Germany late 1944 – the war is basically lost
but in one last effort to turn it all around, a telegram goes out to all the big aircraft
manufacturers for a new fighter jet. It says:
Design a single-engine daytime jet fighter
out of wood and steel, top speed 750 kph, useable from field airstrips, two cannons
with pilot armor, you have five days.
Let me take you through that story.
Let me take you back to 1944. Germany is losing the war and to avert the inevitable, put in place
multiple emergency programs. Amongst these are a complete turnaround in aircraft production with
the introduction of jet fighters. The objective for Germany was to regain Control of the Air. It
had to put an end to daytime Allied bombing, and to Allied interdiction and close air support.
In 1944, the Luftwaffe made that late switch – where institutionally it finally
accepted that it must stop focusing on its own bomber fleet and switch production
to fighters. And from the piston fighter it switched over to the jet aircraft – the most
famous of which is the Messerschmitt Me 262.
Yet there was one problem with this aircraft – it
had been designed with the assumption that Germany could rely on its traditional manufacturing
factories, techniques and on skilled workers. This turned out to be a problem, even as Germany
built up a vast decentralized production network in the south of Germany to build Me 262s.
And this is where the He 162 comes in – the He 162, sometimes referred to as Volksjäger –
People’s Fighter – was to remedy the situation. It was to be a cheap, mass produced, low
maintenance machine, easy to fly for pilots with little to no training, and as a jet,
possess a unique technological advantage.
With this aircraft Germany would be able
to quickly field a large fleet of jets that could wrestle back air superiority over
the Reich and provide that breathing space. Germany needed. At least, in theory – let’s
go through this in turn, largely following the points I have set out here .
Development time of the different planes and engines varies and here we can
see that the urgency for the He 162 certainly produced a quick result.
For the Me 262, the project goes back to 1939. The first flight with only jet engines is in
July 1942 (piston: April 1941 / piston and jets: March 1942), series production starts
slowly in March 1944 but does not take off until the second half of the year.
The He 162 on the other had been developed very quickly. The program launched
on September 11, 1944 and Heinkel’s design was accepted on September 24, 1944. The
first flight was on December 6 of that year, whereas series production, depending on how
you want to count it, began in January 1945.
For the JUMO 004 engines that were used on the
Me 262, development starts in December 1939. The first production versions appear in 1943 but
true series production starts in August 1944.
For the He 162s BMW 003 engine, the dates
are also 1939 and October 1944 respectively.
We can thus see that while development of the
He 162 was quick in comparison to the Me 262, its engine took slightly longer. The BMW
engine was also behind the Jumo engine in terms of quality and reliability .
The main advantage of the He 162 was its low production hours and cost compared to the
Me 262. While the He 162 was about half as expensive as the Me 262 , in terms of production
hours six could be produced for every Me 262.
Add to this, in parallel, 700 hours per JUMO
004 engine of the Me 262 to a total of 1400 hours for two engines per plane – and 500-600
hours for the BMW jet engine of the He 162.
In terms of airframe production, the He 162 got to
a later start than the Me 262 but we can see how production ramps up quicker and is set to bypass
the Messerschmitt jet by the end of the war.
Then we come to the engines. The Me 262 used
the Jumo 004, the He 162 the BMW 003 – and here we start seeing an issue as the
BMW engine got off to a late start .
Regarding these figures, Kay and Nowarra
indicate slightly different figures and breakdowns but this provides us with an overall
appreciation of the situation . It also shows us that the He 162 program received fewer
BMW engines than the Ar 234 – again, two engines vs one per plane, meaning that in
theory more He 162 would still be completed.
Now you may ask, with the vast quantity of
Jumo 004 engines available, why weren’t they used in the Volksjäger? There are many reasons
– including production deficiencies and that the Jumo 004 was initially reserved for the Me 262
and Arado 234. Both planes needed two engines thus the high production number can easily fool
us into thinking that more were available.
However, that also changed as eventually parts
of the BMW production went to Arado with the 003A while the Volksjäger got the 003E, thus
splitting BMW production for two planes.
Thus, while on paper the Me 262 was the better
jet – and any closer inspection these planes, their blueprints and the records that survive
will support this statement – it can’t be ignored that the He 162 was, from a production
standpoint, much more in line with the need to produce a vast amount of jets quickly. As you
may expect, there was some strife between the Messerschmitt and Heinkel companies based
on all of this – I recommend that you watch my previous video on that.
Talking about recommendations then, check out this book on the Heinkel He 162 by Dan Sharp. It’s a
solid choice to read up on many things related to the He 162, with plenty of new stuff in there and
I especially like how the book not just references the sources – that should be the standard in
history books – but often also shows the sources. That resonates with me a lot, as my own books
and videos follow the same principle of putting you directly in touch with the original source
material. The publisher of this book -Mortons - has a lot of books on WW2 aircraft – including
the new edition of Dan Sharps Me 262 book - and you can get all of them at 10% all year round with
my discount code. Check out the recommendations I have in the description and use that code to save
yourself some money – do I need to market this anymore….no, I think you know if you want books or
not, just get them at 10% off, what do I have to waste your time with a marketing spiel….oh yeah
you could get my books via the other links. Ok enough of that, back to the content.
Ok, we saw the production figures…we can speculate about the production potential for
both planes had Germany not surrendered but I covered that in a past video , so
I won’t retrace those steps here.
