Original subtitles

I'm James Holland, and one of the things that's always really fascinated me

about the Second World War is the interplay between man and machine.

In this series, I'm going to go inside the Nazi war machine.

Travelling across Europe, I'll explore the extraordinary machines they produced

and uncover rare archives to understand who built them, how they evolved, and

why they're technically brilliant designs.

were militarily flawed.

The magnificent fighter planes no rookie could fly.

You know, the first time you fly a Messerschmitt 109, you just have to take

leap of faith.

The power of the Pandas. If I had come up against this, I would have been

terrified. But I'm about to learn one of the biggest cons of them all.

The weapon that couldn't cope with mud or sand.

Wow. It's got so little kick on it. And you hit the target, I'm proud about you.

The U -boats that were floating bombs.

That was a suicide command.

Absolute horror.

A journey through the heart of the Nazi war machine.

By the outbreak of the Second World War, the Luftwaffe was without doubt the

finest air force in the entire world.

Just five years later, it was no longer an effective fighting force.

I'm going to uncover the secrets of the Luftwaffe machine.

The devastating jet fighter that Hitler insisted be turned into a bomber.

This was the most insane decision ever.

The infighting between the top Nazi design teams.

The aircraft designers had just been running amok and they were doing

they liked.

The wonder weapon that cost more than the creation of the atomic bomb.

The cost of it is just absolutely staggering.

How the Nazis turned exquisite engineering into combat disaster.

And hubris led them to downfall and defeat.

In early 1935, Adolf Hitler announced the birth of the Luftwaffe in defiance

the Treaty of Versailles. It was a symbol of its technological advancement

modernity.

Meanwhile, with the advent of Hitler, the German Air Force came back to life.

Glider clubs for Hitler youth were fostered throughout the Parthaland.

For the bigger boys, flying sports clubs were the attraction.

Then Hitler gave Air Minister Goering the green light to go into mass

of fighters and bombers.

And airfields like this at Oldenburg were springing up, bristling with

control towers, hangars, and shiny new accommodation blocks, a symbol of their

growing military might.

And so although by 1939 Britain and Germany were virtually neck and neck in

terms of aircraft production at around 8 ,000 per year, the Luftwaffe had been

producing those kind of figures for way longer.

And so by the eve of war, the number of Luftwaffe airplanes was roughly double

that of the RAF.

Their principal fighter was the Messerschmitt 109.

It made its first flight in 1935.

With its innovative low -wing monoplane design and heavy armament, It was the

ultimate in modern fighter technology, created by one of Germany's most

designers, Willy Messerschmitt.

Better known today as the ME 109, it was powered by a V12 Daimler -Benz piston

engine. This was inverted to give the pilot better visibility.

It was armed with two machine guns and two cannon with an optimum rate of fire

of 1200 rounds a minute.

Between 1935 and 1945,

34 ,000 variants of the aircraft were produced, making it one of the most

numerous designs in aviation history.

By the start of the war, the Messerschmitt 109 had developed into the

the Emil, and it was the finest fighter aircraft in the world at the time. It

could climb faster than any other fighter.

When it got to the combat zone, it could pack a bigger punch. It had 55 seconds'

worth of ammunition with its machine guns.

and it could dive faster than anything else.

And those were the three things you really needed for air -to -air combat by

start of the Second World War.

It's just a beautiful machine to watch in the air.

This one is a post -war Bouchon, built in Spain with a British Rolls -Royce

Merlin engine, but absolutely born of the original ME109.

It's being flown by an old friend of mine, Richard Grape.

He restores these magnificent machines based at Cywell Aerodrome in

Northamptonshire.

I'm just still so struck that, you know, in the mid -1930s, most of the world

was still making biplane fighters, which just look at two generations earlier,

don't they? And then this, I mean, what must the German people and what must the

world have thought when suddenly the Luftwaffe is announced in 1935?

And they've got these personally, of course. I mean, it's just amazing. It

just be unbelievable. But, I mean, Germany was ahead the whole time, wasn't

with the design school. I mean, they obviously just, the people driving the

slide walls over there were very clever. I think that's the crux of it.

But I think to come up with the production techniques so early on.

is the cleverest bit from where I'm sat.

I mean, I think they were building 109s in about 4 ,500 man -hours, whereas

Spitfires, you know, 13 ,500 man -hours was as short as we got it, I think.

In that size? Yeah. So it's just a tremendous difference in production

and techniques.

The Germans are often accused of over -engineering everything, wasting

time and money on unnecessary detail.

But that's not Richard's experience with the 109.

Obviously, someone very clever somewhere developed a school of thought that if

you build things in two halves and then join those two halves together, it's

going to take half the time. And they're quite right, because you've got the

fuselage, as I said, which is simply riveted together top and bottom once

built. The tailplane's the same. The tailplane has got a piece of piano hinge

down the leading edge.

You make it in two halves, you put the two halves together, and then you just

slot a pin down the middle of it. Ta -da! One tailplane.

Wow. Same with the fin. It's exactly the same. It's just got a piece of hinge

down the leading edge. It's genius.

The 109 is certainly an impressive aircraft, but it's not something a

pilot can just climb into and pull back the control column.

Getting it into the air takes a fair bit of skill, as Richard can attest.

As far as flying it goes, I mean, the take -off and landing is definitely the

hairy bit.

The take -off can be just as bad as the landing. It can be just as exciting.

And you've got to treat it with kid gloves.

Fundamentally, there's a very small envelope from being stationary to being

airborne that you need to keep the aeroplane within.

And if you drift outside of said envelope, the effects can be exciting.

And many have discovered it. I mean, I've had a couple of exciting take -offs

it. myself. So, yes, it's got some charm, shall we say. So what are the

fundamental issues? The fundamental issue is too much torque for not enough

control. That's the basic. Right.

So in layman's speak, that is just too much power, the props going round.

Too much. It's wanting to go that way.

It's trying to roll the aeroplane the other way. Yeah.

Very narrow track undercarriage.

So that just means it's not very stable on the ground. That's it, and it wants

to literally roll.

It's not trying... Most aeroplanes will try and be divergent laterally. This is

literally trying to roll itself. To turn itself over.

Yeah. OK, so you're in the cockpit, the brake's released,

throttle open, hurtle down the runway.

How are you stopping it from rolling? What you need to do is get the tail up

reduce the angle of attack on the wing, which will therefore reduce the lift, so

the aeroplane will take off at a higher speed.

Right. Then once it takes off at higher speed, of course, you've got more

aileron control because the ailerons are reliant on aerodynamics.

So just say I'm a young recruit, I'm on a grass airfield, there's a bit of a

ridge or a bump, you know, it's not beautifully rolled or anything.

That's your worst nightmare then.

So you're coming along, boom.

That's the worst, that's the most dangerous thing that could ever possibly

happen, would be getting bumped off the ground at low speed.

Because then you've got all of the torque, you've got no...

reference point what you really need to do is is is keep the wheels on the

ground the wheels are really helping you not roll and certainly if it starts

going wrong you actually put it back on the ground to level it out again so that

it will speed up some more so yeah certainly getting bounced off the ground

then attempting to fly off that bound is about the most dangerous thing you

could do in the airplane the allies shot down many 109 But astonishingly, across

the course of the war, the Luftwaffe lost nearly 60 % of its fleet to

rather than combat, many in take -offs and landings.

So what would a new recruit feel like in the cockpit of one of these machines?

The agility of a man who's done this many times.

It's really shocking, isn't it? It's such a small cockpit that they've just

to put everything everywhere, you know, just to try and fit it all in.

I just keep thinking about that young recruit, mid -war, 90 hours in his

logbook, getting into one of these for the first time. It would just be

frightening. I mean, as I say, if nothing else, just sitting in it like

shutting the canopy.

would just be frightening.

And then, of course, you've got people shooting at you. You know, as if flying

isn't bad enough, all of a sudden the bullets start flying. And you can't see

much. Yeah, knowing you're sitting on a fuel tank. I mean, the fuel tank is

under me and behind me.

