How Many Me-262s To Stop Pverlord

How many well fueled, well piloted, in place and ready to go Me 262s would have been needed to stop operation overlord?

It would seem that Overlord cannot happen without air superiority over the Channel. How many Me-262s would that take?
 
So many it is an ASB scenario. The main problem is jet fuel. There really isn't that much oil for the Germans to tap.
 
So many it is an ASB scenario. The main problem is jet fuel. There really isn't that much oil for the Germans to tap.

An Me 262 uses at most 1,600 liters per mission. A few hundred Me 262s each needing 400 gallons per mission (including training missions) is hardly ASB-land. Any one of these *might* work, or you could use them in combination.

* They take it from the rest of the Reich, prioritizing stopping Overlord over something else (like the V-weapon program, or the submarine program, or ...). For just one example, an Me 262 has 1,800 liter tanks. An Type VII submarine holds 67 tons of fuel. You can fuel 34 Me 262 flights for one sub mission.

* They get it from Spain/Switzerland/Sweden/Turkey, who is allowed to import more oil for diplomatic reasons.

* They get it from Norway, where some of the offshore oil fields are on shore.

* They get it from Romania, where minor technological changes allow a greater percent of the in ground oil to be extracted.

* They get it by converting coal.
 

Nietzsche

Banned
An Me 262 uses at most 1,600 liters per mission. A few hundred Me 262s each needing 400 gallons per mission (including training missions) is hardly ASB-land. Any one of these *might* work, or you could use them in combination.

* They take it from the rest of the Reich, prioritizing stopping Overlord over something else (like the V-weapon program, or the submarine program, or ...). For just one example, an Me 262 has 1,800 liter tanks. An Type VII submarine holds 67 tons of fuel. You can fuel 34 Me 262 flights for one sub mission.

* They get it from Spain/Switzerland/Sweden/Turkey, who is allowed to import more oil for diplomatic reasons.

* They get it from Norway, where some of the offshore oil fields are on shore.

* They get it from Romania, where minor technological changes allow a greater percent of the in ground oil to be extracted.

* They get it by converting coal.

You mean, they take away vital fuel supplies and materials from the Eastern Front...just so they can have some air support while they lose?
 

sharlin

Banned
And lets not forget that they went OM NOM NOM NOM on their engines with most of them requiring complete rebuilds after each combat mission.
 
Or how worn down the Luftwaffe training infrastructure was. I can only imagine how many would be lost in training accidents before you even get them to Overlord.
 
The problems are a lot deeper than just having enough 262s (with pilots, fuel and functioning powerplants) to gain air superiority. They would then need large numbers of other aircraft to exploit this.

The 262 was never going to be able to sink ships (nor was the Arado 234), so you would need several hundred Dornier 217s or Heinkel 177s equipped with the Hs293 or Fritz-X to have any appreciable effect on the Allied effort - even with air superiority. Given the maintenance issues with the 177 it wouldn't matter what number you started with, the number of servicable aircraft would dwindle rapidly.

The 217 was pretty much the only effective aircraft they had for this and could only carry one Hs293 over distance. Their chances of dealing a death blow to such a large fleet, even with minimal air cover is vanishingly small.

Do-217K-Hs-293A-1.jpg
 
To answer the question as posed, the OTL Me262 fleet of about 200 aircraft never reached 60 sorties in a single day due to a range of factors, most stemming from the unreliability of their engines and their best day was 16 kills. The USAAF alone regularly flew 2500 sorties per day over Europe and the RAF would match this.

So crudely scaling this up, 2000 Me 262s would fly 600 sorties and get 160 kills in a day and 4000 Me 262s would fly 1200 sorties and get 320 kills in a day.

So the magic number of Me 262s needed to stop Overlord would be in the order of 5000 airframes. Which is why people say its impossible.
 
To answer the question as posed, the OTL Me262 fleet of about 200 aircraft never reached 60 sorties in a single day due to a range of factors, most stemming from the unreliability of their engines and their best day was 16 kills. The USAAF alone regularly flew 2500 sorties per day over Europe and the RAF would match this.

So crudely scaling this up, 2000 Me 262s would fly 600 sorties and get 160 kills in a day and 4000 Me 262s would fly 1200 sorties and get 320 kills in a day.

