Monday, March 17th may not have been the best of times here in Virginia Beach, at least from a weather perspective, but despite the gloomy skies, St. Patrick’s Day did arrive with a sound long absent from the Museum – the glorious whine of spooling Jet Engines!
For several weeks now, our mechanics have been working feverishly to put the Museum’s replica Me 262 back in the air to fulfill a commitment we made to bring the Aircraft to EAA AirVenture to help commemorate the 80th Anniversary of World War II's conclusion.
Running the jets, and conducting taxi tests are a major milestone in this process, and both occurred on Monday. Certainly, more tests remain and work on the aircraft is far from complete, but we wanted to share the excitement of this moment with you all.
And before you ask – yes, we will indeed be holding an open house for the public to see the airplane, and we will be sure to let you know when that is set to take place!
Mike Spalding taxiing White 3 back to the Fighter Factory's hangar following engine tests. The image is very reminiscent of wartime shots of Me 262s hidden in forest settings. (image by Zach Baughman)
A 3rd Army soldier examining an Me 262 for booby traps soon after the end of WWII. The Luftwaffe tried to conceal their aircraft in forests, although it rarely worked successfully.
Watching the 262 taxi around, seemed as good a time as any to share a little more detail on why the aircraft is marked as it is. Where is the original White 3? Who was its pilot, Hans Guido Mutke? And is it possible that he broke the sound barrier in an Me 262?
White 3, Jagdgeschwader 7
The Deutches Museum in Munich, Germany, is where the original White 3 resides – this being Messerschmitt Me 262A-1a Wknr.500 071. Our White 3, the Replica, faithfully duplicates the markings on this fighter jet, helping retell one of the more unusual stories from the Messerschmitt’s time in military service.
Switzerland returned the original White 3 to Germany in 1957 following a 12 year sojourn in the famously neutral Alpine nation. Hans Guido Mutke, had landed the aircraft in Dübendorf, Switzerland on April 25, 1945. The Luftwaffe pilot claimed he had lost his way during a combat mission, but suspicions abounded – was it a defection instead?
Mutke's White 3 on the grass in Switzerland sometime after his famous landing at Dübendorf.
Towing White 3 at an airfield in Switzerland after WWII.
The original White 3 at the Deutsche Museum in 2015. (image by Nicola Giorgione via Wikimedia)
White 3 belonged to 9. Staffel, Jagdgeschwader 7, the world's first operational jet fighter unit. Formed late in 1944, JG 7 Nowotny was originally supposed to be equipped with Focke-Wulf Fw 190s, but the shortage of these aircraft saw the Luftwaffe opt for the Messerschmitt Bf 109 instead. Further adjustments to the plan, however, saw the unit furnished with the brand new Me 262 jet fighter. Even so, this did not alleviate concerns regarding supplies of new aircraft, fuel and even spare parts. At this point in the war, Germany's aircraft industry was stressed almost beyond the breaking point. Essential materials were in desperately short supply, and much of the industry was being moved underground, even into caves, to protect it from bombardment.
These shortages often meant that a typical mission in early 1945 might only feature 3 or 4 operational jets. Identified by their red and blue fuselage bands, the squadron's 262s were expected to disrupt the near-constant flow of Allied bombers, but in truth, their combat operations are better described as sporadic. Life for the pilots adjusting to the new aircraft type was not easy either. Training accidents were common, with around ten Me 262s crashing in a single, six week period while pilots transitioned to the jet.
Persevering through these difficulties, the squadron claimed 45 four-engined bombers by the end of February 1945, and March brought almost enough qualified pilots and flyable airplanes to increase the operational tempo. March 18, 1945 saw a massed attack by 37 Me 262s against 1,330 American bombers (escorted by 700 fighters) bound for Berlin. JG 7 pilots claimed to have shot down 12 Bombers and 1 fighter that day for the loss of 3 Me 262s, although American records indicate only 8 bombers went down. Two of the latter were claimed by a mid-air collision, while an American pilot accidentally shot down another.
It might be surprising for some to hear that a jet was shot down by an Allied piston-powered fighter. However, while the 262 had a distinct speed advantage, it is worth noting that, by this point in the war, the Luftwaffe's pilots were vastly outnumbered by skilled Allied pilots (with excellent tactics) who knew how to get every last ounce of fight from their planes. As the great pilots of that era would tell you - skill counts for a great deal in air-to-air combat.
The closing days of March 1945 saw JG 7 claim dozens of Allied bombers, with 19 in a single day on March 31, 1945. April brought a reversal of fortunes, however. On the 7th, elements of JG 7 joined with aircraft from KG 54 to assemble a force of around 60 Me 262s to strike at a group 1,261 Allied heavy bombers. They were joined in the air by a 180-strong force of Bf 109s from Sonderkommando Elbe. By day's end, this large German force had claimed 18 aerial victories, but their own losses were devastating. Over 60 of the 109s failed to return, along with 27 Me 262s.
The '109 losses were unsurprising, perhaps, because Sonderkommando Elbe, the unit to which they were assigned, was tasked with bringing down Allied heavy bombers by ramming them. This would be their one and only outing - and of the 15 aircraft they rammed on the April 7, 1945, only eight ended up going down – a testament to the rugged construction of these American aircraft, and the skill of their crews, not to mention the desperation of the Germans.
