Toward the tail end of World War II, an aircraft emerged from Germany that ultimately made little difference in the war but had a huge impact in the years to follow. In the words of Military Aviation Museum Director Keegan Chetwynd, EAA 1416693, it was “an airplane that was unable to change the course of the war, but an airplane that unquestionably changed the course of history.”
He is, of course, talking about the Messerschmitt Me 262 — the world’s first operational jet fighter.
Entering service with the Luftwaffe in 1944, the Me 262 operated as a defensive interceptor (nicknamed Schwalbe) and fighter/bomber (Sturmvogel). Problems with the engines delayed introduction for years, and while the 262 had a speed advantage over any Allied fighter, it was especially vulnerable during takeoff and landing as its original Junkers Jumo 004 turbojet was unable to spool up quickly.
A project to build hyper-accurate 262 reproductions began in the early 1990s, with the aircraft based on the National Naval Aviation Museum’s Me 262B-1a/U1 WNr.121448 Schwalbe. The Stormbird Project, as it was called, began with Classic Fighter Industries in Texas before the project moved to Everett, Washington, in 1998 and was finished over the next decade or so by Legend Flyers, with five total airplanes built. The Military Aviation Museum, located in Virginia Beach, Virginia, purchased its 262 reproduction in 2011. The airplane uses a de-rated General Electric CJ610 engine in place of the type’s original Jumo 004. The Military Aviation Museum’s 262 is marked to represent the airplane flown by Hans Guido Mutke, who claimed to have broken the sound barrier with the aircraft in April 1945.
“The airplane was delivered to us in October of 2011,” Keegan said. “It flew here for quite a while. People remember seeing it at air shows and things like that here, but it had a fairly pervasive set of issues with it relating to anywhere that a modern system was used to stand in for a vintage one. Those interface areas created problems. It was the type of thing that you might not have observed operating at Paine Field in Everett, Washington, with a 10,000-foot runway, was the brake fade issues and things like that.”
In preparation for flying the airplane from Virginia to Oshkosh this summer for EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2025, Keegan said the team at the Military Aviation Museum had to do a number of repairs and upgrades, including upgrading the avionics, installing ADS-B, and developing a solution for the braking problem.
“The airplane had been primarily grounded by the challenges surrounding the brakes,” he said. “It was in storage during that period of time, and so bringing it back to life has been the this-year project that really began in January. But the engineering solution for the brakes has been probably a three-year process. We began the design work in earnest three years ago, created the drawings, designed the brakes, and then had to have the parts manufactured. That took about two years, and ultimately what we thought would be about four months of installation was completed in about three weeks. That was pretty great on the part of the team that got stuck in and got them installed.”
A number of Me 262s were captured by the Allies near the end of the war and heavily studied, and its design influenced the development of post-WWII jets such as the F-86 Sabre, MiG-15, and B-47 Stratojet. With AirVenture 2025 commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of WWII and the subsequent transition from piston-powered aircraft to jets, Keegan said it was important for the Military Aviation Museum to bring the airplane to Oshkosh.
“Wouldn’t it be great to do it in this year when we mark the anniversary of the end of the war? Wouldn’t it be great to have it here to show people the bridge point between the old technology and the new? Really, bringing it there as this technology demonstrator was a big part of why we did what we did to get it ready,” Keegan said.
“But what I think is really interesting about it … is there’s nothing else like it,” he said. “When you go stand next to it, it’s really weird because it is both simultaneously anachronistic and futuristic. It’s something that’s really, really difficult to explain where it’s very obviously from the past but somehow looks out of place there.”