Hitler's Jet Plane (5 page)

For a few seconds the pilot surrendered to this glorious sensation of carefree gliding. Remembering his duties, he noted that the instruments read normal, the aircraft felt comfortable and stable, sweet when trimmed. If he released his hold of the control stick the machine had a slight tendency to drift left, but that would be quickly ironed out once he landed. Seldom had Fritz Wendel been so satisfied, so lyrical, about a maiden flight. Yes, it was something to savour. In those days a maiden flight consisted of a single circuit around the town and every pilot was cock-a-hoop if everything went smoothly and no murderous dangers suddenly cropped up. After ten minutes in the air he was in the long drawn-out turn for a sedate approach to the airstrip. With jets throttled back, V3 sank slowly lower; the runway came ever nearer and without difficulty the wheels squelched. The flight had lasted twelve minutes in all. And then it was all jubilation: onlookers running from the airfield buildings, the groundstaff crowding round to offer their congratulations, an exultant Willy Messerschmitt.

An immediate conference involving Messerschmitt, his designers and the Junkers engineers followed the maiden flight. After an examination of the airframe and powerplant it was decided to adjust the control surfaces for trim and refuel the aircraft for a second flight. Wendel took off again just after midday and began a prescribed series of tests. On his return he reported that when banking steeply, the aircraft could not achieve a tight turn and the control stick felt heavy. The defect here seemed to lie in the wing design.

The Me 262 prototypes were built to an arrow-head plan in which the edges of the inner wing, i.e., from the wing root to the engine nacelle, were at a right angle to the fuselage. This part of the wing was exposed to high aerodynamic forces and the airflow spilled away too quickly. The swept-back configuration of the wings therefore only began at the outer engine casing.

The necessary modifications took about three weeks. The inner wing was broadened so that the whole wing was now swept back from the root. This gave the Me 262 its final form. The larger and more effective angle of attack provided the aircraft with a more acute turning radius and a slower landing speed, both crucial for fighter operations.

The Reich Air Ministry had been kept informed of progress, and at this point decided to appoint its own Luftwaffe test pilot. One of the most experienced was Heinrich Beauvais from the Rechlin Test Centre who telephoned Wendel and quickly agreed a date for the flight.

On the morning of 17 August 1942 Wendel escorted his guest to the waiting V3 and spent a good half-hour providing his Rechlin colleague with a careful introduction to the cockpit. First he emphasised the absolute necessity to push the throttle levers forward slowly and cautiously and not with a jerk or brusque movement, because the turbines would stop at once and might catch fire. He demonstrated by moving the levers to show how he did it personally. He explained that after starting the engines, Beauvais should keep the brakes on, allowing the revs to mount slowly until they reached about 8,000 per minute. Then he should release the brakes, let the aircraft move forward and accelerate until the speedometer registered 180 kph. That would be at about the 800-yard mark. Wendel would position himself at the edge of the runway at that point so that Beauvais had a waymarker to know when he had to make the short stab at the brakes to get the tail up and so take off.

Beauvais got into the cockpit while Wendel drove to the 800-yard point. The tone of the V3’s motors slowly swelled louder and he watched as the machine approached faster and faster towards him. The scene was now set for the accident which all had feared.

Wendel had the feeling as he watched the aircraft coming up that it was not moving fast enough. He dismissed the thought at once, for no irregularity was apparent from the howl of the jets nor could he estimate the actual speed of approach. It was ‘just a funny feeling’ but it made Wendel cry out ‘Don’t brake yet!’ He watched in alarm as the Me 262 hurtled past, saw the tailplane rise and then sink back on the tail wheel almost immediately. The thunder of the jets deafening in his ears, Wendel stared horror-struck through the whirling dust as the rear of the aircraft rose up a second time and then subsided again about 150 yards further on.

The V3 was racing at full speed for the end of the runway. Wendel felt the urge to shut his eyes and so blot out the vision of the horrific disaster which now awaited Beauvais and could not be avoided. Spellbound he gazed after the speeding aircraft, had the impression that a last gallant effort was made to raise the tailplane before the Messerschmitt roared off the end of the runway into a cornfield where it was at once enveloped in an enormous cloud of dust.

