From Newsgroup: rec.aviation.military
"Peter Stickney" wrote in message news:10kjhp1$3p6rv$
1@dont-email.me...
On Sat, 17 Jan 2026 23:00:55 -0500, Jim Wilkins wrote:
The 1200+ Me-262 jet fighters they build made little difference.
There may have been 1200 Me 262 airframes listed as being rolled out of
the factories, but the most that the Germans were ever able to get in the
air at one time was about 50-60 on one day in April 1945.
Peter Stickney
Java Man knew nothing about coffee
-------------------------
Adolf Galland told a postwar interviewer that he couldn't find enough qualified pilots for the few jets he did have in JV44, the Me-262 squadron
he was demoted to command for telling unacceptable truths while General of
the Fighters. 44 was chosen as half of 88, Hitler's magic number.
Few good fighter pilots were left and bomber pilots didn't transition well enough to difficult high speed interception with 30mm cannons or rockets,
both of relatively low velocity and curving trajectory. Some excellent
fighter pilots, notably Erich Hartmann, preferred to stay on the Russian
front where they could remain more productive, the high scoring ones who transferred to Reich Defense hadn't done very well there when outnumbered by Mustangs. A group of Mustangs had forced Hartmann to bail out over Romania.
He had to continually make extreme maneuvers at full throttle to avoid their guns, and ran his Me-109 out of fuel.
The Me-262 was too clumsy and not suitably armed to dogfight and the best
prop fighters and pilots had to be assigned to protect it while taking off
and landing at lower speed; it couldn't defend its own airfield. Nowotny the first jet leader and Galland after him were shot down by P-47s while
landing.
This is long but quite comprehensive. The meat begins in Chapter 3.
https://repository.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2218&context=gradschool_theses
"By early 1942, the Germans had lost so many trained pilots that they had to dip into their
training units for instructors and advanced students to fill out their operations ranks."
The Germans became desperate and threw all available pilots into the air battle when the Allies, mainly the RAF at night when they couldn't hit anything smaller, carpet bombed and burned cities and killed wives and children. Loss of seasoned instructors killed in combat or night landing accidents plus American attacks on fuel supplies that limited training
flights greatly reduced the skill of late war pilots.
Eisenhower's advantage was an understanding of economics and production vulnerability that the classically and militarily trained British officers lacked. He resisted the British demand that we should stop attacking production facilities during the day and join them in bombing cities at
night. They were very put off that we could succeed where they had warned us not to repeat their failure.
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