Me 262 VS He-162 - Which one was better?

hey everyone it's chris from military aviation history and what i'm looking at today is the stenox named from project folk siege the statement in regards to the project folk siege by willie messerschmitt now this is from october 1944 that's a good date to remember it'll allow us to place things into context and uh yeah as we go through this just remember that date october 1944 quite quite an early date for the fox seeker project this is a document that i myself pulled from one of my visits to the german military archives which is a great place of course to visit and get hands-on with these sort of primary sources these documents they were written at a time to start off then this is willy messerschmitt talking about the heinkel he 162 volksiega from his competitor the heinkel fluksiclerka the hg162 is a rival in a sense to messerschmidt's own me 262. so obviously there is a competition element to all of this which messagement actually addresses i asked that my support for the me262 against the 162 is not judged as company politics by now we are definitely beyond this point well okay so of course we have to address this a little bit i could go at length here about messerschmitt's shall we say reputation this popular image of him is of course that he's just very shrewd a scheming businessman a well-connected and yes there is some truth to that although i think it does get exaggerated from time to time because oftentimes it's easier to say oh all of this only happened because messerschmidt well he just pulled some strings made some calls and that's it rather right rather than actually looking at sort of the bureaucratic process that goes into making some of these decisions but you can already see how we're starting to drift off topic here so just to pull us back on target for the purposes of this video just keep in mind these companies are of course vying for contracts there are business interests but that doesn't mean that what messerschmitt says in his document in his statement is necessarily wrong as you will see i'm going to analyze his points and then hopefully that will allow us to expand the scope a little bit here now messerschmitt starts off by saying this project to build a cheap jet fighter with the bmw 003 a jet engine that will be available in quantity in early 1945 is something i judge to be inappropriate at this stage no surprise but let's push on he lists four reasons to back up this statement first reason is the technical task assignments are wrong as the tasks of this folks here can already be solved by existing and tested aircraft available today so yeah on a pure technical side i would agree with messenger that the me262 was the better aircraft next to messerschmitt most pilots also were against the heinkel 162. however the technical dimension which often gets emphasized nowadays right actually has very little relevance when it came to the decision to build the 162. in order for a new small jet fighter to be cheap and easy to build the fighter staff accepted trade-offs to facilitate production despite varied objections the potential advantages of having a cheap jet airframe available so cheap as to be disposable were judged revealingly by the fighter staff to outweigh the recognized risks associated with introducing in the middle of a war an entirely new aircraft type that was untested inferior and speed range and weaponry to the me-262 in early september 1944 spares fighter staff called for designs for a single engine jet fight to be powered by a single bmw or free engine the new fighter revealing was christened the folk jager so this is why of course i asked you to remember that date october 1944 because in this statement messerschmitt is reacting to this very announcement as we will see the reason why the heinkel 162 was to be produced had nothing to do with technical or tactical capabilities of the aircraft it was an attempt to make a cheap easy to produce jet and i think messerschmitt knows that and he knows that arguments based on sort of technical and tactical concerns are really no longer relevant at the end of 1944 because all his three remaining points focus entirely on production it is unlikely that a newly developed aircraft with all its risks will allow us in early and summer of 1945 to throw enormous quantities of aircraft into the flight we can however build at least the same amount of aircraft of tester types at the same time without having to take into account the risks of a new development and their externalities if we use the extra capacities that have been provided for this plan to increase the output of existing types it is by now nigh impossible to drive forward the folk sieger program in such a fashion that we can count on an operational use in great quantities by early 1945. it is an illusion that the 162 can be developed and built with extra capacities without disturbing the existing types especially the me262 the me262 continues to stand on a weak foundation there remains a lack of equipment and provisions skilled labor and inspectors to deep dive into this let us compare the two machines in terms of production and see how things unfolded for this let us look at both airframe and engine production the series production of the me262 started in march april 1944 given here are the numbers for the messerschmitt algae augsburg and messerschmitt gambir reagan's book keep in mind that this production is not limited to a single geographic location in early april 1944 the first series produced aircraft leave the provisional production lines the main parts that are assembled here into aircraft originate from different workshops the main parts themselves are assembled from parts kits delivered by dispersed sweat and workshops you can see two things here first of all the aux