Wendel heard a dull thump. He remained glued to the spot for a few seconds as he waited for the explosion, or for smoke to rise from the wreck. But below an expanding cloud of yellow-brown dust from the parched earth a deathly stillness reigned.

Wendel sprinted to his car and drove at full speed towards where Beauvais would be, still alive he hoped, perhaps seriously hurt, the best one could expect. He noticed on the other side of the airfield the fire appliances and ambulance also speeding to the accident site. It was mid-August, and a searing heat baked the plain at whose heart lay the Leipheim aerodrome, pasture and surrounding agricultural land. The ground was hard and dry and each of the vehicles trailed a yellowish plume of dust.

Wendel could not understand why the accident had occurred. Beauvais was a very good, reliable pilot, one of the best at the Luftwaffe Test Centre. He understood flight technology. He had tested many new aircraft and had trained himself to expect the unexpected. He was not the type of man who took off regardless, leaving it in the hands of Fate to deliver him and the aircraft back safely. He had flown many captured enemy aircraft transported to Rechlin for examination and had managed to survive without anybody giving him a thirty-minute briefing on the possible pitfalls.

At the controls of V3 he had not made an obvious error, and self-evidently he had applied the correct pressure to the brake at 800 yards since the tailplane had come up horizontally. ‘Damn stupid braking,’ Wendel thought and decided to do all he could to have all Me 262s fitted with a nose wheel. He could not leave operational pilots to guess their way through this accursed braking nonsense as he and Beauvais had done. The cornfield was bounded by a cart-track and halfway round he espied the accident site in an adjoining potato field. Beauvais was standing a few metres away from the ruined Me 262, which had come to a stop slewed broadside to the intended direction of flight. Both engines had been torn from their nacelles and lay aside from the main wreckage. Both wings were damaged, the right more than the left. The leg of the left wheel was bent, the right wheel had broken off. The aircraft was a mess but not irreparable.

As Wendel got out of his car, Beauvais could hardly suppress a grin at the expression on the Messerschmitt pilot’s face. ‘But Beauvais, you’re alive!,’ Wendel cried, pumping his hand, slapping his back. ‘You don’t kill a weed so easily,’ the Rechlin man responded, and stuck his left thumb into his mouth. ‘You’re injured, Beauvais?’

‘I hurt my thumb on the throttle lever, but I don’t need hospitalisation,’ he explained, and returned the thumb to his mouth. ‘So what went wrong then?,’ Wendel demanded. Beauvais reflected for a few seconds. ‘I’ve got no explanation other than this damned heat wave. As you saw, I got the wings up as I passed you. The aircraft was going slower than I expected but I thought the speed would build up OK by the time I got to you. I touched the brakes twice more afterwards as well.’

‘And the revs were right?’

‘Sure. When I released the brakes, both engines had 8,000, and the count didn’t fall off during the run up. I think that the jets had too little thrust because of the outside air temperature – I can’t think of another reason. When the aircraft didn’t take off at the 800-yard mark, it seemed to me to be best to keep going in the hope that eventually she would rise... and the rest you know.’

‘God only knows why you’re here talking to me instead of the angels,’ Wendel told him.

‘After she roared off the airfield,’ Beauvais continued, ‘there was a sudden violent thump as if I had hit a ditch or something and that’s what knocked the wheels off. After that she more or less finished the flight on her belly.’

‘The ditch is actually a footpath across the cornfield, perhaps I should have warned you about it.’

Beauvais gave him a wry smile. ‘I would still have hit it. After we slid to a stop I got out at once because one of the turbines was smouldering. With oil leaking out of the damaged fuel lines, I thought it best to observe from a respectful distance.’ He thought for a few moments and then concluded, ‘If the first time I braked had been a bit later, say at 900 or 950 yards, when the speed was higher, probably I would have got up OK . . .’

As he finished speaking, one of the ambulance men arrived holding in his hand a very large potato, the V3 having ploughed up several furrows in her long slide across the dry land. ‘Take good care of it,’ he said to Beauvais, ‘it’s the first ever harvested by a jet aircraft.’ Beauvais tossed the thick tuber into the air. ‘Yes, I’m sure it is,’ he replied, ‘but what a damn stupid place the farmer chose to grow potatoes.’

