BOC: ME262

[Ted O. Jackson]

Jazza says:
>
>         Jazza does his normal bit of replying to a thread long after it's
> dropped... Argument a little while back about what point ME262 was trying
> to make. I don't think it's standing anywhere on politics really, it's
> more about getting past the politics to the personal dilemma facing Von
> Ondine (which has to be Imaginos-related, but I don't yet know how):
> "Must these Englishmen live that I might die?" Up in the sky Nazism or
> whatever doesn't matter: maybe it should, but if it's his life against
>
You should read the amazing 'I Flew For the Fuhrer' by Heinz Knoke,
one of the few surviving German aces from WWII.  He obviously saw
himself as merely protecting his homeland from vicious bomber
attacks.  The only politics he utters is repeated reference to
bolsheviks.  He clearly hates Russia, but says he doesn't really have
anything against the British or Americans.  This is interesting in
that he may quite well have bought the argument made by the Nazis
that brought Hitler to power:  that the German socialists 'stabbed
the military in the back in WWI' and allowed them to be defeated.  A
likely opinion for a career soldier like Knoke.  He never says if he
was a party member [wouldn't have helped book sales to the west!] but
he generally stays away from politics.  It's been a while since I
read it, but I'm pretty sure he flew the 262 as a test pilot.

theirs, and if the evil of the regime means he ought to let the bombs
> fall, he's not going to bother being moral...
>         Other sidethreads: it kind of makes the plane the source of his
> power, which of course it is in a real sense, but also in a justificatory
> sense: this is the 'Prince of Turbojet', after all, and the sheer ability
> to destroy in the name of any cause that the plane displays is all the
> excuse it needs to unleash it... Sort of like an airborne `Black Blade'
> with a patriotic edge.

Many combat narratives I've read have said the same thing about the
seduction of power, the ability to take a life, while your own life
could be ended at any time.

>         If you really need politics in it, then I reckon it's patriotism
> before all else. After all, `Von Ondine' is a noble and therefore
> statistically less likely to be a Nazi.. But on the other hand,
> considering the detail errors elsewhere in the song I doubt very much
> that the subtext is that carefully put together...
>         Errors, for the pedants (like me!): the 262 didn't fly at
> night, except a very few two-seater versions: but Ondine is alone surely.
> The British didn't use Fortresses except for ECM work this late in the
> war, and the Americans only flew them in daytime. No 262 carried both
> cannon (`gray-silver slugs') and the R4M rocket installation in the

I can pedant with the best of them!  Those are 'shells,' not slugs,
and I thought it was 'Great' silver slugs!

> `snout', and those with that installation never tested it in combat
> because of the blinding effect of twenty-four rockets firing off from
> right before the pilot's eyes. Not to say Von Ondine couldn't be flying an
> experimental one for an emergency mission, but special pleading required,
> I think.
>         Hmmm. Am I taking this all a bit too seriously?


Not a bit!
theo

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