COBI Messerschmitt Me262 A-1a Set 5721

COBI's Messerschmitt Me 262 A-1a is built from 390 blocks, with a pilot figure, a brick display stand and a printed nameplate. All markings are printed; the set contains no stickers.

The engines were the problem, not the politics

The usual explanation for the Me 262 arriving too late is that Hitler insisted on a bomber version. That happened, and it cost months. The larger reason was metallurgy.

A jet turbine runs red-hot and turns at enormous speed, and the blades need alloys containing nickel and chromium to survive it. Germany by 1943 had almost none of either. Junkers built the Jumo 004's turbine blades from sheet steel with an aluminium coating and hollow interiors for air cooling — an ingenious workaround that produced an engine lasting around 10 to 25 hours before overhaul.

A piston engine of the period ran for hundreds. That is the difference between a weapon and a demonstration: an aircraft whose engines need replacing every couple of weeks cannot be operated in numbers, however good it is in the air — and in the air it was very good indeed, credited with around 900 kills for roughly 100 losses.

The aircraft in this set

The markings are those of the Me 262 flown by Hans Guido Mutke, who in the last days of the war flew to Switzerland and was interned. The machine eventually came home and is now in the Deutsches Museum in Munich.

Mutke claimed for decades that during a steep dive in April 1945 he had exceeded the speed of sound, which would put him ahead of Chuck Yeager by two years. Aerodynamicists have never accepted it — the airframe would probably not have survived, and the instruments of the period could not have measured it reliably. The claim is part of the aircraft's story even though the evidence is against it.

Specifications

Pieces: 390 · Figures: 1 pilot · No stickers · Display stand and nameplate included