![]() Wegmann was jubilant and started to transmit his victory to home base when a stream of enemy fire struck his jet, splattering his canopy, tossing instruments from their panels, and studding his plane with bullet holes. Entering combat two years later, the versatile turbojet aircraft conducted reconnaissance, night fighting, and bombing missions. ![]() German engineers and technicians work on an Me 262 prototype in 1942. That was when Wegmann spotted another formation of enemy bombers and swung around to take a pass at them with his MK 108 “machine cannons.” He swooped in from astern and came within 600 yards of one bomber before opening up with a staccato of fire that ripped away the cowling from one of the target’s engines. The squadron then scattered for the homeward flight. The scores of rockets created devastation, with bits of aircraft, smoke, and flame erupting from the formation of bombers. He and his two wingmen fired their R4M rockets into one tight formation of some 60 Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers from a distance of 3,000 feet. Wegmann led his squadron in a loose formation toward the incoming bombers. ![]() It was the last great air battle of the European war, one that would be a final, deadly encounter for many American flyers and nearly so for Oberleutnant Gunther Wegmann, commander of Jagdgeschwader 7’s 9th Squadron of Me 262 jets. That March 18, 1945, raid on Berlin included more than 1,220 Allied bombers and scores of North American P-51 Mustang fighters contending with heavy German flak and tangling with fast-flying German Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighters employing air-to-air rockets operationally for the first time. 457th Bomber Group first assembled in the early morning sunlight over faraway London. ![]() The Germans knew the bombers were coming, and they prepared even as the U.S. ![]()
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