Forum: Military Aircraft of the Cold War

kmceject wrote:

your comment about mugging airplanes reminds me of Chuck Yeager's kill of a Me-262, the only air-to-air kill of one. He saw one readying for take-off so he circled the field in an orbit that brought him to the -262's six as the plane lifted off. He nailed it about 50ft AGL, so he didn't violate the ROE that prohibited shooting one on the ground.

I'm pretty sure more than one Me-262 was downed in air to air combat. Did you mean Yeager's only Me-262 kill?

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Person wrote:

kmceject wrote:

your comment about mugging airplanes reminds me of Chuck Yeager's kill of a Me-262, the only air-to-air kill of one. He saw one readying for take-off so he circled the field in an orbit that brought him to the -262's six as the plane lifted off. He nailed it about 50ft AGL, so he didn't violate the ROE that prohibited shooting one on the ground.

I'm pretty sure more than one Me-262 was downed in air to air combat. Did you mean Yeager's only Me-262 kill?

You're definitely right here. I have seen several P-51 pilots talk about shooting them down. apparantly they were only vulnerable in a few situations, on the ground, taking off, landing, and in a dive. P-51's were able to out-dive them, and were able to manuver while diving, the 262's were not able to do much turing while they dove.

I've seen video of one being shot up in mid air from behind, it was not taking off.

They avoided tangling with the fighters, they mostly darted in and out , picking off bombers. Just like the allies avoided tangling with the zeros in slow turning fights, the 262's did the same with the prop planes.

kmceject wrote:

He nailed it about 50ft AGL, so he didn't violate the ROE that prohibited shooting one on the ground.

Just curious...What ROE forbids taking out aircraft on the ground, manned or unmanned? Confused

The 'Stangs did low-level stuff on targets of opportunity and more than once that included strafe passes on airfields. Manned or not, aren't aircraft on the ground still valid targets?

Well, I was remembering Yeager's autobio. I'll have to reread that part again and let y'all know what he says about things. At the time when Yeager went plinking for the -262 his unit ROE was not to attack stuff on the ground. Might have been because it was near the end of the war and they were looking to capture whatever they could intact. Don't really recall, been about 15yrs since I read that chapter...

Kevin
The Ejection Site

kmceject wrote:

Well, I was remembering Yeager's autobio. I'll have to reread that part again and let y'all know what he says about things. At the time when Yeager went plinking for the -262 his unit ROE was not to attack stuff on the ground. Might have been because it was near the end of the war and they were looking to capture whatever they could intact. Don't really recall, been about 15yrs since I read that chapter...

Kevin
The Ejection Site

Actually the reason the ROE's was that P-51's were to avoid ground attack if possible due to the lack of punishment they could take relative to the Jug.

Quote:

You're definitely right here. I have seen several P-51 pilots talk about shooting them down. apparantly they were only vulnerable in a few situations, on the ground, taking off, landing, and in a dive. P-51's were able to out-dive them, and were able to manuver while diving, the 262's were not able to do much turing while they dove.

Yup, I remember that one of Germany's best aces got killed that way. His name eludes me right now, if any of you guys remembers the name, hewas the youngest lieutenant-colonel (Oberstleutnant) around and was only 22 when he got killed.

A Tempest V pilot nailed him while he was landing. Basically the guy just went straight through the flak barragearound the airfield and shot him down before he could touch down.

Phoenix wrote:

Yup, I remember that one of Germany's best aces got killed that way. His name eludes me right now, if any of you guys remembers the name, hewas the youngest lieutenant-colonel (Oberstleutnant) around and was only 22 when he got killed.

A Tempest V pilot nailed him while he was landing. Basically the guy just went straight through the flak barragearound the airfield and shot him down before he could touch down.

Nowotny? I think he was 24 and I also think he was shot down by P-51's so actually this is probably a bad guess.

Yeah, Nowotny. Weird, I remember reading that he got nailed by a Tempest V. Memory's a little hazythough since it's been more than a couple years since I read that thing. I'll run a search and see what I can turn up.

Edit: Okay, I ran the search and apparentely the circumstacnes of Nowotny's death are somewhat shrouded in mistery.
What I read was from Pierre Clostermann's book 'Le Grande Cirque'. Basically what happened was that this flight of 4 Tempest Vs came across an Me-262 painted entirely in silver, the plane quickly entered what was known as the flak box (basically an area around the German airfields protected by light flak, meant to protect Luftwaffe planes when taking off and landing). The first three ships in the flight stopped the pursuit, not daring to run the flak gauntlet, but the fourth one supposedly went right through and shot the plane down as it was about to land. Later that day (or the next, can't remember exactly), German radio announced that Nowotny was dead. People in Clostermann's squadron added 2 plus 2 and came up with the conclusion that Nowotny must've been flying the silver Me-262. Either that or my French is so bad, I should stop claiming to be able to speak it.

And yeah, he was 24 when he got killed. That was my mistake. Sorry. Embarassed

I did some quick research just because I was curious and this is what I came up with:

Nowotny was shot down and killed on 8 November 1944. I believe he was shot down be Lt. R. W. Stevens, 364 FG in a P-51. He was landing and one of his engines was out when he got jumped. The situation is remarkably similiar to what you described. Lt. Stevens indicated he caught up with a slow Me-262 that was about to land, shot at it and damaged it and pulled off when he believed he was about to enter the "Flak Alley". Subsequently, Nowotny's Me-262 rolled and he crashed. (This more or less happened within sight of Adolf Galland who was visiting Kommando Nowotny that day.)

On 4 November 1944 OBFHR Willi Banzhaff of Kommondo Nowotny was shot down by a Tempest V. I was unable to find any other information about this event ie. how it occured, on landing etc. W/C J.B. Wray was flying with Sqn 122 at the time he was credited with this kill.

As near as I can tell Clostermann never served with 122 having served with Nos 341, 602, 486, 274, 56, and 3. So the information differs there as well.

The "silver Me-262" reference threw me. I think Nowotny was flying "White 8" the day that he was shot down. It would appear that the color scheme was a camoflauge green/grey. (There is some confusion and disagreement if the plane had the yellow bands around the tail and wing.) I came across one reference that referred to the Me-262's code name as the "Stormbird or Silver". Possibly they were referring to the code name of the Me-262?

I could be completely wrong so all this information should be taken with a grain of salt.

Forum: Military Aircraft of the Cold War

Kill of a Me-262 on take-off