Me Bf162 'Jaguar'

Thanks...
I'll add a bit of smudge when I finalise it.




:) P
 
Daily Express, 13th May 1941, Page 4—

"[Rudolf] Hess used for his dramatic flight a Jaguar high-speed reconnaissance bomber, a version of the Messerschmitt 110. It is chiefly distinguishable by its glazed bomb-aiming nose."

Happy Christmas.

Simon Wood
 
Daily Express, 13th May 1941, Page 4—

"[Rudolf] Hess used for his dramatic flight a Jaguar high-speed reconnaissance bomber, a version of the Messerschmitt 110. It is chiefly distinguishable by its glazed bomb-aiming nose."

Happy Christmas.

Simon Wood

I thought that Hess used a Bf110. A prototype Bf162 seems unlikely. A newspaper in 1941 might find the claim plausible because at least some German disinformation portrayed the Bf162 as a production type.
 
Hi Iverson,

I thought so, too.

I found these references to the Bf162 -

"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."

"The Bf 162 continued to see service as a propaganda tool. Images of the aircraft were widely distributed under the name Bf 162 Jaguar, in the hopes of drawing the attention of Allied intelligence services away from other aircraft programs."

1609015894281.png

I can't work out how the Daily Express came by this very specific information.

Happy New Year.

Simon
 
Hi Iverson,

<snip>

I can't work out how the Daily Express came by this very specific information.

Happy New Year.

Simon

Happy New Yer to you too.

There is lots of precedent for the press getting things wrong and embellishing stories, particularly in sensational and murky circumstances like those surrounding the Hess flight. Given the long distances involved, a bomber might just have seemed more likely to the authors and editors, so they put it in. Plus, disinformation does get around. Lots of Allied pilots are said to have reported combats with "He113" (He100) fighters.
 
An interesting point is that no photographs exist of the nose and cockpit of Hess's aircraft. That would have sorted it out in an instant. Come to that, no photographs of Hess appear to have been taken while he was in Scotland/England.

And just so you know, I am not a rabid conspiracy theorist.
 
An interesting point is that no photographs exist of the nose and cockpit of Hess's aircraft. That would have sorted it out in an instant. Come to that, no photographs of Hess appear to have been taken while he was in Scotland/England.

And just so you know, I am not a rabid conspiracy theorist.

The conspiracy theories are built in to the subject in this case. Given the Duke of Windsor's flirtation with Hitler, Mosley's Fascists, and the UK's history of anti-Bolshevism, Stalin no doubt suspected a British sellout. Japan and the Italians probably feared the same thing from Germany, given historic ties between Germany and the British monarchy. Both Churchill and Hitler tried to obfuscate what had really happened. So no wonder people felt then and since that something was being held back, whether the kind of aircraft or something else.

But I have no doubt that he was flying a Bf110D--unless and until something proves otherwise..
 
I would have thought this would not have been a mystery given the werk number of the airframe is known, 3869.
Just good old journalistic flannel, its almost a surprise when a reporter gets the right aircraft given how many mistakes they have made over the years.
 
I would have thought this would not have been a mystery given the werk number of the airframe is known, 3869.
Just good old journalistic flannel, its almost a surprise when a reporter gets the right aircraft given how many mistakes they have made over the years.

Yes. But while I do not know, I suspect that the newspapers would not have been privy to the serial numbers of crashed enemy aircraft in 1941, especially under the circumstances surrounding Hesse's flight. In any case, trying to keep secrets from one's own public, especially when the reason is potential embarrassment, invites speculation. We've seen that again and again over the years.
 
Identifying the aircraft as a Jaguar with a "glazed bomb-aiming nose" seems such a specific piece of journalistic flannel, especially as the aircraft in question had been dropped from production years earlier. Was the aircraft werk number 3869 known on 13th May 1941? Probably not. Personally, I do not believe Hess ever set foot in Scotland.
 
Hi Iverson,

I thought so, too.

