Consider the Me323 Gigant, the largest plane of the war. With a wing span of 180 feet, it would not be dwarfed by a jumbo jet. Originally designed as a bizarre cargo glider, it was later fitted with six massive 1140hp engines, and began service as a heavy lift transport. It served extensively in North Africa and Russia, and was eyed with a bit of trepidation by crew and transportees. Indeed, the lumbering beasts were slow, easy targets; and when transporting fuel drums, could occasionally be turned into flying bombs. Still, as the heaviest payload-carrier that an often-beseiged Wehrmacht had to rely on, the arrival of a flight of Gigants often turned the morale of the troops on the ground, if not those aboard.
A slightly more successful Messerschmitt endeavor was the Me262, the world's first operational jet fighter. The Luftwaffe could have had this plane in decent numbers as early as 1943, were it not for Hitler's insistence on developing it as a bomber. When it finally did take to the skies in defense of the Reich, it was well-nigh unstoppable. Some argue today that it was too fast, too unpredictable, too uncontrollable. But the men who flew them and the men who shot at them from the Flying Fortresses knew different. They knew in an instant that this plane had changed everything, and it had. It did nothing less than usher in the jet age.
If the 262 was a few years ahead of its time, then the Me163 Komet was decades ahead. Here was a rocket-propelled single-seat attack craft, sporting cannon and machine guns, tasked to take one or two near-supersonic strafing attacks at the bomber formations, then glide back to earth and land on a retractable skid. The single centerline-mounted rocket motor was fueled by a volatile mixture of two toxic compounds, known as T-stoff and C-stoff. There were occasional unexplained explosions, such as the one that claimed the life of the top Komet ace. Like so many German advances which served the Nazis little but later science much, the Komet cannot be counted as military success. But in inspiring cutting-edge experimental aircraft for the next 4 decades, the little Komet must be seen as another Messerschmitt coup.
