The Nazi’s Super Jet Was Wooden & Designed to Be Flown by Teenagers

By Sebastien Roblin,The National Interest

By the summer of 1944, the German Luftwaffe had a lot of problems. Huge Allied four-engine strategic bombers were pummeling Germany’s industrial base daily, escorted by long-range fighters that were frittering away the German flying arm’s elite cadres of combat pilots nurtured since the 1930s. While the bombing campaign failed to prevent German industrial output from increasing in 1944, due to increased mobilization and use of slave labor, attacks targeting petroleum production proved extremely effective. By the end of the year, the advanced new tanks and warplanes coming out of German factories were often grounded for lack of fuel. Such was the Luftwaffe’s decline that Allied fighter bombers were frequently able to roam over the frontlines unopposed as they wreaked havoc on German frontline troops.

The Nazi leadership had hoped that Messerschmitt Me 262 Sturmvogel (“Storm Bird”) jet fighter—the first fighter jet to see combat in the summer of 1944—would swing the air war back in their favor. But despite the Sturmvogel’s hundred-mile-per-hour speed advantage and powerful armament, the twin-engine jets were expensive to produce and consumed tons of fuel. Furthermore, pilots required extensive training to master the advanced jets—but the Luftwaffe’s situation had grown so desperate that trainees were being thrown into combat after minimal instruction, with predictable results.

Recommended:North Korea Has 200,000 Soldiers in Its Special Forces[3]

Recommended:Why Doesn’t America Kill Kim Jong Un?[4]

Recommended:1.2 Million Casualties: If North Korea Attacked Los Angeles with a Nuclear Weapon[5]

These crushing realities led Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring and industrial minister Albert Speer to conceive of an Emergency Fighter Program to produce a cut-price advanced fighter that would not tax the Nazi Germany’s increasingly limited industrial and human resources. The new fighter had to be simple enough that it could be piloted by Hitler Youth who were ostensibly eager to sacrifice their lives for the Third Reich. If the aircraft proved too difficult maintain with spare parts, the planes would be expendable enough to simply abandon. Needless to say, this project was adopted over the objections of the Luftwaffe’s old-school fighter pilots.

Many of the proposals submitted to the program reeked of desperation, such as using towed gliders to attack bomber formations. Others exhibited a wanton disregard for the pilot’s life, including several expendable manned rockets launched from vertical rails like a missile. There were also bizarre “miniature fighters” deployed from bombers, in which the pilot had to lay on his belly.