Working on my Me 262 development book at the moment.
It was originally planned as the third 'Secret Projects of the Luftwaffe' book after He 162 and BV 155 but it's turned into a bit of a monster. As seems to be the case with every German WW2 aircraft type I study extensively via primary source documents, the story that has emerged diverges somewhat from the 'accepted' history of it.
I was particularly intrigued by a video that a popular aviation history YouTuber put out in February 2021 entitled The 'Real' Reason(s) Why The Me 262 Had Bombs - with the thumbnail text 'No, bombs didn't delay the Me 262'. His argument was that the state of the Jumo 004 was what really prevented the Me 262 from entering service more rapidly.
I'd already been working on the book, on and off, for a couple of years by this point and I knew enough to know that the YouTuber in question was likely to be wrong. But if he was, what actually did delay the Me 262? And if I could find an acceptable answer, would I be able to conclusively demonstrate its veracity using primary sources?
Development started in mid-1938 and the first series production model Me 262s were accepted by the Luftwaffe in April 1944 (though actual military operations didn't get underway until mid-July). Was ~6 years an unreasonable development time for the world's first operational jet fighter? Spoiler warning, my conclusion is: yes it was. The Me 262 could, and perhaps should, have been put into service much sooner. I've looked in some detail at exactly what went wrong, and when.
There were a number of niggling questions I also wanted to answer. The glass nosed Me 262 bomber - why did that come about?
Were a whole bunch of late-war Me 262 prototypes redesignated as the second Me 262 V1, the second Me 262 V2 etc. If so, why? If not, how did that notion come about?
What actually happened to the BMW P 3302 engines fitted to the Me 262 V1 during its first jet flight? (Spoiler: It appears as though pilot error was responsible for their failure and the flight test report doesn't mention the use of the prop engine in bringing the aircraft back down).
Was the Me 262 A-1 actually the Me 262 A-1a? If so, when was the little 'a' added and why? Did the Germans actually use the little 'a' consistently? Or was the aircraft generally known as the 'A-1' without it?
Was there any difference at all between the Me 262 A-1 (or A-1a) and the A-2 (or A-2a)? If so, what was it?
Was the Me 262 x 2 Mistel combination a real project? And if so, was it given serious consideration?
I've tried to provide answers to all these questions and many more, while chronicling the development of the Me 262 as a continuous narrative - rather than 'boxing out' particular projects. This approach has yielded some noteworthy points. Did you, for example, realise that plans to fit the Me 262 with a high-calibre nose cannon can be traced back to August 1943? Or that the Me 262 HG III originally had circular engine intakes - and it's possible to pinpoint the exact date when Willy Messerschmitt personally insisted that they had to be oval instead? Or that three different Me 262 Panzerflugzeug designs were put forward at different times, and what each one consisted of? Clearly, I've already mentioned the Me 262 with M-wing elsewhere on this forum recently.
There's been a lot to discover and the book will cite the primary source material for each and every one of these discoveries.
