It's no wonder that the ME-262 fighter was changed to a night fighter, after all, after the introduction of jet technology in the UK, no one would have imagined that the German jet engine technology would mature rapidly.

Germany's current jet engine can almost guarantee the safety of flight. At least it won't be damaged casually, causing accidents such as crashes and deaths.

Under such a premise, the single-seat, single-engine jet fighter is more in line with the requirements and standards of the Air Force, while the twin-engine fighter is obviously defective in performance.

However, in this era, at least the twin-engine jet fighter also has an advantage, that is, the nose part of the nose part is vacated, and the radar can be installed for night combat.

However, in this case, the ME-262 fighter can only be equipped with radar and then used as a jet fighter at night.

As a result, in the process of modification, there were many troubles caused by insufficient preparation in advance, for example, the radar that could be installed on the ME-262 jet fighter did not have very good performance.

After all, today's radars are very large, and the performance of radars after compressing the volume is actually not very good. Moreover, this radar is to be installed on a fast-moving jet fighter, and the actual combat performance has yet to be tested.

Moreover, the radar of this era is not the advanced equipment of the 21st century, and it can respond to the scanned target to the pilot of the fighter plane very intuitively.

Therefore, a fighter with a radar must have a co-pilot to operate the radar, which requires a lot of space, and it is obvious that a single-seat, single-engine fighter does not have such conditions.

Unfortunately, the ME-262 does not seem to have such conditions either - it does not have low fuel consumption, and the range is not abundant. Even the size of the fuselage, in fact, cannot meet the modification.

Under such conditions, it is absolutely impossible to install a radar, carry enough firepower, and finally stuff one more person into it.

In other words, if the above conditions are met, a large amount of fuel in the aircraft will have to be cut, and the result is that the range of the ME-262 will be greatly reduced, and it will truly become a veritable "airport protector".

After taking off, it can only climb as fast as it can, and then when it reaches a sufficient altitude, it can only fight, and then it has to face no fuel......

Obviously, such a combat procedure was not what the Luftwaffe wanted, and it was almost the same as the effectiveness of firing an anti-aircraft rocket, but the rocket was a hundred times cheaper.

So, the end result of the experiment was to convert the ME-262 into a larger aircraft, increasing the size by 30 percent.

The engine is the same model as the Raven, which can carry more fuel and can carry heavy firepower.

After such a modification, the ME-262 has undergone noticeable changes. The first is that the nose part is equipped with an Yagi antenna, unlike the previous installation of multiple large-caliber cannons.

This radar antenna can guide the ME-262 to the target at the fastest speed and launch the most effective interception.

In the process of interception, the jet fighter will give full play to the advantages of speed and climb, easily approach the target group, and gain a position advantage.

The modified ME-262 will then strafe the target with an aviation rocket mounted on the wing, and one aircraft can carry 6 rockets of the same type.

By disrupting the formation of enemy night bombers with these rockets, the ME-262 fighters were able to take out the enemy planes that had lost cover with four 20 mm cannons mounted in the wings.

This modification allowed the cannon that was originally in the nose to be moved to the wing, on the one hand, to make room for radar placement, and on the other hand, to move the cannon that had to be moved back to the rear of the cab.

After all, when firing at night, the light will affect the pilot's vision, so all the weapons of the night fighter must be placed behind the pilot.

The modified ME-262 also has a radar operator's position in the fuselage, except that this position has only a narrow porthole, and there is hardly anything outside.

This is partly because the radar operator doesn't need to look at the outside at all, and partly because he really can't see anything at night.

So in order to protect the strength of the fuselage and also increase the protection of the radar operator, the improved ME-262 night fighter, the radar crew lies almost on his back in the fuselage.

Apparently this is not ergonomic, with a pronounced wartime coping style. But no one cares about this little detail at all.

The ME-262 night fighter does not need to fly in the sky all the time, and according to the speed at which it can fly more than 800 kilometers per hour, it can fly in the sky for more than 2 hours at most before running out of fuel.

So even if the pilot is not comfortable, he only needs to endure 2 hours of cruising time, and that's it.

Later generations of MiG-15 fighters, as well as F-86 fighters, were actually not very comfortable, including the later MiG-17, as well as MiG-21 and other aircraft, did not make any compromises for the comfort of pilots.

The United States was not much more advanced in this regard, and it was not until after the end of the Vietnam War that the F-16 generation of fighters entered service, which can be regarded as a precedent for comfort considerations.

Of course, after such a change, the official service time of the ME-262 fighter has also been greatly delayed.

The already mature ME-262 was enlarged in a circle, then increased the thrust of the launch, and sacrificed some of its performance, and finally became a mediocre night interceptor fighter.

In fact, its advantages are not much, at least compared with the full-fledged JU-88 night interceptor fighter, its technical advantages are actually very average.

The only impetus behind this project is the prospect of jet fighters and the slightly more beautiful data.

Sometimes, when a new technology is just getting wilder, it doesn't really have many performance benefits.

It's as if in the beginning, computers may not be as fast as abacus - but with the development of technology, there is no longer any comparison between the two sides.

Either way, Germany made a great leap forward this time, and the jet fighter and the night jet fighter were developed together.

What's even more gratifying is that the performance of both aircraft is not bad, at least not as reliable as the real historical ME-262.

It was a real plane that had not crashed in as many "widow makers" as its own accidents, the "ace killers" in the mouth of German pilots, and it was a pit plane that specialized in killing his own aces......

At least now, it seems that both the ME-262, a night bomber, and the new day fighter such as the Raven, are gradually maturing.