FROM:    COLLIN KIRKBRIGHT   (MPSV13A)
SUBJECT: SWOTL GROUP

  DOGFIGHT WITH A 262. Part 1
Mustang pilot Lieutenant John Kirk spotted the German bogey
as it came out of the sun and raked a B-17 Flying Fortress.
His fighter group frequently met enemy fighters, usually
Me-109s and FW-190s, while escorting the B-17s on daylight
raids over Germay, but the meeting that day, 21 March 1945,
was different.
  Still eight days from his 21st birthday, the young man had
already gotten a reputation for being a fierce competitor in
dogfights. That day, however, Kirk knew his chances of
catching the German bogey were not very good; the plane he
had spotted was an Me-262, the new Messerschmitt twin-jet
fighter. Never one to let an opportunity pass him by,
though, Kirk peeled off and gave chase.
  Kirk was dubious about his chancesof catching the jet for
good reason. The 262 was the much-rumored, little seen
fighter which had been in development since 1938. Featuring
two Jumo turbine engines producing 1980 pounds of thrust
apiece, the 262 was about 100 miles per hour faster than his
P-51D and could easily outdistance any prop-driven fighter
in the world.
  On two seperate occasions before, Kirk had seen these
jets. His first encouter with one went as did most of the
early sightings between American fighters and German jets.
Kirk spotted the fighter in the distance but never bothered
going after it, knowing the plane was a lost chase before he
started. Instead, he marely watched as the jet quickly
vanished in the distance.
  Om another occasion, he and several other fighters were
circling a German airfield when they saw two 262s taxiing
out for takeoff. Even through the American fighters
immediatly dove straight down at the jets, the first 262 was
able to take off and evade the attack. The second, while not
quite so lucky, nearly got away, too. The new jets were very
fast.
  From their breif encouters with them, Allied fighter
pilots had a pretty good idea just how fast. Although the
state-of-the-art American P-51Ds were very quick, boasting a
top straight and level speed of 435 mph on a good day, they
were made to look sluggish by the the new twin-jet fighter.
Allied pilots also correctly assumed that the Germans had
not yet breached the speed of sound (about 650 mph). So, an
educated guess was made that the Messerschitt 262 was
flirting with speeds around 550 mph. As it turned out, that
guess was right on the money.
  While Allied fighters were capable of similar speeds while
diving, at such speeds air compressibility comes into play
and a plane's controls can become unresposive or
unpredictable. Kirk knew about the problems associated with
compressibility. In 1943, while glying a P-47 Thunderbolt
during a training flight, he vert nearly lost his life due
to this effect. Kirk had put the big fighter into a steep
dive over Chesapeake Bay, and, when the airplane reached
what was then known as terminal velocity, the craft's
controls froze up. He was headed for certain death unless he
could do something.

  When the P-47 was less than a thousand feet above the
surface of the bay, however, the thicker ait allowed Kirk to
pull out of the dive by using the plane's trim control. Many
other WWII fighter pilots weren't so lucky. They died unable
to pull their planes out of similar high-speed dives.
  Messerschitt WERKS began development of the 262 in 1938
at the request of the German High Command. The first
operational unit was delivered in July 1944, following many
prodution problems.
  Despite those problems, however, the 262 gave the Nazis
the best fighter in the world. Able to achieve a top speed
of 540 mph and climb at nearly 4000 feet per minute, no
Allied warplane could touch it.
  Yet, for unknown reasons, Hitler insisted that the jet be
used only as a bomber, and it languished in that role.
  It was only when the war reached a critical state for
Germany that the 262 went into full production as a fighter,
and by that time Allied air strikes had crippled most of
Messerschmitt's plants.
  So, prodution of the 262 was diverted to a hastily
constructed plant consisting of several buildings hidden
beneath the canopy of a densepine forest. Other parts were
assembled in the dark recesses of abandoned mines. In spite
of these desperate conditions, more than 1400 262 were
completed between March 1944 and April 1945.
  That day in March, Kirk's fighter squadron had been
assigned to escort B-17s deep into Germany as they bombed
strategic targets. In these last months of the war, it was
getting easier to do, as constant Allied bombing had reduced
the Luftwaffe to a shadow of its former self. With their
constant barrage, the Allies targeted evey war prodution
facility they could find. In sharp contrast to raids
conducted earlier in the war, many missions in the Spring of
1945 encoutered light resistance from German interceptors,
due to shortages of pilots, fuel, and parts. German
antiaircraft fire was likewise ineffective, due to a
desperate shortage of ammunition. The perception American
pilots has was that in their desperation, the Germans were
saving their resources for a last-ditch stand against the
Allies when they crossed into Bavaria, as was inevitable by
then.
  Kirk was a member of the 83rd Fighter Squadron of the 78th
Fighter Group of the Eighth Air Force, stationed in Duxford,
England, a grass base south of Cambridge, which was home to
the Hawker Hurricanes which fought so valiantly in the
Battle of Britain, By 1943, the base had been taken over by
the Eighth Air Force, which operated P-38s and, later,
P-47s.
  Having done his stateside training in Thunderbolts, Kirk
was assigned to Duxford as soon as he finished his combat
training. The front-line fighter there, the P-47, was a good
plane, fast and maneuverable. Most importatly, it could take
a beating and still manage to get its licks in and somehow
limp home.
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