So the magic number of Me 262s needed to stop Overlord would be in the order of 5000 airframes. Which is why people say its impossible.

Does that include planes to cover the airfields during take of and landing when they were extremely vulnerable?
 
An Me 262 uses at most 1,600 liters per mission. A few hundred Me 262s each needing 400 gallons per mission (including training missions) is hardly ASB-land. Any one of these *might* work, or you could use them in combination.

* They take it from the rest of the Reich, prioritizing stopping Overlord over something else (like the V-weapon program, or the submarine program, or ...). For just one example, an Me 262 has 1,800 liter tanks. An Type VII submarine holds 67 tons of fuel. You can fuel 34 Me 262 flights for one sub mission.

* They get it from Spain/Switzerland/Sweden/Turkey, who is allowed to import more oil for diplomatic reasons.

* They get it from Norway, where some of the offshore oil fields are on shore.

* They get it from Romania, where minor technological changes allow a greater percent of the in ground oil to be extracted.

* They get it by converting coal.

Those countries you mentioned hardly have enough oil to supply Germany with needs as grand as you suggest. Even the Romanian oil production(the only country of those mentioned that had significant oil fields) had been grinded down to an almost standstill by allied bombing. even if they would take all the feul of the kriegsmarine and use up all their reserves they won't have enough to feul even 1 wing of ME 262's for a month in 1944.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
It too late to stop overlord once the Americans have gained air superiority. You need the ME-262 well before summer of 1944 in large numbers. Seems like Feb and March of 1944 saw the Luftwaffe lose more fighters to bombers than all the prior months of the war, so we are looking at large number of jets by 1944. Five percent losses was enough to stop the bomber campaign if sustained, so probably 2000 ME with 100 kills per major raid is enough to delay the operation.
 
how many skilled pilots did they have left Britain and America had air superiority in the west the russians in the east and the russians had a lot more pilots and planes than the germans.if any reason to get the me262 into combat it would of beein the eastern front not the west.the russians where the bigger problem if you stem the red tide the germans could sue for peace.
 
* They take it from the rest of the Reich, prioritizing stopping Overlord over something else (like the V-weapon program, or the submarine program, or ...). For just one example, an Me 262 has 1,800 liter tanks. An Type VII submarine holds 67 tons of fuel. You can fuel 34 Me 262 flights for one sub mission.

Aicraft grade fuel is different from the fuel used in submarine, and you can't just transform one into the other, as for a gallon of raw oil, there is a limit to how much you can get, and I assure you that they push this limit in favor of aircraft fuel already.

* They get it from Spain/Switzerland/Sweden/Turkey, who is allowed to import more oil for diplomatic reasons.

Pray tell, how those nations get petrol (especially Switzerland) ? From who ? The allies who are already using all the petrol they can get their hands on ?

* They get it from Norway, where some of the offshore oil fields are on shore.

Where do they get the technology to start offshore drilling ? In 37 the maximum depth of an offshore drill was 4.3m of water. In 46 it was 5.5m. In the US, where companies actually had experience in oil drilling. Offshore drilling started at the end of the 60's in Norway, in the middle of the North Sea.

* They get it from Romania, where minor technological changes allow a greater percent of the in ground oil to be extracted.

By what miracle do they do that ? Anyway given the ressources that germany would have used in pushing back the Allies in Overlord, Ploesti would be lost in august anyway, killing this oil source.

* They get it by converting coal.

Which they already did. So who doesn't get aircraft fuel ? The eastern front ? the bombers who will try to destroy the invasion fleet after your wonder fleet of 262 try to destroy allies air superiority ?

The thing is that by 1944 the position of Germany is untenable. It had lost. All it can do is give more or less territory to the soviets.
 

GarethC

Donor
The problems are a lot deeper than just having enough 262s (with pilots, fuel and functioning powerplants) to gain air superiority. They would then need large numbers of other aircraft to exploit this.

The 262 was never going to be able to sink ships (nor was the Arado 234), so you would need several hundred Dornier 217s or Heinkel 177s equipped with the Hs293 or Fritz-X to have any appreciable effect on the Allied effort - even with air superiority. Given the maintenance issues with the 177 it wouldn't matter what number you started with, the number of servicable aircraft would dwindle rapidly.