broken line starts to approach a capacity of 100 airframes in september 1944 and 160 in 1945 before being shut down mid-april comparatively the reagan borg line lags behind however these numbers hide a critical problem problems with unsafe and poorly constructed engines combined with manufacturing problems of the me262 airframes meant that of a total 1433 me 262 airframes only about 358 aircraft became operational through allied bombing and strafing attacks 611 aircraft were damaged and lost through special measures 114 aircraft are repaired thus the effective loss equals 497 me 262. this means that compared to airframe production only a quarter to a third of the total possible me262 output was usable to the germans although germany made a tremendous effort to try to decrease the cost of the me262 production especially for the indiscriminate use of slave labor this production loss is catastrophic considering the cost of the aircraft and the need to get them to the front lines especially when compared to the heinkel 162. the main advantage of the he-162 was its low cost compared to the me-262 the he-162 took only 1 500 man hours to produce whereas an me262 airframe at messerschmitt required 9 000 man hours each me262 cost 150 000 ice mark whereas the hg162 cost half as much the hg162 had a remarkably short development time which contrasts with messerschmitt's expectations however this is not to say that the development went without problems that are guaranteed to happen when a plane is developed this quickly let us look at a timeline on the 6th of december 1944 the first flight happens followed a few days later by a crash and the death of the test pilot soon the second prototype is ready production is to start in january 1945 but problems with production delays the introduction as most of the completed airframes were useless and due to the chaos at the end of the war the production numbers are hard to pinpoint but it is clear that the luftwaffe had only received a small number of aircraft in the 8th to the 11th april period as the copper jacques schwarter irons reported it had 10 to 12 aircraft while spider copper jackishborn irons were still awaiting any aircraft the luftwaffe on the whole had by this stage received only around 60 hg162s while the production gets going quicker than with the me262 in large parts due to the urgency and simplicity of the design the heinkel 162 is not ready for operational use in april 1944 from a technical perspective that said the problems with production get even more clear when we look at engine production by the end of the war about 275 he 162s had been completed and about 800 nearly completed a large proportion never received engines talking about engines let's have a closer look at that the me262 and he 162 had two different engines the me262 had a jumo oo4 and the heinkel 162 had a bmw 03. between the two the main production joomla engine entered production slowly in early 1944 and the bmw in october 1944 when comparing the engines i will look at this from a production standpoint the advantages of the jumo oo4 engine in comparison to the piston engine was that it was quicker to build less resource intensive and provided more horsepower per man hour spent in building it the crucial jubal 213 daimler band 603 and bmw 801 engines took approximately 3 000 man hours to build whereas the production version of the joomla or4 engine ultimately required a mere 700 man hours to and at six months of operation the single notework factory produced 1955 jumo or four jet engines underground based on the historian hermione gifford total jumo 04 production was 6000 engines although anthony k indicates roughly 4000 of the series production b type keeping in mind that each me262 required two this means that for each of the 1400 airframes three to four engines were made this availability rather than the associated performance was the main advantage of the jumo engine at this point in time by the end of the war the production version of this engine still had a high waist saturate through component failures a total of 6100 jumo4 engines were produced before the end of the war while bmw assembled approximately 559 production o3 engines this delay in the bmw engine is mainly due to development problems and the availability of the correct fuel in 1944 but it is worth noting that early on a lot of hope was placed into this engine the program had gone ahead primarily with junckers working on the 10904 engine destined to attain production status speedily and bmw working on a more advanced substitute the 10903 engine the engine had to be produced for about 500 man hours per unit that each engine should use no more than 0.6 kilograms of nickel and that the engine should be broken down into a maximum number of easily made components the bmw engine was cheaper and less resource intensive compared to the jumo engine thus perfect for the heinkel 162 concept yet it was barely entering series production which left it in a supply deficit given what was required nevertheless the bmw 03 engine had to be adopted for the new folk sieger simply because all junkers joomo 04 production was reserved for the erado 234 and the me262 the bmw engine supply was worsened for two reasons first it had to be modified from the a to the e model to allowed a use in the heinkel 162. the 10903a engines were produced in modified forms as the e-model to permit installation of both a wing or fuselage instead of below a ring such a modification is quick to make but caused a split in production as the e-models went to the heinkel 162 and the a model was now to be used in the errata 234 thus a major problem next to the poor production quality of the heinker 162 was the limited production of the engine powering the aircraft here we can see the numbers by k compared to the