EVERETT, Washington (dpa) – In Everett, Washington, of all places, a work of trailblazing aeronautics created by the Nazis to try to turn the tide of World War II is being resurrected.
Everett, north of Seattle, is better known as the place where the U.S. airplane giant Boeing sends its B747 jumbo jets and twin-engine long-range B777s on their initial test flights. But now, in painstaking manual labour, five “Me 262” jet planes built by the Nazi regime are being assembled. American engineers, technicians, designers and airplane freaks remain fascinated by what was to be Adolf Hitler’s final “miracle weapon”. Their work is based on the one Me 262 which the U.S. Navy at war’s end in 1945 shipped back to the United States from Cherbourg, France. This plane is serving as the model for the puzzle work now involved in building five copies of the German jet fighter. The project has its roots going back to 1992. A wealthy U.S. industrialist, Steven Snyder from New Jersey and said by his friends to be an “airplane freak”, began the work in Texas. Now it is being continued in Everett under the name “Classic Fighter Industries”. It is under retired former Boeing Vice President Bob Hammer – who says that “this is a lot more fun than washing dishes at home” – that dozens of enthusiasts, most of them former Boeing workers, are now resurrecting Willy Messerschmitt’s plane. The first Me 262 – altogether, 1,433 of them were built, but only 300 saw combat action – had its initial test flight on July 18, 1942. The plane could fly at 870 kilometres per hour, 200 kilometres faster than most of the fighter planes then in action. It proved not to have a decisive role in determining the war’s outcome, but it certainly in the beginning scared many American and British war pilots who had never seen an airplane without any propellers. Altogether, 11 of the Me 262 planes were captured and taken to America, where pilots and plane designers looked them over in utter fascination and awe. There were many reasons why the Me 262 no longer had a major role in the final war years. It was not just a matter of a shortage of qualified pilots, but also it turned out that landing gear problems, jet engine failures and quirks in the plane’s aerodynamics were more than just “teething problems”. The few jet-powered Messerschmitts which did see action – the fighters were dubbed “swallows” and the bombers as “storm birds” – turned out to be easy prey for the Allied pilots. The planes became a mere footnote in the war’s history, even though Willy Messerschmitt became recognised as the genius plane designer who ushered in the era of jet-powered military aviation. The Me 262 replicas being built in the United States differ from the 1940s-era planes in only two important details. The old “Junkers Jumo 004B” jet engines have been replaced by the General Electric J- 85 CJ610 jets. And secondly, these replicas will not be decorated with swastikas. The U.S.-built two-seater jets are to undergo their first test flights next summer after months of ground testing. “This airplane is a piece of aviation history,” Hammer says. “We want to bring this history back to life – but we have nothing in common with the political background in which this airplane was created.” But the Americans are grateful for the major support which the Munich-based Messerschmitt Foundation has been providing them for years now. “Without this help we would be nowhere as far along as we have now come,” Hammer says. Less than 15 per cent of the components in Everett are the authentic original items. And there’s a certain fascination to be found in the fact that on one of the old tool boxes in Everett can be in faded German lettering the words “Geheime Kommandosache. Versuchsanstalt Oberammergau” top secret (“experimental facility Oberammergau”) – almost 60 years after the first Me 262 test flights. As to the question, where will the five Everett-built Me 262s go, the answer is – to wealthy Americans and U.S. museums. One, however, will go to Munich, the jet plane’s original home.