So is that why so many of these things just blow up? Yeah.

Absolutely. And it would just, all of the fuel you have, which is about 390

litres, is directly behind you and underneath you. And there is a way for

bit of aluminium between you and it.

The first time you fly a Messerschmitt 109, you just have to take that leap of

faith. You can do all your notes, you can be told what to do, but ultimately

you've got to get in that cockpit and you've just got to fly it.

At the start of the war, a new pilot would be reaching his staffel, his

squadron, with about 150 to 170 hours in his logbook.

By the beginning of 1944, that's probably only about 90 to 100 hours in

logbook. And that is not enough to fly a beast like this first up.

At the same time, Allied fighter pilots in the RAF and in the US Army Air Force,

they're coming to their squadrons with around 350 hours in their logbook. So

disparity is just getting wider and wider and wider.

This is not the plane to reduce the hours.

of a new pilot. It really isn't.

During the Blitzkrieg years, the Me 109E was undoubtedly the world's best

fighter. But as the war progressed, its mid -30s airframe and Daimler -Benz

engine lacked the power of the RAF -upgraded Spitfires.

Phase 1 of the Nazi plan called for the RAF to be knocked out of the air.

But the men of the RAF hadn't read the Nazi plan.

A new fighter, faster, more manoeuvrable and more stable was vital if the

Luftwaffe was to dominate the skies.

Designing aircraft for the Nazi war machines was a highly competitive

Heinkel, Dornier, Focke -Wulf and Junkers were all vying with

lucrative contracts from Reichsmarschall Goering.

Professor Willie Messerschmitt, here on Goering's left, was a loyal Nazi and

Hitler favorite, so few other companies bothered to take him on.

The exception was the design team at Focke -Wulf.

They challenged Messerschmitt's monopoly with what is undoubtedly one of the

best fighter planes of the war, the Focke -Wulf 190.

German fighters take off to attack the enemy's supply lines, announces the

commentator.

This is a rare story of tactical Luftwaffe action on the Western Front.

When the Spitfires of the RAF first came up against this, the Fokker Wolf 190,

in August 1941, they were in for a shock. Suddenly, they were up against a

machine that was more maneuverable and faster.

And unlike the Messerschmitt 109, this was a firmer gun platform and much more

stable on the ground.

Powered by a potent BMW radial engine, its superior handling gave it an edge in

the hands of even less experienced pilots.

The A model also carried considerably more armament than the Me 109. Four 8mm

machine guns and two 20mm cannons.

On their first combat appearance, they shot down three of the latest variant

Spitfires, besting anything the 109s have managed and transforming the

of the air war.

But even the production of this aircraft was dogged by the kind of Machiavellian

infighting that Goering encouraged.

While Field Marshal Erhard Milk was in day -to -day charge of the Luftwaffe,

Goering handed the crucial role of procurement to his old friend Ernst

former fighter pilot woefully unfooted to the job.

Field Marshal Erhard Milk was finally given control of procurement in

1941.

He was in for an absolute shock because he realized that the aircraft designers,

and Professor Willie Messerschmitt particularly, had just been running

There was no control over them whatsoever, and they were doing whatever

liked. And it wasn't what Milk wanted or what the Luftwaffe needed.

Based on the performance figures for the FW -190 that UDET had been claiming,

Milk decided to prioritize its production over that of the ME -109.

Only afterwards did he realise that Udet's office had actually falsified the

performance figures for the Focke -Wulf 190 and that actually, despite its

dramatic entry into the war, the BMW engine had all sorts of overheating

problems and it simply wasn't ready for the kind of production figures that Milt

wanted.

The flaws in the BMW engine were to prove critical.

delaying production and forcing the engineers to cut costs as materials

impossible to obtain.

Towards the end of the war, the plane was being just too hastily assembled.

I think what's amazing about this particular model is that this came out

and you can see how the quality standards have really dropped.