jumo oro4 engine note that this includes both bmw a1 and e1 novara indicates slightly different figures but provides a ratio breakdown the highest production output was in march at around 100 units whereby 60 percent went to errado for the erado 234 and the remaining 40 were built into the heinkel he162a2 in terms of turbojet engine production bmw's success came second to that of juncas however there is every reason to believe that this gap would soon have been closed had there been time as you will remember for every me262 four heinkel 162s could be built in terms of man hours or two heinkel 162s in terms of costs but the question is did the germans have enough bmw engines to power those four or those two heinkel 162s and the answer was at the time at the end of the war no they didn't yes the me262 might require two engines but for every 262 airframe build around three engines were available here you can see the drastic really the drastic and critical advantage of starting production about half a year earlier on the flip side bmw 03 protection was barely covering the 162 airframe production and the situation was not really improving but we should look at this in more detail if we want to evaluate messerschmitt's statement that the heinker 162 would impair me 262 production while messerschmitt has a point saying that the heinkel 162 and me262 would compete for resources and manpower in october 1944 as we can see from this graph total aircraft production started to drop significantly in the following months as the german industry shifted production nearly completely to the jets production fell significantly due to a mixture of allied bombing resource scarcity and a shift to the jet fighter program but considering that this at least on the surface freed up production space and capacity a production of both the heinkel 162 and me262 seems feasible at least on paper although most would argue that the development of a new fighter was wasteful and unnecessary the folk sieger project was valid at the time and when you consider the bomber production had ceased the aircraft manufacturers in nazi germany also had the capacity to undertake such a new type while theoretically correct and although i understand the point the offer of this quote is making i disagree with this statement on a practical level while on paper production capacity does free up in reality this does not automatically allow a shift over to new aircraft the existing factories are often under attack or stood especially in 1945 at the risk of being lost in the ground fighting so much so that the production had to be relocated underground and dispersed the heinker 162 problems are also made worse by the fact that production was largely focused in mid to sort of north germany as such it was way over one world for example to allied uh bombing attacks and then you need to retool your factories retrain your labor force and keep the factories running as an example actually in early 1945 me262 production had to seize one day a week in various factories because electricity had to be rationed then if we consider that due to allied attacks the urgency to build these aircraft the use of slave labor and the near total collapse of the infrastructure was of course substandard and this dual production run meant not only producing two different aircraft but two different engines and then we start really running into a massive problem for both aircraft that cannot be overcome given the situation that being said i do agree in principle that the hanker 162 production as it happened did not have sort of a significant impact on me 262 production because the planes or the the plane the 162 was designed on purpose to be different to the already existing mb262s so as to facilitate a cheaper and less resource consuming production messagement was right in saying we won't get this folk seeker out in time but then again to make a definite statement on most of these things you have to look beyond costs and man hours but resource allocation and logistical organization for example while heinkel 162 airframe production had overall probably a limited impact on me 262 f frame production bmw 03 production might have had a comparatively bigger impact on jumo4 production or rather vice versa at the end of the day we can speculate how the situation would have unfolded in 1945 had the war continued but thankfully it didn't and i'm not a fan of these what-if scenarios so i'm going to cut it here as always i am a big fan of going back to some of these original documents primary sources and see what was well actually said at the time let me know what you think about all of this what do you make of messerschmitt's attitude towards the folk seeker what about to the production of both planes and the engine yeah put it down below and as always i hope that you enjoy these files that i pull from the archives more of course is coming up so as always i want to thank my patreon and my channel supporters because well it's they that fund my research and my filming trip so i can actually make this content for all of you if you enjoy it please consider supporting the channel with a block or two a month over patreon or channel memberships and share these videos also a big thank you to the raf museum and the flu craft schleichtein near munich for letting me film the aircraft shown in this video i recommend that you visit both of these museums when you can links in the description below as always have a great day and see you in the sky

Channel: Military Aviation History

Views: 118,188

Rating: 4.9528265 out of 5

Keywords: Heinkel, He 162, Messerschmitt, Me 262, Luftwaffe, jet, fighter, Willy Messerschmitt, Volksjäger, Volksjager, Salamander

Id: BUSGgAXLOqc

Length: 21min 3sec (1263 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 10 2020