What I want to do instead is have a discussion
on how the He 162 entered service in the Luftwaffe – because remember, while the jet ticks
off the boxes on cheap and mass production, it leaves us with the question whether it was sound
as an operational weapon system. I’ll break this down into operational numbers, design simplicity,
pilots and flying, as well as technology.
Regarding operation numbers, very few He 162
ever got a chance to be used in combat. Less than 300 were ever completed – that’s airframe plus
engine into one. Although deliveries started to Jagdgeschwader 1 that was to use the plane already
in February, conversion training was seriously hampered by allied air raids. At the beginning of
April when the He 162 first saw combat, less than a dozen were on the roster of JG 1 – and when the
airbases started to be overrun by allied troops, that problem was still the same – with only
about 20-25 He 162 being judged airworthy enough to be evaluated by the Allies .
The He 162 was a very simple machine – that was the purpose, and you can see
it in the production standards.
Everything is minimalist, with pushrods holding
hatches in place, cables and lines being barebone, and a lot of pilot conveniences at the time were
done away with for the simplest solution – like for the front gear were pilots checked visually
whether it was retracted rather than relying on an instrument indicator. For the weapons too, the
installation gave easy access to the 20mm cannons and their ammo, the gear well provided access to
some of the internals and the overall complexity was kept low. This was deliberate and yes, made
the aircraft easy to maintain – however the limitations of this showed due to poor production
standards and corner cutting that placed risks on the safe operation of the aircraft.
So all in all, the design achieved its objective of being low cost and low maintenance – but at
the associated costs that we would expect.
You’ll remember that one of the main requirements
on the He 162 was to have a simple machine that could be flown by pilots with minimal training.
However, many of the pilots that were initially selected to fly the plane were not novices.
However, their conversion training was very slow. Between January and March 1945, a good number
of them had yet to fly the He 162 – even though the planes were available on paper . It also
transpired that the aircraft was not easy to fly. This was not just due to frequent failures to the
engine, the gear or weapons – due to a combination of speed, manoeuvrability, precarious landing and
take-off performance and the engines poor negative G performance , it was critically unforgiving.
You’ll maybe remember that Eric Winkle Brown, the most prolific and experienced
pilot who probably ever lived, is sometimes quoted as being fond of the He 162.
However, consider what he and other pilots said, the positives they highlight are often taken out
of context – and when they speak favourably of the planes speed and roll rate, that is a sign
that for a novice pilot, the He 162 would be a handful. Now that’s a big topic for another video
– but it was relevant here to cover this aspect. If you are interested to see how plane evaluations
often highlight different aspects depending on who is testing the plane, watch my video on the
Japanese evaluation of the German Bf 109.
The final discussion here is on the technological
advantage of the plane. Basically, considering the planes build quality, this is down
to one aspect: the engine. Sure enough, you can make a case for the ejection seat –
yes, the plane featured a first-generation ejection system because of the engine and wing
placement. As a jet, the He 162 did have what we generally consider a technological advantage
– and its paper performance was impressive.
However, the BMW 003 had its share of problems
that neutralized much of the nominal advantage. Yes, in dogfight you’d be benefitting from high
performance but operationally, the engine was a headache due to problems ranging from randomly
cutting out, to failures in the variable nozzle leading to critical losses in thrust, to
a high fuel consumption. At low altitude, the plane would be out of fuel within 15min – at
higher altitudes and with some fuel management, that could be extended to 30-45min - however as
the He 162 was barely used at higher altitudes, this appears to be a moot point.
Let’s put all of this together by looping back to the beginning of the video
The He 162 was intended to be a cheap, mass produced, low maintenance machine, easy to fly for
pilots with little to no training, and as a jet, possess a unique technological advantage.
From the evidence we have, the plane ticks off the first box.
An argument can be made that it could have eventually ticked off the second but considering
the low numbers that were operational – we are in the low two digits – there can be no doubt
that production potential and operational use were completely out of balance.
It also appears to be low maintenance in many ways, but it’s a bit of a
mixed bag considering the complexity and quality of the plane’s engines.
From what we know, it was also not an easy plane to fly – going against its initial
purpose and beyond the low operational numbers, we can have severe doubt as to whether
Germany would have had enough pilots once mass production was underway – this was the one
aspect that even the planners of the He 162 were never able to answer . The same consideration
could be given to fuel or available operational bases but that takes us into other aspects.
Finally, the technological advantage. I feel like there is always the temptation to consider
a jet in WW2 immediately superior to a piston aircraft and sure, on paper I agree. Considering
the operational record of the BMW 003 however, I would argue that this engine was not ready yet
for combat operations and a lot of problems and accidents happened because of this. As such, never
mind the advantage it may have given in the rare tactical engagement, the potential of this engine
is cancelled out by its operational record.
What do you think of the He 162: Was it a rational
choice, was it too late, was it a pipe dream, a wasteful and disgraceful attempt of a last ditch
wunderwaffle? Let me know what you think about all this – and if you are as big a fan of getting in
touch with the original documents, primary sources and see what was said at the time, consider
supporting via Patreon and Channel Memberships. This funds my research and filming trips so I
can make content for all of you. Also, I showed a lot of footage from museums I filmed at – you can
catch those episodes here (He 162 and Me 262) and make sure to visit a local aviation museum
yourself, because for many of these places that’s what keeps that history alive. As always, have
a great day and see you in the sky.
