In article ,
"M. H. Greaves" writes:
Another factor in the Me 262 was hitlers intervention; he wanted it to be a
bomber, NOT a fighter! which caused many aproblem, and even willy
Messerschmitt had to be summoned.

A common legend, but there's no truth to it. The only difference
between a Fighter Me 262, and a Bomber 262 (Actually, a Jagdbomber -
Fighter-Bomber) was the addition of the removable pylons. Withoug the
bombs on board, there was no difference in the performance of the
airplane. Since that was the case, it made plenty of sense to add the
pylons & the release wiring on the production line. It didn't
actually delay the service introduction of the jet one bit. What did
delay its introduction was the poor reliability and low production
numbers for the engines. The 262 was suppoed to go into service in
very early 1944. The powerplant problems delayed that by a half a
year. Note that in early 1944, everybody in the German command loop
knew that the Western Allies were going to be invading, and invading
as soon as it was practicable. They also knew that theere would be a
massive blanket of air cover, and that they stood no realistic chance
of successfully attacking the invasion beaches, and more importantly,
the ships supplying them, with the airplane types they had in 1943.
GIven that set of conditions, having an airplane that could make
strikes that couldn't be easily countered on the invasion beaches and
the invasion fleet would have the effect of drawing a significant
amount of those resources into protecting the beaches, rather than
interdicting the Heer as is moved to counter the invasion. In fact,
it really didn't matter if they were able to bomb accurately or not -
the threat itself would have been sufficient. The delays in being
able to supply adequate engines, however, made the whole concept
irrelevant.

So, what we have is what was actually a rather sound decision that was
negated by the technical problems causing the in-service date to slip.

Hitler did that to many projects, he did it to the Fi103 (the doodlebug,
V1), he also had reservations about the A4 (the V2) and it was only in the
later stages of the war that he let it go into production because he knew he
was losing the war and wanted revenge weapons (vergeltungswaffe), as a form
of payback to the allies.

The A4 had problems with Guidance and Control, and, as was dicovered
fairly late into the program, with the airframe of teh rocket breaking
up on descent. These problems, and the need to set up the proper
infrastructure to produce and transport massive quantities of Liquid
Oxygen had much more to do with delaying its use.

The F1 103 (V-1) also had problems with launching and inflight
stability. Those had to be sorted out, and the launching sites in
France had to be prepared. Germany, for reasons unkown, took a rather
luxurious path with the launching sites, with large amounts of
permanent construction and massive fixed facilities.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster