Heinkel He 162
Info copied and paraphrased from Wikipedia
The Heinkel He 162 Volksjäger (German, "People's Fighter"), the name of a project of the Emergency Fighter Program design competition, was a German single-engine, jet-powered fighter aircraft fielded by the Luftwaffe in World War II. Designed and built quickly, and made primarily of wood as metals were in very short supply and prioritised for other aircraft, the He 162 was nevertheless the fastest of the first generation of Axis and Allied jets. Volksjäger was the Reich Air Ministry's official name for the government design program competition won by the He 162 design. Other names given to the plane include Salamander, which was the codename of its construction program, and Spatz ("Sparrow"), which was the name given to the plane by Heinkel.
At the end of April,P-51 escorts that formerly performed "close escort" of the USAAF's bomber combat boxes were now flying far ahead of the B-17 and B-24 formations in an air supremacy mode and aggressively seeking combat with the backbone of the Jagdwaffe (fighter force) to "clear the skies" of them, this change in USAAF tactics resulted in the German fighter forces being broken, with many of the Luftwaffe's leading aces killed in combat. Replacements were slow to arrive, leaving the Luftwaffe unable to put up much of a fight through the summer of 1944. With few planes coming up to fight, the U.S. fighters were let loose on the German airbases, railways and truck traffic. Logistics soon became a serious problem for the Luftwaffe, maintaining aircraft in fighting condition almost impossible, and having enough fuel for a complete mission profile was even more difficult.
One group General der Jagdflieger ("General of Fighters") Adolf Galland, reasoned that superior numbers had to be countered with superior technology, and demanded that all possible effort be put into increasing the production of the Messerschmitt Me 262, even if that meant reducing production of other aircraft in the meantime. However, the Me 262 had notoriously unreliable powerplants and landing gear, and the existing logistics problems would mean there would merely be more of them on the ground waiting for parts that would never arrive, or for fuel that was not available. Instead, they suggested that a new design be built - one so inexpensive that if a machine was damaged or worn out, it could simply be discarded and replaced with a fresh plane straight off the assembly line. Thus was born the concept of the "throwaway fighter".
This Throwaway Fighter was the Heinkel He 162
Paperwork issues meant none of the He 162 formations officially became operational,[8] but the He 162 finally saw combat in mid-April.[citation needed] On 19 April, a captured Royal Air Force fighter pilot informed his German interrogators that he had been shot down by a jet fighter matching the description of the He 162. The Heinkel and its pilot were lost as well, shot down by an RAF Hawker Tempest while on approach to land (a point when German jets were at their most vulnerable).[citation needed] Though still in training, I./JG 1 had scored a number of kills beginning in mid-April, but had also lost 13 He 162s and 10 pilots. Ten of the aircraft were operational losses, caused by flameouts and sporadic structural failures. Only two of the 13 aircraft were actually shot down. The He 162's 30-minute fuel capacity also caused problems, as at least two of JG 1's pilots were killed attempting emergency landings after exhausting their fuel. By the time of the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945, 120 He 162s had been delivered; a further 200 had been completed and were awaiting collection or flight-testing; and about 600 more were in various stages of production.
It was also part of The Mistel Program, A pilot guided V-1 bomb
The Mistel series of fighter/powered bomb composite ground-attack aircraft pre-dated the He 162 by over two years, and the Mistel 5 project study in early 1945 proposed the mating of an He 162A-2 to the Arado E.377A flying bomb. The fighter would sit atop the bomb, which would itself be equipped with two wing-mounted BMW 003 turbojets. This ungainly combination would take off on a sprung trolley, derived from that used on the first eight Arado Ar 234 prototypes, with all three jets running. Immediately after take-off, the trolley would be jettisoned, and the Mistel would then fly to within strike range of the designated target. Upon reaching this point, the bomb would be aimed squarely at the target and then released, with the jet turning back for home. The Mistel 5 remained a "paper project", as the Arado bomb never progressed beyond the blueprint stage.
Thanks again, Jatan!
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Also, Here's the Original 162!
In order to confuse Allied intelligence, the RLM chose to reuse the 8-162 airframe designation (formerly that of a Messerschmitt fast bomber) rather than the other considered designation He 500.
The Messerschmitt Bf 162 Jaguar was a light bomber aircraft designed in Germany prior to World War II that only flew in prototype form. The Bf 162 was designed in response to a 1935 RLM (Reichsluftfahrtministerium, Reich Aviation Ministry) specification for a schnellbomber ("fast bomber") for tactical use. Messerschmitt's design was a modified Bf 110 with a glazed nose to accommodate a bombardier. In 1937, three prototypes were flown against rival designs, the Junkers Ju 88 and the Henschel Hs 127, both entirely new aircraft. Eventually, it would be decided that the Ju 88 be selected for production, and development of the Bf 162 ended. As a disinformation tactic, images of the Bf 162 were widely circulated in the German press captioned as the "Messerschmitt Jaguar", a name never used outside this context. Only three were built.
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Did you know 162 is the total number of baseball games each team plays during a regular season in Major League Baseball?
That's what wikipedia told me anyway.
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http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/lQwm8/jagged-alliance-2-wildfire
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