by Richard T. Trenk Sr.
Radio silence was broken when someone from the bomber formation reported a single Me 262 jet coming up at two o’clock. Major Tim Sweeney dipped his P-51 Mustang’s right wing slightly and spotted it easily because the jets left a visible exhaust trail under full power. He knew the German would be heading right back where he came from after passing up and down through the bombers.
He radioed his wing man that he was going to break formation and try to get a shot at this jet as it headed back to its base.
Sweeney dropped his wing tanks (which were just about empty) and nosed the Mustang over into a dive, aiming for an imaginary line on which he hoped to meet the returning jet. The airspeed indicator was going up fast and the Mustang was heavy on the controls as it howled downward and towards the southwest.
In World War II, the Luftwaffe was first to employ a jet fighter in actual combat (the British Gloster Meteor was operational but was used only against V-1 flying bombs over England and was not permitted to combat manned aircraft. The Americans were flying and testing jets but had nothing ready for production).
The Messerschmitt Me 262 twin engine jet was at least 100 miles per hour faster than any Allied fighter but was somewhat unreliable. It also had a short flight range of around 650 miles at a cruise speed of 300 miles per hour and of course used lots more fuel when brought up to its combat speed. Production models could reach 540 miles per hour in level flight at 20,000 feet but a stripped experimental model with a very low canopy had reached 624 miles per hour! The plane had a usable service ceiling of over 45,000 feet and still retained a speed of nearly 450 miles per hour at that altitude.
Quite a formidable opponent for any piston engined fighter which would be gasping for breath and quite slow and sluggish on the controls at such extreme heights.
Typical German tactics were to wait until the Allied bomber formations were fairly close to the jet fighter airfield, have the jets take off and climb above the formation, level off about 6,000 feet above the bombers, then make a diving attack at nearly 600 miles per hour. This climb and dive attack would be repeated several times (if possible) before heading directly back to the airfield. The escorting fighters were helpless to intercept the Me 262 and were themselves sometimes attacked by the jets, which could break off a fight at any moment and streak away to safety.
Similar to the problems plaguing the U.S. and British jet engines being developed at the time was the nasty propensity of the Junkers Jumo 004 engines to shed compressor turbine blades due to the extreme rpm’s which these engines operated at.
When a blade let loose at around 9,000 rpm, it was like a piece of shrapnel and usually several blades came exploding out at one time, causing fantastic imbalance and vibration, along with loss of power. The pilot would of course shut down the engine instantly but often the initial damage was extensive, to not only the engine itself, but also to the wing area.
According to Luftwaffe records, nearly seventy per cent of jet crashes were related to engine or landing gear failures, twenty per cent due to pilot error and ten per cent to all other causes. A few planes were lost due to pilots being killed or wounded by turbine blades piercing the cockpit wall. As a result of these recognized problems, the Me 262 was to have the first pilot ejection seat as standard equipment and although one was being developed and tested, it did not enter production.
Despite the troubles the Luftwaffe endured with it, this plane caused serious losses to Allied bombers plus a frustration problem to the escort fighters who had no chance to catch one of these planes and could only watch as the jets came up at the bombers. After the war, Luftwaffe records showed that the Me 262 actually had knocked down quite a lot of Allied planes despite the small number of jets actually in use.
One Me 262 group, called “Jagdgeschwader 7” (Fighter Group No. 7) had only forty-five planes assigned to it and on any given day only fifteen to thirty were flyable, yet JG 7 had 425 kills, of which at least 304 were four-engined bombers!
Oberleutnant Werner Bauer was fairly new to Jagdverband 44 (JV44) and had flown the Me 262 in only five previous attacks on incoming bombers. In the jets, he was officially credited with destroying one B-17 and damaging two others. Twice he had bailed out of the jet fighters due to engine failures during training flights and a landing gear problem had caused him to ground-loop another one, resulting in severe wing damage.
Flying Bf 109 and Focke-Wulf 190 conventional fighters he had knocked down nineteen Soviet and two British planes before being transferred to the Me 262 jet fighter group organized by Generalleutnant Adolf Galland just a few months before Germany would finally surrender. JV44 was a truly elite group of selected pilots and it was an honor to be allowed to join.
On this day Bauer took off alone when the report of the American bomber formation came in. While he would have much preferred to have a few of his comrades with him there had been no other choice, his plane was the only one ready to fly at that time. Still, the dazzling speed of the jet made it easy to escape from difficult situations and Me 262 pilots were now bold and had no hesitation attacking large numbers of enemy planes.
Major Tim Sweeney had four confirmed kills to his credit (three Bf 109s and one FW 190) along with another three damaged.
Today, his fighters were positioned at 23,000 feet just below the bombers, which were at 25,000 feet. The fighters were deployed with one group far in front of the bombers, one to the left, one to the right and one to the rear. Tim’s group was on the right side. In this basic arrangement the whole flight formation of 275 bombers and eighty fighters roared eastward at 230 miles per hour.
Bauer in the Me 262 had now been airborne almost forty-five minutes and was several hundred miles from his base when Luftwaffe air control finally vectored him within sight of this American formation. Due to bucking a headwind and flying at 480 miles per hour, his remaining fuel permitted just one attack run.
He fired at one B-17 on his upwards pass into the formation but could see that he had missed hitting the plane due to misjudging his approach speed. On the roll over at about 31,000 feet he picked a B-17 at the west edge of the formation, dived and gave it a three-second burst from his four Rheinmetall-Borsig MK108 30-mm cannons and saw debris come off the right wing as he flashed downwards at nearly 600 miles per hour. The bomber gunners had little chance of hitting the Messerschmitt at such velocities. The jet fighter was in their .50-caliber machine gun range for only 1.7 seconds! Once below the bombers he throttled back a little to around 550 miles per hour and carefully looked back at the formation of escorting fighters to the west of the bombers. Seeing no fighter break from the formation he started to pay attention to his compass heading and ground orientation. He had only fifteen minutes of fuel remaining at this speed and was anxious to get well clear of the formation so he could really cut back the power and save fuel for the flight home.
