Osprey Aircraft of the Aces 17 : German Jet Aces of World War 2

When the sun rose over Mecklenburg on 27 August 1944, it held the promise of another glorious summer's day for the thousands of holidaymakers thronging that province's Baltic coast seaside resorts. But then kilometres inland, along the banks of the River Warnow, it heralded an event of far greater import in the annals of aviation history - the dawn of the jet age. The Third Reich's last ditch efforts to sweep the massed Allied bomber formations from the skies of Germany centred around the new crop of jet 'wonder weapons' that were issued to the Jagdwaffe from mid-1944 onwards. Far in advance of anything the Allies had even in the experimental phase, types like the Me 262, He 162, Me 163 and the Ar 234 could perform their combat sorties with relative impunity. However, paucity in numbers and unreliable jet engines eventually cancelled out any technological edge that these aircraft offered. Despite operating from autobahns and forest runways, always being short of the exotic fuels necessary and lacking any strength in numbers, a handful of pilots amassed amazing scores in the last year of the war on these aircraft, flying with units like JG 7, JV 44 and NJG 11. Text by Hugh Morgan with illustrations by John Weal.

Contents

• Heinkel v Messerschmitt
• Kommandos - Bombers and Trainers
• JG 7 - The Main Protagonist
• The Final Effort
• Other Units, Other Types
• Appendices