I mean, look at that there. That is just not a straight line.

This is still being handmade.

but not with the same attention of detail and quality. Look at that. It

doesn't fit.

And look at this up here.

This is, you know, for the extra quantity that milk wants by the

1944, some 2 ,000 single -engine fighters every single month, you're

massive qualitative drop, and that's the price you're paying.

As it is, this isn't up to speed compared to the latest marks of

This is below that in terms of performance, and they're just churning

as quickly as they can. But in doing so, they're cutting all sorts of corners,

and you can see that on this. You really can. This is not the high spec you

would expect from Wolfram Dirk's technique of German engineering.

Fighters above at high altitude.

Fighters on both sides.

Fighters in the front and in the rear.

Fighters weaving in and out of the bomber for me.

The Luftwaffe was, of course, made up of much more than its fighters.

Its bombers, Heinkel 111s and Dornier 17s, delivered the blitz bombing

to Britain's cities and ports.

German long -range bombers lay in wait to spot the convoy and keep them under

surveillance until short -range dive bombers could strike.

The most iconic of these was the Junkers 87, the Stuka dive bomber.

With its gull wings and infamous Jericho trumpet, it screamed out of the skies,

traumatizing all in its path and becoming a mainstay of Nazi propaganda.

Carrying both a pilot and navigator air gunner, more than 6 ,000 Stukas were

built between 1936 and 1944.

The anti -tank variant carried two 37mm cannons in underwing gun pods, with two

six -round magazines of armour -piercing ammunition.

It could carry up to five bombs, tank more Allied ships than any other

and destroyed a record number of enemy tanks.

I've come to the Technic Museum at Sinsheim, south of Frankfurt, where it's

still possible to see the remains of one of the very few surviving Stukas.

Well, this Stuka was pulled up out of the Mediterranean.

It's in a bit of a sorry state, but look at this here. You can still see the

Junkers signs on the exhaust subs.

And the iconic gull wing that was such a feature of the Stuka dive bomber.

You know, this really was the spearhead of Blitzkrieg. You know, the screaming

banshee wail as it was diving down, terrorizing the people below. And that

wailing sound that it made was 100 % deliberate. It was there as a

weapon to terrify people.

It's absolutely fine in the early stages of the war, you know, in Poland, in

Scandinavia, in France, in the low countries, because the Luftwaffe is

dominating the skies.

The moment you lose that air superiority, however, this becomes a big

Because as it comes out of its dive, it's almost at a standstill. And anyone

waiting above, a Spitfire or a Hurricane of the RAF, for example, can pounce on

it like a hawk and it's goodbye to the Stuka. And that's exactly what happened.

The problem for the Luftwaffe is, by that stage, it was too late to do

about this, because they've already gone down this route of trying to focus on

dive bombing with their new generation of aircraft.

The Nazi love affair with dive bombing seriously affected the long -term

development of the Luftwaffe.

Despite the sustained attacks on Britain during the Blitz, they completely

failed to develop a coherent strategy for their bomber fleet.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the decisions they made over the

Junkers JU -88.

It was originally conceived as a fast, long -range medium bomber, potentially

the most versatile aircraft of its day.

I'm returning to the RAF Museum at Cosford near Wolverhampton, where

of them on display.

Well, I've got to say, the thing that really strikes me about this, being so

close to a Junkers 88, is just how big it is. It's a real beast.

And then you remember, of course, that this was originally designed as a long

-range Schnell bomber, fast bomber.

You know, it was designed to go kind of 350 miles an hour, have incredible

range, and have a payload roughly equivalent to that of the Heinkel 111

Dornier 17, which were the kind of standard bombers just at the beginning

Second World War.

The Ju -88 had two 1 ,200 -horsepower Jumo engines.

It could carry two 500 -kilogram bombs under each wing and 28 50 -kilogram

stored inside.

Its four -man crew had an extensive array of machine guns for defensive

purposes.

Its original design promised a great deal.

But the early success of the Stuka meant the Luftwaffe High Command insisted

that their exciting new bomber should also have dive -bombing capabilities.

