Another excerpt - Heinkel 162

[warshipbuilder]

Of interest in this excerpt it how often these guys did their recon. Like the previous incident, this one took place in April 1945.

Longley had gone off again on an armed reconnaisance with one of our sections. When helanded we heard that they had met - but this time they had shot it down - another extraordinary aircraft.

He told me that, as they flew along a stretch of the Berlin-Hamburg autobahn that was in course of construction, jut where it hugged the shore of Neu-Ruppin lake they had seen a plane just over the water. The plane with its undercart and flaps down, seemed about to land on the autobahn. In spite of the flak, Longley had shot it down.

It was a Henikel 162, or 'Volksjaeger;, jet propelled. This seemed to confirm repoerts we had of the mass production of He 162s in underground factories near Neu-Ruppin. But up till now nobody had understood how these planes were tested. The only airfield near by was the one at Rupping itself, and care had been taken to bomb it and make it unusable. In addition, the bi-weekly photo cover had never once in the last three months revealed the presence of a single aircraft on this field.

We now had proof that a section of the autobahn three miles long and sixty yards wide and perfectly straight, was being used as a trial runway. The machines were probably parked in camouflaged shelters in the woods on either side of the autobahn.

Life was full of surprises. The Jerries had succeeded in turning Germany into a regular conjurer's shop.