4

A Fatal Crash and Hitler’s Fatal Decision

A
fter Beauvais’ accident, it was 1 October 1942 before a V2, fitted with two Jumo 004 jets but still lacking a nose wheel, was ready to proceed with the programme of test flights. At 09:23 hours that day Fritz Wendel made a twenty-minute circuit over Augsburg, the first of numerous satisfactory flights with this particular aircraft which continued well into the spring of 1943. During this period there were no noteworthy occurrences.

Despite Milch’s directive in August 1941 suspending all further work on the Me 262, it would appear that at some time in the succeeding year Reich Air Ministry contracts were placed with Messerschmitt AG for both the jet and the Me 163 rocket fighter. Milch himself remained sceptical and inflexible. After listening to Willy Messerschmitt deliver a report about progress on the Me 262 to a Development Conference at the Ministry of Aircraft Production on 13 November 1942, he refused to give the aircraft any financial support on the grounds that in view of the growing Allied air superiority over the Reich he wanted to concentrate on conventional fighter and bomber production.

The repaired V3 re-entered service for test flying in early April 1943 and Wendel as chief test pilot enlarged his flying team by the addition of a proven young colleague, Oberfeldwebel Wilhelm Ostertag. This was done with a view to shortening the period of Me 262 testing and have the machine in series production ahead of schedule.

After a few flights, Ostertag flew the V2 as well as Wendel. The problems with the powerplant appeared to be diminishing but had not yet been fully eradicated. Nevertheless, at Messerschmitt the time was considered ripe to discuss with the Ministry of Aircraft Production the question of an early start to series production, and the appropriate report was submitted to the Reich Air Ministry. The Berlin office despatched young Hauptmann Wolfgang Späte to Augsburg to fly the Me 262 and make his evaluation. He appeared a suitable man for the task, for he had been involved in the flight testing and preparation of the Me 163 for operations and had been selected to command the operational test unit Erprobungskommando 16. After his first Me 262 flight Späte wrote:

What was immediately obvious was that this was a leap forward in aviation such that it was bound to bring us, as a nation at war, an unimaginable advantage, provided it was possible to produce the aircraft in time in sufficient numbers . . .

Continuing his test programme a few days later, he lost power in both engines at 9,000 feet. From an examination of the earlier flight data – principally in flying at slow speeds – it could be seen that he had throttled the engines back gradually to 2,000 revs. At the end of this experiment he attempted to regain thrust by pushing the throttle levers backwards and forward repeatedly, but neither engine responded, the rev counter remaining at 2,000. A brownish-black banner of smoke streamed astern from the jets.

The engines would not restart and after several more desperate attempts to regain control he had lost so much height that his only alternatives were abandoning the aircraft or crash-landing. Suddenly he recollected Wendel’s instructions for such an eventuality. Wendel had once told him that in this predicament the thrust levers had to be restored to neutral and the engines restarted by the same procedure as if on the ground. At this juncture this advice was clearly not without its perils. If Wendel’s advice was wrong, Späte would have lost so much altitude during the attempt that it would be too late to escape by parachute and he would be forced to crash-land. This might succeed but an explosion was a possibility. Fortified by the philosophy ‘Nothing is known for sure’, Späte decided to stake all on Wendel.

Meanwhile the aircraft had sunk down to 4,500 feet and Späte had no more time to lose. Putting the thrust levers to neutral, he made an injection of fuel and pushed the left throttle very slowly forward. Suddenly there came the short explosive sound that was music to his ears, accompanied by an increase in speed which confirmed that the left turbine had ignited. The engine rev counter climbed to 4,500, a little later to full thrust.

The altimeter read only 1,350 feet, but already Späte no longer needed to concern himself with the question of baling out or crash-landing. On one engine he could maintain at least this height. The starboard engine responded similarly and he made a normal landing.

This extremely unsettling state of affairs for pilots was typical of what had to be endured when the powerplant of a new aircraft was not unconditionally reliable. Jet flight, particularly as regards the engines themselves, was still very much in its infancy. The works engineers had neither the necessary experience nor, as previously mentioned, access to the best materials. The investigation into Späte’s almost disastrous flight came up with the explanation that if the Me 262 yawed when running at low revs, the strong lateral airflow could stop the compressor wheels and extinguish the ignition flame.