Heinkel He-162 in Combat (How Well Did The 'People's Fighter' Actually Do?) 

i actually met a 162 driver decades ago on the airshow road. he was one of the youths --an 18 YO that was tasked to fly the 162. he only made a few flights before he was shot down by a p-51 while moving 162s to a new AB. he crash landed his jet --survived being hit by a 50bmg . ended up in the US and joined the NAVY. he said the 162 was excellent to fly IF the glue held and the engine didn't blow--yet they failed very frequently

"If the glue holds" is a terrifying qualifier of an airplane's capabilities.

Eric Brown flew the 162 after the war and said it was very responsive and delightful to fly.

This is the best history lesson ive seen so far on he 162

People like to hate on it, but it's obvious that if this design was manufactured in the same conditions the US/UK, with better facilities, labour force and raw materials etc., and pilots were trained properly to operate it, it would have been hard to beat. The speed advantage was massive.

Missing in history is the 162s used by Jg-84 and 85. They both picked up their 162s at the same time and flew in formation to their new base which is unknown. The accidently ran into an unescorted groups of American bombers and did considerable damage before they had to break off due to fuel. There is one book on Jg-85 that I have been trying to get a hold of to verify this story, but no luck yet.

Another well presented and informative video

The animation on this video, coupled with the obvious research gone in to the history, is astounding. Incredible work. Hats off to you sir.

Great history lesson He 162 the facts are rarely mentions.

As a 50+ channel subscriber, how fortunate we are to have the technology to reproduce these actions so well... and by 'we' I mean our narrator, who tells these stories so engagingly and without padding. Great channel, sir.

They have a complete 162 in the Berlin technical museum, as well as a 109. Was amazing.

Excellent video, content and commentary. Thanks

Another fine production in the books. Keep on keeping on, Showtime112.

Thank-you for an excellent telling of the He-162, my favourite of the early jet aircraft. Despite the appalling state the Germans were in, to design, test, build and put into service this aircraft in such a short span of time was a huge achievement ~ even if Ernst Heinkel did all he could behind the scenes to ensure his aircraft won the Volksjager competition despite there being better designs presented such as the Ta-183. Proposed future iterations of the He-162 included; swept wings, forward swept wings, V tail, different engine fits including 1 or 2 pulse jets etc. Galland decried the very concept of the Volksjager, saying they should be concentrating on Me-262 production instead and the idea that barely trained Hitler Youth were to pilot what was a hot little plane were ludicrous, but Eric Brown RN said it was an exhilarating little plane to fly, would’ve run rings round the Gloster Meteor and that the Allies were lucky it hadn’t appeared earlier as in concert with the Me-262 it would have wreaked havoc on Allied bomber formations.

The fact that this sleek little jet fighter flew at the end of WW2 totally blows my mind, the ME 163 and the 262 looked different and futuristic but this one with its wing tips and jet engine on top looked really really different... That said, I wonder how the Heinkel 162 would have fared against the Gloster Meteor...

Another good video Showtime 112.

Absolutely loved this one! I'll revisit and watch again..several times, as I find the air war over Europe to be most interesting. For me anyway. Fantastic video!

Excellent video. Love your honest presentation of the research blended with the simulation of the events.

This is crazy. I was in my local modelling shop not 3 hours ago and they had a couple of Tamiya He-162s in my preferred scale of 1/48. No, I thought. Too outlandish. I will pick one up tomorrow...

Amazing vid as always

Great Job with this video! Much appreciated! I knew so little coming in and left feeling like i am ready to lookup more about this amazing time of the launch of the age of the single engine jet fighter age!

So happy to have found your channel mate! Great presentation, super informative too! Looking forward to binging your content this weekend. Keep up the great work, God speed!

A really interesting piece of military history. So thank you very much

Nice video. Excellent graphics.

This is the first video of the He-162 i ever seen. Well done video.

An obviously well researched video - thank you !

Excellent video. Subscribed.

Great story. The unknown episodes of WW2. Thanks for sahring it with us

Thanks for showing this plane. Interesting trivia

Great work!

Again very good video.

I can’t tell you how much I love this channel..The great history and video fits perfectly together..Also this channel comes at a direct way of telling the facts about an aircraft or a conflict..Keep up the great work and will you do a part 2 on the Romanian Airforce during WW2..If not the Airforce of Hungry would be great to watch..Thank you🇬🇧👍

That it flew as well as it did is a miracle in itself. Especially when one considers the circumstances of its manufacturer. A good showing of its history in action.

Great video

Nice video 👍

Thanks again for this bit of obscure history.

The speed with which this aircraft was produced is often commented upon. It's worth looking through Heinkel designs to find that a larger plane with similar layout existed in the form of calculations and drawings of basic airframe design, more than a drawing, less than a prototype. Like with the existing North American A-36 Apache becoming the P-51 Mustang, this shortened development enormously.

Thanks for these great video! My grand unkle was at the 1. Jagdgeschwader and was trained on the "Volksjäger" he liked it but told not to pull the flightstick too strong at the start.

