Messerschmitt Me 262 (1944): the first jet fighter

1944·Me 262 A-1a·870 km/h·1,430 (~300 fought)·2× Jumo 004B turbojets, 8.8 kN each·1,050 km·11,450 m

· THE STORY

A glimpse of the next war

The Me 262 flew on its jets in July 1942, first met Allied aircraft in late July 1944 and fought in unit strength from October, and for the pilots who met it, it was a glimpse of the next war. Nothing with a propeller could catch it. Its engines were built from mild steel because Germany had no nickel to spare, and needed an overhaul after ten to twenty-five hours of running, sooner if handled roughly; its pilots were few and its fuel was scarce; and Allied fighters learned to wait over its runways, where it was slow and helpless. Fourteen hundred were built and about three hundred fought. It changed nothing about how the war ended, and everything about what came after.

870 km/hTop speed1,430 (~300 fought)Built

· WHY IT MATTERED

Speed became a different game

A propeller loses its grip as its blade tips approach the speed of sound: its efficiency collapses, and at the same time the airframe runs into the drag rise of compressibility. Between them they capped piston fighters at roughly 700 km/h in level flight however much power they had. A turbojet removes the propeller limit, and the Me 262’s wing and engines pushed the airframe limit further. It cruised where a Mustang could only dive, and every fast aircraft since has followed it.

GO DEEPERThe Me 262 in the Aviation timeline →A jet engine without nickel →

· WHY IT MATTERED

Four cannon that emptied in eight seconds

Its four 30 mm MK 108 cannon could put about 14 kg of shells a second out of the muzzles, six times a Mustang’s figure (a measure of what leaves the guns, not of what hits), and a handful of hits would take a bomber apart. The shells were slow and the guns emptied in eight seconds, so pilots closed fast and fired late. Racks of R4M rockets, fired from outside the bombers’ gun range, were added in 1945.

GO DEEPERThe turbojet, the full demo →

· WHY IT MATTERED

Killed on the runway

Two Jumo 004s gave only 17.6 kN of static thrust for a six-tonne aircraft, and the engine flamed out or burned its turbine if the throttle was moved quickly, so the 262 gathered speed slowly from a standing start. On take-off and landing the 262 could neither run nor turn, and Allied fighters loitered over its airfields to catch it there. Hitler’s insistence on a bomber role complicated priorities, and historians still argue over how much it delayed the fighter; engine life, fuel, pilot conversion and airfields under attack were the larger limits.

· THE ENGINE

A turbojet made of the wrong metal

The Jumo 004 was the first axial-flow turbojet in production, the layout nearly every jet engine has used since. Its prototypes used nickel, cobalt and molybdenum that the blockade had cut off, so the production engine replaced them with aluminium-coated mild steel and hollow turbine blades folded from a chromium-manganese sheet and cooled with air bled from the compressor. It took 375 man-hours to build against 1,400 for a BMW 801 radial, and it lasted a working day. Move the throttle too quickly and it flamed out; move it faster and the turbine burned.

2× Junkers Jumo 004B · axial turbojet · 8-stage compressor, 6 combustors, 1-stage turbine · 8.8 kN each · 719 kg · overhaul after 10 to 25 hours

GO DEEPEROpen the full demo →

· WEAPONS AND SPECIALITY

Fourteen kilograms a second

The MK 108 was a short, cheap, blowback cannon firing a 330-gram mine shell at only 500 m/s: hopeless at long range, devastating close in. Four of them gave the Me 262 the heaviest armament of any fighter of the war, for as long as the ammunition lasted. Against bombers it worked. Against a Mustang that could turn inside it, the cannon rarely got the chance.

· TRY IT

Jet against propeller: where the curves cross

The lab plots the power a propeller can put into the air against speed, collapsing as its tips approach the speed of sound, against a jet whose thrust barely falls with speed, so its power available keeps climbing. Where the curves cross is where the jet starts to win; below it the propeller is the better machine, which is also why the 262 was so sluggish on take-off. The Jumo itself runs live on the engine card.

Readout

At 500 km/hthe propeller wins

Propeller efficiency83%

Crossover~600 km/h

Shapes, not certified data: the propeller curve carries a tip-shock collapse near 650 km/h, the jet’s power available grows with speed because its thrust barely falls. Every 1944 dogfight report lives in the gap between those lines.

· THE LAB

Power, guns and range: the same three models for all ten

Power against altitude from the type of supercharger, weight of fire against the other nine, and Breguet range with the armour and drop-tank trades. Simplified models, each scaled to this aircraft’s published figures, so the shapes are honest and the third decimal is not.

Messerschmitt Me 262: 14.30 kg/s, of which 100 % from cannon; 8 seconds of fire.

Readout

Weight of fire14.30 kg/s

Cannon share100 %

Seconds of fire8 s

Metal in this burst28.6 kg

Messerschmitt Me 262: the guns as carried on the reference variant; seconds of fire is the gun that runs dry first. A bomber never brought every gun to bear on one attacker.