I found these references to the Bf162 -

"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."

"The Bf 162 continued to see service as a propaganda tool. Images of the aircraft were widely distributed under the name Bf 162 Jaguar, in the hopes of drawing the attention of Allied intelligence services away from other aircraft programs."

View attachment 647232

I can't work out how the Daily Express came by this very specific information.

Happy New Year.

Simon

The info panel you included on the Bf 162 appears to be correct. Unsurprisingly, the airframe numbers for V4 and V5 were 820 and 821. When you say it came from the Daily Express, presumably you mean a modern Daily Express, not a paper from May 1941.
I don't know much about Hess's flight but the IWM certainly has photos of his 110 on a scrap heap in Scotland (see attached). Evidently it was coded VJ+OQ if that helps. You can see the 'OQ' in the pics but I can't make out the first part of the coding.
 

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Hi Newsdeskdan,

Thanks for the photographs. I already have these, but it was interesting to read the reverse of IWM2 and learn who actually took the photo.

The newspaper I was referencing was the Daily Express, 13th May 1941. Here are the last two paragraphs from Page 4.

I'm slowly learning that are more parts of Hess's aircraft than there are pieces of the true cross.

Happy New Year

DAILY EXPRESS 13 MAY 1941.JPG
 
Hi Newsdeskdan,

Thanks for the photographs. I already have these, but it was interesting to read the reverse of IWM2 and learn who actually took the photo.

The newspaper I was referencing was the Daily Express, 13th May 1941. Here are the last two paragraphs from Page 4.

I'm slowly learning that are more parts of Hess's aircraft than there are pieces of the true cross.

Happy New Year

View attachment 647615

Do you have the bit of the paper from May 13, 1941, that mentions the Me 163 A?
 
It was attached to my last post.

Newspapers had yellow-tinted boxouts in May 1941?? Also, I downloaded the bits of the Express from May 13, 1941, that you referenced and while, sure enough, the last two paragraphs on p4 do mention the Jaguar, I don't see the panel with the very specific information.
The reason I'm interested in this is because not only did British intelligence (let alone the newspapers) not know about the Me 163 A in May 1941, the Me 163 A did not actually exist in May 1941. Contemporary German accounts refer to it as the 'Me 163 V4' or just 'Me 163'. It only became the 'A' when the 'B' was approved for development in November 1941.
So where is the very specific information on the Jaguar really from?
 

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The yellow-tinted box came from this website - http://www.histaviation.com/Messerschmitt__Bf_162.html

I agree with you. British intelligence and the press would not have had any current knowledge of the Bf 162, because, as you rightly point out, it did not actually exist in May 1941.

So, how did the Daily Express get hold of this piece of impossible information?
 
The yellow-tinted box came from this website - http://www.histaviation.com/Messerschmitt__Bf_162.html

I agree with you. British intelligence and the press would not have had any current knowledge of the Bf 162, because, as you rightly point out, it did not actually exist in May 1941.

So, how did the Daily Express get hold of this piece of impossible information?

?

I asked "Do you have the bit of the paper from May 13, 1941, that mentions the Me 163 A?" The Me 163 A was an experimental rocket-propelled aircraft.
You said "It was attached to my last post." - The bit of the paper mentioning the Me 163 A was attached to your last post.

But clearly the paper does not include any mention of the Me 163 A - because that name had not yet been applied to the Me 163. As information in the yellow tint box from www.histaviation.com appears correct based on our current knowledge of the Bf 162. This itself is based on research conducted over the last 40 years or so.
I am in no way saying that the Bf 162 did not exist - it did. Apparently it had appeared in German press reports which were freely available to the British. So the Daily Express sticking in this random line about the 162 is no surprise. Having worked in newspapers before the days of the internet, I can tell you that newspaper journalists would occasionally put 'facts' into stories which really had no grounding in reality when it proved impossible to verify the details through the proper channels and when there was no legal risk and no one was likely to contradict them. It filled out the column inches, particularly when a story fell two paragraphs short.
 