Absolutely lovely that yoh work in even something with little service record ae the He-162. Bravo.

Glad you did this assessment,one of my favourite late German aircraft tbh what other late war types you got plans to showcase next and keep up the good work buddy ??

50k -- look at you. Congrats, friend. On to 100k.

Vrdeo of a rare slice of ww2 history. Thanks!

Capt. Eric Brown loved the handling of the He162, saying it would ‘run rings around a Gloster Meteor jet, had they met in combat. In fact his prediction came true, when a Meteor from 616sq was shot down over the Dutch border by a Volksjäger in the last days of the war.

Heinkel HE 162 auch genannt der Volksjäger! Billig hergestellt, viel Sperrholz und auch schwer zu fliegen.

The He-162's didn't get many kills, but the squadron was new, the planes were not well tested before deliveries started so they had a lot of teething problems. It had an impressive armament package, but with really only two months to train, and constantly changing air fields, not much time to achieve anything.

Another good video about lesser known Luftwaffe aircraft.

The glue thing is easily explained, the original Tego Film glue factory had just been bombed flat, and so a substitute called Kaurit, which was more subject to moisture, sometimes causing failure.

I have often wondered about how effective the German ejection seats were in use.

Another great video! The volksjäger is an interesting subject. I personally thought that its performance was much worse. In any case, a curious little plane that tried to push the envelope.

One word...WOW!!!! Great job!

Thank YOU for this extraordinary and brilliant video ! It's very Special and for me,as a german,now I know the last day's of this jet experiment of the LUFTWAFFE !! Good Job,well done!! 😊

This people fighter is very fascinating. Thx for this great video once again :)

Grwat video. Subbed...👍

15:58 France flight tested a trio of He-162s in 1946-1948. At my birthplace: Mont de Marsan, south-west France. BA.118 Colonel Rozanoff, nowadays they fly Rafales (the base also got the first Mirage IVA nuclear bombers in October 1964). Whatever Eric Brown said of the He-162, french pilots hated the machine. There was one fatal accident mid 1948 after what the type was grounded. France used the type as a trainer to familiarize pilots with the coming jet fighters: Vampires and Ouragans.

Nicely researched of a obscure airplane, I liked the camme scheme of the french one at the end.

Great video! Will you be doing any more on the Falklands war? There are the two Etendard Exocet attacks on the MV Atlantic Conveyer and HMS Sheffield, The ground attack where a Harrier GR3 was shot down and the shootdown of the C130 by Sharky Ward in a Sea Harrier. Be great to see more :)

Nice one.

GREAT VIDEO, as usual. Preserving history alive and paying tribute to those pilotos who dared to fly and fight for their country. They are flying higher now than during those days. THANKS.

Having seen the plane in a Berlin museum, it is scary. To get into that is. Wood and a BMW unreliable engine. The ejection seat is supposed to stop you going into the jet engine, but no hope at low altitude.

I'd love to see similar videos on the subject of American-made carrier based fighters (i.e. the Wildcat/Martlet, the Hellcat and the Corsair) vs. Luftwaffe land-based fighters. So far I haven't come across even a single instance of an encounter, let alone any combat or comparisons. The FAA fighters were deployed in nothern European waters, e.g. the Tirpitz raids, where they didn't actually encounter any Luftwaffe fighter opposition. Also, accounts of the Fulmar vs. German single engine fighters.

I really love the design. Unique plane designs are fun.

The Thunderbolt misidentification is funny, in the same way Allied ground troops often identified every German tank as a Tiger. The Thunderbolt was by far the meanest machine alive over Europe, and it's no wonder "Thunderbolt Fright" has taken hold among the Luftwaffe.

Amazing video. I love the music in particular. Very atmospheric. Look up Harald Bauer's presentation on serving as a test pilot for the He-162. It's called: Heinkel He 162 Jet Fighter Test Pilot 20 minutes 40 seconds in, he claims, one of the He 162 shot down a British Meteor in may 1945. And another He 162 shot down a British fighter too around that time also.

what game was used to record the footage? thanks

Bela animação e trabalho histórico, bom trabalho

Imagine you're a successful German fighter pilot and you receive the news that your squadron is being re-equipped with brand new aircraft. Then you see the new aircraft and it's a flimsy deathtrap with a giant engine strapped on to the fuselage.

Nice video! Which game did you use?

Nice video, thx. It is always awesome to get the actual stories from the unit flight logs and compare them tot the ones from the other side! I also built the Revell's model kit when I was a kid and had always thought that the plane made at least some sort of impact, but achieving measly one confirmed kill with couple of losses due to enemy action, plus all the "self-inflicted" losses, makes you REALLY wonder if the resources used to design and build the 300+ of these could've been used WAY better... Obviously that comment comes with hindsight, but wasn't this a bit of a common problem in 3rd Reich? Spending scant resources on trying to get better and better wunderwaffe after wunderwaffe when reliable more standard equipment had been already available from some time and would've been a way better an option to stick with them and increase their production?

Top notch video! 🎖

Your visual suggestion at the end is intriguing. Did the French capture, paint, and fly some 162s?!?

