re: History in Pictures is a great twitter feed. Here is one just posted.

Yes, it was in a Dauntless but not at Midway. This was in 1942.

Interesting note on the Dauntless is its agility. It was capable of pulling maneuvers of up 9g's. Although it was very slow and outclassed, it was a very agile plane.

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ETA Had an odd name. Vracieu, Vejstaha, something like that

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Close enough - will give it to you. At the time, he then Lt. Stanley "Swede" Vejtasa.


Now, about that MOH thing...

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Yes, it was in a Dauntless but not at Midway. This was in 1942.

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Coral Sea?

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Eric Brown

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Tons of respect for this man, but he is the first person I've heard say anything good about the He-162.

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Now, about that MOH thing...

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He didn't get a MoH. He got recommended for one for shooting down 6 or 7 japanese bombers in a single sortie at Santa Cruz but never got the award.

Is that the Maine?

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Tons of respect for this man, but he is the first person I've heard say anything good about the He-162.

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I think that's a case of people repeating what they hear. You know, how everyone will tell you the P-40 was a terrible fighter - even though it remained in production until 1944 and the Japanese had tons of respect for it. Once a bad reputation gets out, it is hard to undo.

Much of the reputation probably came from Adolf Galland's opposition to the airplane - but he didn't oppose it from a technical standpoint. He opposed it because he felt it would take resources away from the 262 program.

Anyhow, the French used captured examples of the He-162 as an introductory jet trainer (something it most definitely was not) for most of 1947-1948 and only suffered a single accident.

It was a fast, agile, fighter with good visibility and said to be a stable gun platform. Given even 6 months more of development, it would have been a terror.

The design wasn't copied more for the same reason the 262 design wasn't. As good as those early models were, jet fighter technology (particularly engines) advanced so rapidly they were quickly rendered obsolete.

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And had Hitler used the 262 as intended, things would have been a whole lot worse.

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Meh - too little, too late. The Allies would have adapted. The 262 flew first, what, in the summer of 1942 with the jet engines? They didn't go operational until April 1944.

Even if they had started operting in the Spring of '43 - they would have slowed down U.S. daylight bombing - perhaps even suspended it. Wouldn't have impacted Overlord, couldn't have gone back in time and won Stalingrad.

Would have resulted in (maybe) a few hundred, maybe 1000, more dead 8th Air Force crewmembers and a few dozen allied fighters. With our equipment at the time, we still destroyed 100 262s in the air.

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