After leaving their base at Parchim, Leutnant Hermann Buchner and the Me262 jet pilots of III./JG7 climb to intercept a large formation of American heavy bombers, during the final weeks of WWII. Below them the tranquility of the meandering River Havel flowing through the countryside west of Berlin, is a stark contrast to the deadly encounters that will soon take place overhead. 

April 1945: and the end of the war was growing closer. By now the weather was improving and, as the days began to lengthen, the American Eighth Air Force was able to dispatch well over a thousand bombers, with a fighter escort to match, on some of the largest raids of the war. The Allies’ overwhelming strength meant the contest was all but one-sided; yet the expert pilots of the Luftwaffe were still a force to be reckoned with – especially when armed with their revolutionary Me262 jets.

Had Hitler recognized the jets’ full potential as a fighter, as Adolf Galland had pushed for, then the course of the war might have been very different. But by the time this radical new jet was put into mass production as a fighter, it was too late to save Hitler’s Reich.

Although some 1,400 Me262s were built, rarely more than a couple hundred were fully operational at any one time, continually hampered by shortages of fuel, spare parts and trained pilots. American factories, in contrast, could build that number of combat aircraft in a day. Even so, Allied bombers had frequent contacts with Me262s, especially those of JG7, and had run into serious trouble from the large jet formations that the Gruppe had managed to assemble.