Mano Ziegler - Hitlers Jet Plane The ME 262 Story

Dear Friends and Comrades!

This foreword is for all of you who flew the Me 262, whether as fighter pilot or bomber crew. I have been motivated to write this book for three reasons:

1. At present, the Me 262 and its history have received only a fragmented treatment in the literature of military aviation.
2. All previous narratives either gloss over the development stage of the Me 262, which was an ongoing event from the initial drawing board sketch to the last dogfight, or present an incomplete history within a biography of the aircraft.
3. The younger generation my primary concern has at best a very superficial understanding of the great drama surrounding the worlds first operational jet fighter, which also served as the first bomber of its kind in aviation history.

Many young people have the idea that German fighter pilots the collar-and-tie brigade were more given to boasting of their early victories instead of getting into the air to shoot down the Allied bomber formations. This is a misconception which needs to be corrected. Accordingly I have depicted what it was like to be on fighter operations, and for the benefit of the younger generation have thought it worthwhile to describe the experience of fighter action, something beyond their imagining.

During the lifetime of the frontline Me 262 I was an Me 163 test pilot and instructor, and so do not write as a jet-fighter pilot from my own immediate experience. The foundation for this book has therefore been a thorough research of the existing literature. To my comrades-in-arms of that epoch who placed themselves at my disposal for hours, and all night if need be, I offer my heartfelt thanks. I record their names in the Acknowledgements. No less are thanks due to the named firms of the German aviation industry.

In this volume I have paid no heed to rank or position and have tried to set aside old unresolved grudges, although here and there some subjectivity is bound to have crept in. Unavoidable too are the many gaps in the story which still remain. Therefore I shall be grateful to every comrade-in-arms and every historian who puts me right.

None of the praiseworthy efforts to compile the Me 262 story in the immediate postwar period succeeded. Despite there being many more relevant documents extant in the UK and US national archives than in the German Federal Republic, English language works are not free of error. American military aviation historians and their British counterparts have the advantage of easier access to sources for research. Seized by the victors were plans, drawings, reports, photographs, films, memoranda, diaries and they have much other additional useful material including PoW interrogation statements. These huge files have probably still not been fully evaluated to the present day. Much of the material has been returned to the German Federal Republic by the United States, to a much lesser extent by the British authorities. Precisely why the British want to keep secret what they have not even allowing it to be worked from under supervision is not known. All the documentation respecting the highly interesting organisation of the German night-fighter network under Generalleutnant Kammhuber remains in British hands. All attempts to date to obtain at least copies for the German military archives have been unsuccessful. It is all the more incomprehensible because the return of the material would not be against the interests of any nation but rather of inestimable value for historical research.

It will be a great success of this book if it inspires the Old Guard to criticise and correct me, or supply some missing pieces. I encourage it with a hearty Horrido! Into battle!

MANO ZIEGLER, GERMANY, 1978