The problem is that they suddenly go, hang on a minute, we've got this amazing

new... bomber, the Junkers 88 that's been developed, why don't we give that

bombing capabilities as well? And the good folk at Junkers sort of do lots of

teeth -sucking and say, well, okay, we can, but that's not the original spec.

The original spec is to have a Schnell bomber, a fast bomber that can fly at

over 350 miles an hour and have a range of 1 ,000 miles.

And they go, no, no, we don't care. We want to have dive bombing capabilities.

And so they go, okay, but it's going to cost you. It's going to cost you in

terms of time.

It's going to cost you in terms of money. And it's going to cost you in

performance. And by the time the Junkers 88 finally starts reaching frontline

squadron, it's just half the plane it used to be.

So what starts off being something really special and really rather

ends up being... Incredibly average.

Attempts to silence British artillery by Ju -88s ended in disaster for the

enemy. Watch one of the Junkers crash near the battery which shot it down.

As the war progressed and the Luftwaffe lost its dominance of the skies...

So a new strategy was developed, that of the vengeance weapon, the Wunderwaffen

as it was known, a wonder weapon that would strike such fear into the enemy

all resistance would collapse.

The first of these was the V1, the doodlebug.

It was the sudden silence as it dropped from the skies that was especially

unnerving.

London is doomed, said Dr Goebbels.

The first attack on Britain came at dawn on the 13th of June, 1944.

Adolf Hitler's intuitive propaganda experts claimed that in its first few

of attack, V1, the buzz bomb, had almost entirely removed the city of London

from the war -scarred face of the earth.

The Allies quickly learned ways of combating this pilotless plane.

Anti -aircraft fire was knocking the terror weapons down in hundreds, often

before they reached the coastline.

But something more devastating was to come. The world's first ballistic

ever to be used in combat.

The V -2 unmanned rocket.

The V2 offensive against England was launched on the 8th of September 1944,

killing three civilians that first day.

More than 2 ,500 Londoners were killed in the following six months.

Well, I'm on Kynaston Road in Orpington in Kent, in the southeast of London.

And just along here was the site of the last ever V2 to land on England, the

27th of March, 1945, so just before the end of the war.

I've got this photograph here, and I'm trying to sort of marry it up. It's one

of these ones. Yeah, this is it.

88.

So here we are. This is the spot. So this building here is this one, and

there's that gaping hole, look.

And this was also, tragically, where the last... civilian to be killed in

England, lost their life.

Ivy Millerchamp, 34, newly married, was in number 88 in the

kitchen when the V2 landed.

I've met up with Barry Newman, who was a 13 -year -old schoolboy living nearby

at the time.

It was at about 5 o 'clock in the evening and... So you were back from

Oh, yes.

And having tea with mother and sister. Yep.

When I heard two explosions.

And I rushed outside of the 13 -year -old wood. Yeah. And saw this column of

smoke rising in the air. And I thought, that's Court Road.

I'll run down there and see what's happened.

It was a huge crater and debris and damaged cars and rubble

and a mountain of stuff.

And it was then that I found out a lady had been killed in that explosion.

This was Ivy Millichamp? Ivy Millichamp, yeah.

Great tragedy.

But so many lives were lost through that campaign of their V weapons.

What do you think they were trying to achieve? They were trying to achieve a

destruction of our morale, the British morale.

And how did it affect your morale?

Well, it put our backs up, didn't it?

Instead of that, it was quite the reverse.

We were more defiant than ever.

The V -2 rocket was the brainchild of Werner von Braun, who post -war would

become a pioneer of aerospace technology in the United States.

He'd been working on rocket design since at university in the early 1930s, and

supervised the V -2 development at the research facility at Peenemunde, until

was obliterated by RAF bombers in 1943.

A new underground production facility was established at Mittelberg, where

between September 1944 and February 1945, some 5 ,000 V2s were made

using slave labour from a specially created concentration camp.

They were powered by a volatile mix of liquid oxygen and ethyl alcohol, which

this stage in the war was being distilled largely from potatoes.

