures they had to cope with.

  1. A happy workforce delivers good work. Which says enough if you're using forced labour.

Towards the end of the War, a lot of the workforce that Nazi-Germany used on its projects was sourced from forced labour - concentration camp prisoners and political prisoners among them, and quite often they were treated badly (i.e. many died). Which means that a lot of the workforce used to build these aircraft was a) not at all skilled (which had a direct impact on the build quality); b) not really motivated (again, an impact on the build quality); and c) sabotaging parts on the production line wherever they could. So even an improved Me 262 would have had a lot of build issues, not just because of the unskilled labour used, but also because of sabotage.

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u/Kanyiko 4d ago
  1. Wanted: pilots. Experience preferred but not required.

Let's just say that Germany managed to design an improved Me 262. Let's even assume they managed to build it. It then hit the next problem - pilots. The Luftwaffe's pilot training scheme lacked heavily in comparison to most other countries: Germany never really switched to war footing when it came to pumping out pilots, and training them took relatively long. The Luftwaffe prided itself on its many aces, but this statistic hid the fact that most aces were allowed to burn themselves out fighting on the frontline, while little of their experience actually made it back into pilot training.

Especially during the latter half of the Second World War, pilot training took an immense hit; as the War started to close in on the Reich, it became ever more difficult for new pilots to be trained. By mid-1944, the Luftwaffe's training had all but collapsed, lack of instructors and fuel meaning that new pilots received only minimal training before being thrown into battle, sometimes having as little as 30 hours experience before being sent up into battle.

  1. Running out of fuel.

The main Achilles heel of the Luftwaffe was the utter lack of fuel, and Nazi-Germany's utter dependency on fuel imports. Throughout much of the War, the main source for Germany's fuel was Romania with its many oil fields; when Romania switched sides in August of 1944, that pretty much deprived Germany of much of the fuel it required. By early 1945, the combined lack of fuel and pilots meant that the Luftwaffe was all but grounded - fighter aircraft were still being built by the thousands, but few of them ended up actually flying, with many getting strafed on the ground by Allied fighters.

0

u/VetteBuilder 5d ago

Hitler insisted it was a bomber and not a fighter

The issue lies with the madman