Me 262

Flight Journal, Aug 2005 by Farmer, Jim

Me 262 Historic Aviation; (800) 225-5575; historicaviation.com; $29.95.

The remarkable core of this 52-minute DVD is the recently unearthed 47-minute blackand-white 16mm reel that was the official Luftwaffe checkout film for pilots new to WW IPs Me 262 jet fighter. Ever wonder why this revolution in aerial combat proved to be such a sitting duck when caught on final landing approach by marauding P-SIs or P-47s? Or try to figure out why those German aces (for only the most skilled and proven German pilots flew the 262) didn't just ram the throttles forward and leave those Allied propeller-turning slow-movers in their exhaust? After you watch this instructional pilot video, the reasons become quite clear!

The video's producer, Luftwaffe historian Russ Heinl, introduces the film and explains that this rare find had been saved by one of the Luftwaffe's wartime jet instructors and aces, Oberleutnant Franz Stigler. During the war, Stigler had flown with JV-44, the famed "Galland Circus." Although the film no longer has its original soundtrack, Stigler knowingly narrates scene by scene (with a professional English-language narrator) what is being explained, and he adds numerous knowledgeable and insightful asides. As the veteran ace explains in the film, he had between 4,500 and 5,000 flying hours when he started to train on the Me 262. Because of the fuel shortages in this latter stage of the War, training flights were limited to two hops of some two hours total duration. The largest part of the eight-day conversion course, Stigler explains, was instruction in the operation of those new turbine powerplants.

What strikes me today is just how remarkably similar this German film is to its U.S. contemporaries. From the featured ham-acting actor (or "instructor") to the cockpit, ramp start-up and in-flight sequences and the professionally rendered, animated diagrams of jet-engine operations, it's all here! Over and over again-it apparently couldn't be said enough-"slowly, slowly," was the advice on how to advance the turbine throttles. "S-1-o-w-l-y!" Got that! The pilots in training were told that otherwise, this temperamental new engine technology could explode into flames in your face or simply flame out, all while skimming over the fir trees and heading for the nearby autobahn with everything extended. Why, that could just about ruin your whole day!

A video, quite simply, not to be missed!