Enter Hans Guido Mutke
It is amidst this climate of hopelessness within the Luftwaffe that Fähnrich Hans Guido Mutke made his first mark in the history books. At this point, he was flying with the 3rd flight of Ergänzungs-Jagdgeschwader 2 (EJG 2) an Operational Training Unit that specialized in training pilots to fly the Me 262. Mutke had been selected to fly the new jets because he had been with Nachtjagdgeschwader 1 since 1942. In that role he had flown Messerschmitt Bf 110s and Dornier Do 217s. This multi-engine experience made him a shoe-in for managing the twin Jumos which powered the Me 262.
On April 9, 1945 Mutke was scheduled for a high altitude flight (in White 9 -NOT the same aircraft he later flew to Switzerland). Part way through this sortie, Mutke’s flight controller noted a P-51 approaching the group. A scrambled response then began, with Mutke hoping to aid his fellow trainee at a much lower altitude.
Mutke, who was at around 36,000 feet at the time, put his jet into a 40° dive and advanced the throttles to full power. According to Mutke, “The airspeed indicator was stuck in the red danger zone, which is over 1100kph (680mph). I noticed that rivets began popping out of the tops of the wings. The aircraft began vibrating and shaking wildly, banging my head against the sides of the cockpit.”
Mutke’s efforts to recover in the dive were hampered by the futility of his regular control inputs, the pilot noting: “I moved the stick wildly around the cockpit. For a brief moment, the aircraft responded to controls again, then went back out of control. The aircraft still did not respond to pressure on the stick so I changed the incidence of the tailplane."
This is fascinating, because the latter technique is essentially the way that transonic aircraft are controlled. According to Mutke, the buffeting stopped, controllability resumed for a few seconds. He retarded his throttles, but this caused an engine flame-out. The buffeting soon returned, and the violent shaking made relighting the engines exceedingly difficult. Fighting for control while, falling 3 miles, Mutke was able to relight the engines once he got below 310mph - and make a safe landing back at his base in Lechfeld.
Careful inspection of the aircraft revealed distorted wings - and popped rivets everywhere. Speculation quickly took hold – what exactly had happened?
Mutke described how the mechanics inspected the aircraft: “On the runway the mechanics were very surprised by the appearance of the aircraft, which looks as though it had been shaken by the hand of a giant.” He was well aware that his life had been in danger during the dive, as in another interview he stated: “What happened had never happened to another pilot as I entered a very dangerous realm without knowing it. I had no idea what was happening. I thought there was something wrong with the aircraft.”
Fearing trouble from his commanders, who were displeased by the battered state of his airplane, Mutke minimized the flight events he'd encountered. He told them he had not exceeded the redline, because he knew that the airframe could have been “A Monday Production” – an aircraft that might have been made after workers had been out drinking on the Sunday before. This might have been the last anyone heard of that day’s events if Mutke hadn't learned of Chuck Yeager's similar experiences during the course of his supersonic flights in 1947. They provided Mutke with some understanding for what exactly had happened to his 262 that day.
Depending upon the environmental factors encountered on his memorable flight, data unlikely to have been recorded, it is possible that the physical speed of sound at the altitude described on that day, could have been as low as 660mph. Could Mutke have broken the sound barrier in his dive?
Messerschmitt had themselves tested the 262 up to Mach 0.86 (.86 times the speed of sound) where it became uncontrollable in a dive. The British verified Messerschmitt’s results during post-war testing, but neither group exceeded the Mach 0.86 test regime. What is most interesting about Mutke’s description is how closely it mimics the experiences of later transonic pilots regarding how the aircraft's controllability both came and went.
In all likelihood, Mutke's velocity readings were erroneous due to compressibility in the pitot tube, triggering a higher-than-actual airspeed reading. That being said, computer-based analysis conducted by the Technische Universität München did indicate that it was possible for an Me 262 to exceed Mach 1. Did it happen with the 262's temperamental, underpowered engines? Did it happen without a fuselage design informed by the area rule? It is hard to say...
What we do know, is that the highest performance fighters of the era were pushing the envelope as they flew and fought in the skies over Europe. On more than one occasion, Allied pilots reported seeing supersonic shock waves rippling across their wings as the air moving over the aircraft exceeded Mach 1, despite the aircraft's forward velocity being well below that number. Popped rivets and bent wings were just some of the symptoms of dogfights at the edge of the performance envelope.
In the 16 days which followed this remarkable incident, Mutke completed his training to become an operational fighter pilot with JG 7. But shortly afterwards, during his combat mission of April 25th, Mutke landed his aircraft at Dübendorf, Switzerland. And as the famous phrase goes - "For him, the war was over."
What does it all mean?
Among aviation historians, there is a general consensus that Mutke did not break the sound barrier that day, but that he came close - perhaps as close as you can get and still survive with the technology of that era. It remains something of an article of faith for those fans of the Me 262 who celebrate the aircraft as the dawn of a new era in aviation - ushering in not just operational jets, but supersonic flight as well. Those enthusiasts often point to the following passage as a tantalizing speculation on what was really achieved with the Me 262. The passage below is from a 1946 handbook¹ drafted by the USAAF based upon what they had learned from captured Me 262s tested in the United States.
Speeds of 950 km/h (590 mph) are reported to have been attained in a shallow dive 20° to 30° from the horizontal. No vertical dives were made. At speeds of 950 to 1,000 km/h (590 to 620 mph) the air flow around the aircraft reaches the speed of sound, and it is reported that the control surfaces no longer affect the direction of flight. The results vary with different airplanes: some wing over and dive while others dive gradually. It is also reported that once the speed of sound is exceeded, this condition disappears and normal control is restored.
¹ Page 13 of the "Me 262 A-1 Pilot's Handbook" issued by Headquarters Air Materiel Command, Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio as Report No. F-SU-1111-ND on January 10, 1946