Sorry, I know nothing about the Me 163. That's news to me.

I doubt we'll ever get to the bottom of the Daily Express story, but it's interesting that other papers identified the aircraft as an Me 110.

Small world. In the 60s I worked for the Press Association at 85 Fleet Street.

Thanks for your interest.
 
Sorry, I know nothing about the Me 163. That's news to me.

I doubt we'll ever get to the bottom of the Daily Express story, but it's interesting that other papers identified the aircraft as an Me 110.

Small world. In the 60s I worked for the Press Association at 85 Fleet Street.

Thanks for your interest.

The yellow panel you posted states that the Bf 162 V2 was used for towing the Me 163 A. So when you said that this yellow panel came from the Daily Express of May 13, 1941, I was obviously surprised.
The Daily Express of May 13, 1941, is contradictory because on the front page it clearly identifies Hess's aircraft as an Me 110. I strongly suspect that the Bf 162 mention is just erroneous filler.
 
And that's why we should always cite sources when posting. However it was clearly a screenshot from a website, not a scan from a newspaper.
 
And that's why we should always cite sources when posting. However it was clearly a screenshot from a website, not a scan from a newspaper.

That was not clear to me. I could imagine a yellow tint box appearing in a magazine of the time. Or a black and white panel being 'recreated' with a yellow tint for emphasis.
Incidentally, the info in the tint panel is surprisingly accurate and I do wonder what it's true source is. If you look at William Green's work of the 1970s, for example, this panel blows it away on accuracy.
 
I had a copy of my grandfather's book Britain's Wonderful Air Force, by P. F. M. Fellowes (Ed.), Odhams Press, 1941. In it there were a few plates of drawings of Axis aircraft, on the page containing Axis bombers the Bf 162 was certainly shown. So was the He 113 on the fighters page and the seaplanes had some exotica like the Ha 139 which never saw frontline service. The Italian types had some obscure one-hit prototype wonders too. Mind you it was claiming Lightnings and Airacobras on the accompanying illustration of RAF frontline fighters...
Aeroplane had included the Messerschmitt 'Jaguar' in its recognition guides in 1940.
The Aeroplane Spotter included it in its recognition guides until at least mid-1941, but seems to have disappeared after that.
Flight in 1940 published an RAF combat account in which no less than two dozen (!!) "Messerschmitt Jaguar fighter - bombers" being shot down in one Battle of Britain engagement.

There is no doubt that during 1941 the Bf 162 was, rightly or wrongly, known to the general public as a service Luftwaffe type. So its no surprise a newspaper reporter might have made a wrong guess, perhaps the destruction of the nose section of Hess' Bf 110 made a reporter think it must have been a glazed nose that crumpled up easier?
 
Thank you, Newsdeskdan and Hood,

Interesting information.

I suppose this is the clincher. If Hess's aircraft had been a Bf162 Jaguar, where did these three guns come from?

H for Hess.

CRASH 5.JPG
 
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Mind you it was claiming Lightnings and Airacobras on the accompanying illustration of RAF frontline fighters...

I think the RAF did actually operate a few examples of both types, the latter one in particular, though plans to procure them in larger numbers were ultimately cancelled.
 
RAF operated their variant, Airacobra Mk.I, since mid-1941. They even served in one operational squadron, the 601st. RAF disliked them and at the first opportunity they sold all their Airacobras to the USSR. The rest of the almost 700 machines were delivered directly to Russia or to the USAAF, which deignated them as P-400. At the same time, the Brits ordered Lightning Mk.I, which was anglicanised P-38E. First were delivered at the start of 1942, and because among other things they lacked the superchargers (GE was overhelmed), they sucked even more and after the testing of first three the order was cancelled. USAAF then used them as P-322.

Those planes were ordered in large quantities, so it's quite ok for a book from 1941 to presume those would be a common frontline aircaft.
 

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