At the very least, the Salamander tried to demonstrate the ejection seat. It is a pity that this is not recognised today. Nevertheless, excellent reportage!

Although I find his accent fatiguing, I do appreciate his pronunciation of German words and names. Also, as to the computer animation, I believed that I would hate it. But I loved it. In my youth, the late 1950's, there were library books. Very few photographs of World War II aircraft and other equipment. That is why I got into plastic kit modeling. I wanted to see a Junkers Ju 88 from different angles. Also, it was the beginning of black and white TVs with rabbit ears (antennae) and very iffy reception. There were 3 TV stations with limited broadcasting hours: WBBM (CBS channel 2), WMAQ (NBC channel 5) and WBKB (ABC channel 7). And a little bit of WGN (independent channel 9) and WTTW (independent non-profit channel 11). They were VHF. When UHF came out, there was WFLD (channel 32) and 'WSNW?' (channel 44). I could at times receive a station from Milwaukee(?) and watch true bull fights! That was at about two in the morning and with the right atmospherics. And, no computers! Can you believe it!!! Thanks for the memories. I have short attention span. In those days, especially over the summer, I would watch the TV in my bedroom and the one down the hall in my older brother's bedroom, for the at home local ball team (Cubs or Sox, White, that is) and a national broadcast on channel 5 NBC ("Game of the Week"). I would have one radio on to the local pop music station (WIND, WGN, WLS, I don't remember). I would also have two other radios, one tuned to the local team that was out of town and one to a 'national' game. I would usually score the at home game. And I would also be reading a book. And during the week, the Cubs might be available, they never played night games at home. All pitchers batted and there were 8 teams in each league, including the Milwaukee Braves, New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers. Depending upon the season there was the NFL and later the AFL. The Chicago Cardinals were my favorite team. And the Bears played at Wrigley Field. Go Ollie Matson and Rick Casares! There was no basketball in Chicago and the Chicago Blackhawks' home games were never broadcast on TV. Go Stan Mikita! At 77 with multiple strokes and other happy events, I acknowledge that my memory is faulty. But that's my story and I'm sticking to it! Thank you for your efforts. May you and yours stay well and prosper.

What sim or game do you use? I'm not sure!

It's a very clever simple design.

There is one in the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa, Canada. Quite an interesting aircraft. The jet engine was a BMW if I remember well. Was it the first WW2 aircraft to have an ejection seat?

You should do a video about the me 323 gigant

what game are the visuals from, one of the IL2 series?

It was a revolutionary jet fighter but the glue used to hold it together wasn't reliable. Furthermore, the He-162 arrived too late in the war...

Thank you

Interesting !

Luftwaffe pilots are like allied infantry substituting every tank is a Tiger with every aircraft is a Thunderbolt...

I’ve been lucky enough to see two of these rare aircraft, one at the RAF Museum and the other at the Imperial War Museum.

The SALAMANDER, was built in a hurry, with a mix of wood and aluminium and the turbojet of the ME-262 which was ready. It was easy to produce and cheap, it's was very important at the end of the war. But it need more time to be well developped, unfortunatly it was the end the war, and the accident arrived very often. 320 was produced on 1945, this is an exploit in so little time !!!

What game is this footage from?

What Sim did you use to make this?

Most accounts say that the He 162 was unstable & difficult to fly except for very experienced pilots.

I remember it being stated that a top German Ace was allowed to see one of the first 162s off the line. He said it would be an excellent aircraft, small, with excellent armament, in the hands of an experienced pilot would be a fine aircraft to shoot down Allied bombers. [If the aircraft could have been manufactured to the standards and numbers that Heinkel proposed, it could have delayed the end of the war. There was even talk of giving it swept wings to increase performance a bit more.]

"Our training is restricted to 600 kts (about 360 mph) because the plywood wings are glued together and may come apart." "We lost 7 planes before we ever got off a shot at an enemy plane." "We traded in our FW-190s for THIS?"

What sim is this?

Was this created using Il-2 combat sim???

Hello again mate. Just send you by mail , link about "french " he162. Thank you to show at end of vidéo this plane with french roundels.🇲🇫 3 are used ,1 crashed. Other in display at musée de l'air Paris le bourget. In UK , seen in IWM Hendon or Duxford

I'd have expected the aircraft to be very noise with that engine immediately behind the pilot. Surprised to learn it wasn't.

I've always felt it is an aircraft that never got a fair chance. It needed time to debug and train on.

what flight sim did you use?

Many/some years ago I visited IWM in London and they had an He 162 hanging close to the balcony, to be looked at. Still an extremely "modern" looking fighter, though being planned and produced during an absurdly short time at the end of the war. Finn. Denmark

What flight-sim is this?

Excellent! Again!!!!👏

Records seem to vary somewhat but it appears that the He 162 shot down at least 6 and maybe as high as 8 Allied aircraft they lost more than that due to accidents on landing or trying to eject

This airplane looks so cool.

The Tempest pilot Spawn camping makes me sad