The 217 was pretty much the only effective aircraft they had for this and could only carry one Hs293 over distance. Their chances of dealing a death blow to such a large fleet, even with minimal air cover is vanishingly small.
By Overlord the Hs293 was ineffective against the Allied fleets. At Anzio it was qutie successful, but in the intervening period both the UK and US had developed effective shipboard jammers that caused a loss of control of the bomb, and on D-Day the weapons either went wild or were deliberately steered away by the defenders when control was seized from the launching aircraft.

So, either develop a different control system for the weapon (which both works well and isn't used before June 6, so countermeasures aren't developed) or take steps to prevent Allied scientific intelligence from developing the OTL defensive EW solution - I think a near-intact weapon was recovered (Google and Wikipedia suggest a crashed He177 on Corsica).

It would help if there isn't a Baby Blitz/Steinbock to cost the Luftwaffe 300+ bomber airframes by the end of May 1944 as well.
 
By Overlord the Hs293 was ineffective against the Allied fleets. At Anzio it was qutie successful, but in the intervening period both the UK and US had developed effective shipboard jammers that caused a loss of control of the bomb, and on D-Day the weapons either went wild or were deliberately steered away by the defenders when control was seized from the launching aircraft.

There was a wire-guided version developed (the Hs293B), and it seems less of a jump to get that into service than 1,000, 2,000 or 5,000 Me262s, but it still wouldn't make any difference to the final result. For the Germans to stop Overlord through air power is going to take a POD far back in the past.
 
they could have 2000 it wouldn't change anything because the 262 was a garbage design; it was also short legged and needed hard metal runways; so her airfields will be visable and visted by medium bombers... frequently
 
To answer the question as posed, the OTL Me262 fleet of about 200 aircraft never reached 60 sorties in a single day due to a range of factors, most stemming from the unreliability of their engines and their best day was 16 kills. The USAAF alone regularly flew 2500 sorties per day over Europe and the RAF would match this.

So crudely scaling this up, 2000 Me 262s would fly 600 sorties and get 160 kills in a day and 4000 Me 262s would fly 1200 sorties and get 320 kills in a day.

So the magic number of Me 262s needed to stop Overlord would be in the order of 5000 airframes. Which is why people say its impossible.

To add a bit; During the weeks before 6th June the USAAF ramped up its medium bomber sorties from a average of around 400-500 per day to 1000 per day. Thats just the twin engined bombers of the 9th AF. For 6th June the combined air fleet managed well over 13,000 sorties over France. There was a surge in the preceeding weeks in Italy and in the East the VVS kept up its air activity. For the week before and after 6th June the Germans were contending with a average of 5,000 to 6,000 offensive sorties daily combined from all fronts.
 
And lets not forget that they went OM NOM NOM NOM on their engines with most of them requiring complete rebuilds after each combat mission.

Aside from the problems of engines averaging ten hours usefull life, and the pilot training problem, the Me262 was not a good aircraft for general combat. Its speed made it good for 'boom and zoom' attacks. Against the experienced pilots of the Allied air forces it was marginal in the close or manuver fight, and lost much of its superiority at low altitude, where the Soviet VVS and USAAF/RAF tactical air forces flew. What sucess the Me262 had was against heavy bombers at high altitude, from a robust base system in Germany. Moving forward into France to attack the Allied invasion means trying to operate from partially paved airfields that had already been bombed many times. The fuel, ammunition, mechanics, tools, and parts have to be moved there either on a collapsing French railroad network, or by overworked automotive convoys moving only at night.

Over Germany the Me262 had only the very long range Allied fighter planes to contend with. Every 200 miles closer to the Normandy battle effectively doubles the number of Allied fighter planes in range. By the time the French coast is reached even Spitfires can join in.
 

Nietzsche

Banned
The thing is that by 1944 the position of Germany is untenable. It had lost. All it can do is give more or less territory to the soviets.
This here. Their choices in 1944 is "Do we want the Bolsheviks in Berlin, or can we maybe hold them at the Oder.."
 
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