Each rocket could hurtle 50 miles high and 200 miles downrange.

There's a surviving V2 at the RAF Museum at Cosford, alongside other rockets

that Nazi scientists have been developing from as early as the 1930s.

To help me understand its history and its impact on the post -war world, I've

been joined by Richard Osborne, who is a rocket scientist.

I mean, you look at it.

A, it's enormous, but B, it looks comic book.

But I suppose you realise it looks comic book. I mean, it looks like something

out of Tintin or Dandere.

Because that's where Tintin and Hergé and Dandere are getting their

from, right? Exactly.

So actually this comes first rather than the comic book. Very much so.

Because aerodynamically, there's only certain shapes that you can adopt if

you're designing a rocket.

Right. You need a pointy end up the front.

Yeah, you need fins.

You need fins and you need all the hot stuff coming out the back.

And generally you don't want to vary that too much because if you do, the

generally doesn't go the right way.

Britain had also been developing rockets since before the war.

By 1940, anti -aircraft defences on both land and sea were deploying rocket

technology.

But these were small, short -range weapons relying on solid fuel to power

Quite unlike the liquid fuel being developed by the Germans.

Of D -Day, for example, there's landing craft stuffed full of rockets.

That's right. But they are rockets, right? But they're solid fuel rockets.

are solid. So they're short -range.

Unguided. Yeah, much smaller warhead. Yes. They weren't as efficient as

something like the V -2.

Why does solid or liquid fuel have a difference on the size?

With the solid...

You've got a lot of thrust in a very compact, dense form. But generally,

solids are not as efficient as a liquid.

A solid rocket is basically like a firework. Whereas a liquid rocket,

the German ones, they had lots of plumbing because rocketry is basically

-pressure plumbing.

Right. And this is the difference between a liquid rocket...

and a solid rocket.

Right.

But as a weapon of war, I mean, it's fatally flawed, because it's not guided,

you can point it in roughly the right direction, but you can't do much more

that, can you? Well, it was guided.

Was it? It had a guidance system.

It was more of what you'd call more of a mechanical, a sort of clockwork -type

guidance system.

Right.

You basically told it before launch,

roughly what trajectory you wanted it to go on. Instead of saying, right, I want

to hit that factory, you say, I want to hit South England.

Right. And that's pretty much the sum of it. Do we have any idea about how

much it cost in terms of resources, effort, time, and so on? I mean, do

Well, it was actually... It tied up the German...

because they would probably have been better putting their time into more

fighters, more bombers. But of course they didn't. They spent their time

building weapons like the V2, which were less effective overall than having more

fighters and more bombers.

So from that perspective, it was actually a false economy for them.

The numbers involved in creating the Nazi rocket program are absolutely

extraordinary. It costs around 50 % more than the Manhattan Project that

developed the atomic bomb.

And used a level of resources the Germans could simply no longer afford.

I'm just reading here, 3 ,500 kilograms of an ethyl alcohol mixture.

and 5 ,250 kilograms of liquid oxygen.

I mean, that's just huge numbers. And really, you've got to say that the V -2

project is clutching at straws. I mean, it's a desperate gamble.

And these V -2 rockets, brilliant and incredible though they were, are just

tying up unbelievable numbers of resources, thousands of men. The cost of

is just absolutely...

And to create that amount of alcohol, for example, just for one rocket, you

would need 30 tonnes of potatoes.

The V2 certainly didn't deliver the killer blow that Hitler wanted.

It was a wonder weapon.

just not in a way that was going to be decisive in the war.

So just how impressive is this technology, especially when you consider

this has been developed from the 1930s and 1940s? It's extremely impressive.

And the reason why it's extremely impressive can be seen in the fact that

development of the V2 was followed on by copies of the V2, effectively, by the

Russians and the Americans.

And that is why it made this such a pivotal rocket. And in the history

of rocketry, it is the one we all come back to because so many future rockets

were based on the V -2.

As the war approached its endgame, the lessons learned from the rocket

were not to go to waste.