Tim Sweeney in the Mustang was still in his dive heading southwesterly towards the imaginary target in the sky where he hoped to meet up with the Me 262.
Bauer’s luck ran out and Sweeney’s held firm. Looking upwards and to his left, Tim saw the jet curving downwards into his trap.
At about 10,000 feet Bauer said he was about to close his throttles and slow down when he felt sharp jolts throughout the plane and a hole suddenly appeared in the right side of the canopy. The starboard engine appeared to have flamed out and the thrust of the port engine swerved him to the right. He never noticed the Mustang coming in from the right side at nearly 500 miles per hour.
Tim figured he would only get one chance to shoot and it would be a deflection shot too. Not a nice neat “shoot-’em-in-the-ass” shot where he could match the target’s speed and linger while adjusting the stream of tracers into the target properly.
Sweeney was now at the same altitude as the jet which was going to pass from left to right in front of him. He had lost some of his dive speed due to having pulled out to almost level flight but the airspeed indicator still read high, at 450 miles per hour. His throttle was full forward in “War Emergency” position and the Packard-built Merlin was at its rev limit, drawing Tim ever closer to the moment of truth.
The Me 262 had it’s right wing up a little, due to being in a gentle left turn. That blocked Bauer’s chance of noticing the Mustang on his right side. As the jet grew larger in Tim’s gun sight frame, he adjusted his aiming lead to more than he normally would use, in consideration of the jet’s great velocity. When at about 500 yards distance he had to shoot, because in another moment the gap would be widening. His first burst went far ahead of the Messerschmitt, his lead had been excessive. A little kick on the rudder brought the aim point where it belonged and from about 300 yards he put the six .50-caliber Brownings to work with a sustained burst of three to three-and-a-half seconds. The jet pilot instantly flipped over to his right and dove right under the Mustang, but that didn’t matter now, Tim had seen his tracers hitting the upraised right wing and caught sight of some material fragmenting away from the right engine housing.
He yanked the Mustang up into a clockwise half-roll in order to get the jet back into view and spotted it quickly because it was now trailing a very visible smoky plume from the right engine.
It had also slowed way down and although it was over a mile in front of him, Tim could clearly see the hinged canopy swing open and a moment later, the pilot bailed out, his chute opening normally.
The Me 262, pilotless, went into a dive, spinning slowly. It made a dull yellow glow as it plowed up a bit of der Vaterland.
The bombing formation was by now far ahead and to try to climb and rejoin was not prudent. Sweeney figured he was still over Allied-held territory and not likely to encounter German fighters en route back to the French airfield.
Back at his own base he reported knocking down the jet and everyone congratulated him. The gun camera film was sort of inconclusive and while clearly showing the tracers of the first burst passing well in front of the jet, the second long burst did not really seem to show any hits although the debriefing officer and photo staff agreed that some stuff was coming off the right jet engine during the attack and the target was well centered in the photo frame. Later in the afternoon U.S. ground forces reported picking up Bauer and this ended all doubts about the “kill.” Sweeney was officially credited with his fifth victory and became an Ace.
This successful attack by Tim Sweeney occurred on 1 May 1945. On 3 May the base used by JV44 near the Munich Autobahn was being moved to a location near Salzburg-Maxglen where it was overrun and captured by U.S. armored forces. Germany surrendered five days later, on 8 May 1945.
Tim Sweeney had shot down the last jet fighter of World War II. In the future, his remarkable feat would become commonplace, as a new era in aerial warfare had commenced. Partly due to this courageous and skillful attack and also because he was in line for promotion, Sweeney was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel.
Back home, he studied law under the GI Bill and practiced in Denver until his retirement a few years ago. He also holds a pilot’s license and tools around in a 12-cylinder XKE Jaguar coupe. Seems like he can’t shake the thrill and fun of high-powered travel.
This story isn’t quite over yet. Oberleutnant Werner Bauer parachuted safely, and as mentioned, was picked up by the U.S. forces in the area. Sweeney arranged to meet the fallen jet pilot and as was usual, they saluted each other with a champagne toast but Bauer seemed confused by the idea of an American pilot coming quite a distance to a prisoner holding area to see him and inquire about his condition. “After all,” he said, through a translator, “what happened was that my starboard engine threw some compressor blades because I over-revved the engines during the dive through the bombers. Pieces were flying all over and some came through the canopy window near my head. I had to get out fast. The reason I turned over on my right side was because the cockpit canopy was hinged on the right side and I needed both hands to lift it at such speed so I let go of the control stick for a moment. The port engine was still making power which pushed the plane to the right before I could get the throttles closed.
“I never saw a P-51 attack my plane and I tell you all, I was not shot down by anyone! This Major Sweeney should not receive credit for something he did not do.”
Sweeney and the USAF think otherwise. Perhaps the German was losing one engine, but he could have made it home on the good one and besides, gun cameras don’t lie. There was nothing coming out of the right jet engine until Tim filled it up with good old American-made .50 caliber slugs.
Bauer and Sweeney have remained friends since the war ended. Tim and his family have visited Bauer who lives near Stuttgart and the Bauers have twice come to Denver.
Every year Christmas cards are exchanged and Bauer’s always has a small note written inside which reads, “You never shot me down. Happy New Year, Werner.”
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| Luftwaffe Messerschmitt Me 262 being shot down by USAAF North American P-51 Mustang of the Eighth Air Force, as seen from the P-51's gun camera. |
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| From gun camera footage of Me 262 shot down by P-51. |
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