Posted on 01/13/2006 8:14:42 AM PST by pabianice
A replica of one of Germany's greatest technological triumphs late in World War II, the Messerschmitt Me.262 fighter jet, has left American soil and reached Germany after U.S. State Department officials delayed it 60 days because they saw it as a weapon of war.
The four 30 mm replica cannons aboard lack a firing mechanism and still wouldn't fire if they had one. The aircraft now has arrived in Germany where it will be reassembled by the Messerschmitt Foundation aircraft collection and flown once again.
The replica project has been taken over by a group of retired Boeing engineers operating in Everett, Washington, as Legend Flyers. The aircraft are for sale by Air Assets International/Warbird Recovery in Colorado. Messerschmitt granted five additional serial numbers. Two have been built, with three to go.
Man, what a beautiful piece of aircraft history!
wow, thats just way to cool. id pay good money to ride in this plane if it was a 2 seater. btw, what always surprised me is just how small the early jets were, ie the aircobra, this messerschimdt, etc etc. even the mig 15 was a smallish bird. state dept, sheesh, what more needs be said?
Hottest-looking plane. Ever.
Yeah - would be cool to fly one of these to Sun and Fun...
This jet was definitely not small. Even today it looks sleek - truly revolutionary! Now if they'd just get around to re-building a 'Stuka'......
Yep. I actually sat on the wing of one while watching a concert once, amazingly small even compared to small modern fighters like the F-16. A club in Germany had purchased it and put it inside.
Flying around in a Stuka, complete with the siren, could certainly be fun ;)
Yeager got to fly one and had nothing but praise for it.
I truly believe God intervened and put into Hitler's head that it needed to be a bomber. That one move halted production at a time that it could have stopped the bombing of Germany by B17s.
The ME-262 Project
http://www.stormbirds.com/project/index.html
Yeah - useful while doing a (simulated) divebombing of your ex's house ;-)
It wasn't a matter of capability, it was simple numbers. We had many more B17's/fighter cover than they had jets (and fuel). Same situation with Panther/Tiger tank vs the Sherman.
If they had started the jet production a year or two earlier, that really could have changed the air war over Europe. Luckily, Luftwaffe politics helped us out.
I beg to differ. While this is an absolutely marvelous bird, of all WWII vintage planes, P51 Mustang is by far the best looking. Everything about it says "fighter", "bird of prey".
THat is hard to say. It delivered a huge payload, for its time. It also had enough guns to truly be a flying fortress, but since from most angles you could only shoot at most a couple guns...
It did bring a lot of guys back home after taking a beating, but, you would never have gotten me in that ball...not for a million dollars.
It's not a "replica". It's a new-production bird built to the same design and standards (or in some cases, improved standards) as the original. The guys who built them even got authentic werk numbers from Messerschmitt that start in sequence where the old ones left off.
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