The Luftwaffe was about to unleash the power of the jet engine in aerial combat

for the first time.

Nazi Germany secretly experimented with increasingly ambitious and impractical

aircraft designs.

The Messerschmitt 163 was one of the few that saw action.

The only rocket -powered intercept fighter to enter operational service.

Known as the Comet, these stubby rocket planes were blindingly fast by the

standards of World War II fighters.

On the 6th of July 1944, a Comet set an unofficial world record of 702 miles per

hour, a speed unmatched for another decade.

To get an insight into what this might have been like to fly, I'm exploring its

performance with former fast jet pilot Matt Doncaster at RAF Cosford.

I mean, you know, when you're looking at experimental aircrafts, you know,

developed in World War II, this is absolutely it, isn't it? You've got this

of very, very short fuselage and nose made of metal.

Amazingly, these are sort of largely wooden wings.

I mean, that's incredible.

And powered by a rocket.

It is. If somebody rolled this out today, you'd go, you know, what's going

here? Let alone in the 40s.

No tail?

No tail, no. Very interestingly, I'm not going to go down some aerodynamic

rabbit hole regarding no tail, but clearly you can design a flyer craft

a conventional horizontal tailplane.

You simply control pitch by control surfaces on the wings, which is exactly

they did with the Comet.

But equally, the rocket exhaust is at the back as well.

So my gut feeling might be that to hang a tailplane on the back with the

mechanism involved, etc., etc., next to what is fundamentally a very hot piece

of the airframe.

might have proved problematic, but very, very high risk.

The comet was powered by a highly volatile mix of peroxide oxidiser and

hydrazine fuel.

These were held in separate fuel tanks to prevent spontaneous combustion.

Nevertheless, the planes were in as much danger of blowing up from their rocket

fuel as they were of being shot down by enemy fire.

The fuel for this is...

hydrogen peroxide, which is incredibly volatile.

You've got just seven and a half minutes of powered flight.

So you climb up incredibly fast, dive down, you've got one pass, shoot up what

you can, and then basically you've got to burn up all your fuel, and you've got

to land with no fuel, because what happens is the wheels come off, you

the wheels, and you land on, the skid comes down.

I mean, that's a backbreaker, if ever there was one. You want to land slowly

without wheels.

You want to land slowly with wheels, arguably. But equally, the airframe is

built to do 700 -odd miles an hour.

And you've got to make sure you land with not a drop of that hydrogen

in your fuel tank, because if you do, boom. Yes. I mean, this is a really

aircraft to fly, however brilliant and fast it might have been.

The rocket -powered Comet was just too far ahead of its time, but the next

aircraft we're going to look at was a stunning creation.

The Me 262, the first operational jet aircraft in the world, truly set the

course for the future of aviation history.

It first saw combat in July 1944.

Its twin jet engines were built around gas turbines being developed by BMW.

Armed with four 30mm cannons and 24 rockets, some 1 ,430 were built,

although only around 300 saw operational action.

It could reach speeds of 540 miles per hour, making it highly effective against

Allied bomber streams.

So, Matt, looking at this, this is the ME -262. It's the kind of first

operational jet, really, fighter jet. I mean, what do you make of it? You look

at aircraft like these, and, you know, as a pilot, I think, you know, would I

want to go? And the simple truth is, yes, I'd love to go in one of these.

There's an old adage, you know, if it looks right, it is right. Yeah, it does

look right, doesn't it? It does look right.

And quite a pioneering airframe for Second World War, you know, the swept

wings and all that. I mean, you know, you haven't got that on fighter planes

until that point. No, the sweep is definitely key, because the faster you

the more sweep you need, you know, aerodynamically.

Well, there's no question about it. The German pilots were just, you know, every

single one of them wanted to get in this for obvious reasons. I mean, everyone

wants to be in the fastest, most modern, best.

Plane available, don't they? Yeah, absolutely.

Speed is key.

Speed up until jet engines is gained by getting height and then trading height

for speed once you've eyeballed your target below. But if you've already got

that speed, you don't have to worry about that. You just go straight in.

Exactly. You can attack from below, from above, from level. It doesn't really

matter.

Say you're coming up against comparatively slow bombers. I mean,

about, you know, bomber stream of B -17s, for example. They're flying at

240 miles an hour, something like that. You're hurtling along at the kind of

best part of 600, yeah.

What's your approach?

The approach would still be to get in and get out fast, without a doubt,

the B -17 festoons with 20mm, 30mm, 50 cals and all that sort of stuff. So

you're going to get to your target quicker.

You're going to be in the thick of it quicker, but you don't want to stay

for long.

What this aircraft gives you, of course, is the ability to stay around for less

time than, say, a Fokker -Walker or a Messerschmitt 109.

So pretty impressive.

Yeah. I've always been impressed by this. It looks like a shark, doesn't it?

It's got that shark nose to it. It's got the shape that sort of says it fits the

purpose.

But yet again, engine reliability was to prove an issue for the 262.

By the time it got into production...

The Nazi regime no longer had access to the resources it required, and as a

result of Allied bombing of its factories, it just didn't have the

to make effective jet turbines.

Here once lay the warworks of Essen, busy, prosperous Essen, thriving on what

was the highest concentration of industry for death.

So they were relying on cheaper, more plentiful substitutes.

And these just couldn't cope with the intense sustained heat required by the

262's jet engines.

It's the whole development thing in Germany, isn't it? The engines are

not as reliable as the engines being developed in the UK.

When your engine's not reliable, there's a bit of doubt in the mind. But

notwithstanding the fact that they don't last very long, you know, they're

there, they're doing the job.

Because they're going super fast.

Yeah, I'm sure if you speak to a German pilot who, you know...

got airborne in one of these and came back with two sets of engines, I bet

had a good day.

Just like the Junkers 88 before it, this potential game -changer was also to

fall victim to interference from above.

Hitler's personal insistence that the fighter should be reconfigured as a

bomber.

So this was built and designed as a fighter aircraft.

Hitler, personally, is set up becoming a bomber. Yeah. But hasn't got any bomb

bays. Because if you haven't got bomb bays, you've got to hang them on

underneath. Exactly. You've got to put racks on. The racks themselves have

The bombs on the racks have drag. It all adds up.

So if you're clean, as we call it, you know, nothing under the wings at all,

then you'll be flying at a certain...

Thrust selling. To stoon them with draggy bombs and that sort of stuff and

racks, for that speed, you have to increase the power because the drag

is significant.

Gallant, who was the general of fighters at the time, he was just sort of going,

oh, my God, I can't believe this was the most insane decision ever. We finally

got a fighter aircraft that could take on the P -47s, high -marked Spitfires,

the P -51Ds and all the rest of it, and we're not allowed to use it. I mean,

that's just ridiculous.

Yes. Bit of high -level meddling going on there. Yeah, I think so.

Once again, it was the lack of a coherent strategy amongst the Nazi top

that failed this brilliant invention.

For years, Goering had clung to the belief that mass production of

aircraft was a better option than investing in the research and

the jet engine.

By the time he had realised its potential, it was way too late and the

were catching up.

The Me 262 never had the chance to fulfill its early promise.

But it became an important step in the development of combat aircraft,

the designers of early jet fighters around the world.

Germany began the war with the finest air force in the world, but by May 1945,

it had been crushed.

The demands upon it had just been too great, and they'd been unable to keep up

with the production and technological advances of their allies.

The problems had been compounded by faulty strategy, the internecine

of the designers and a convoluted procurement process, and although they

heralded in the dawn of a jet age, it had just come too little, too late.

Their legacy, however, cannot be ignored.

The inventiveness of their designers and engineers was eagerly embraced by their

victors.

The jet engine went on to transform both aerial warfare and civilian air travel,

shrinking the world in a way unimaginable in the 1940s.

And, of course, their rocket technology captured the imagination of millions as

it powered its way to putting a man on the moon.