That might be true, but have in mind that you have to see the overall context, especially what kind of pilots flew them - and what was their previous role.
The transitioning process for (trained) single engine fighter pilots was rather easy, the main part was to learn how to fly a twin engine fighter in case of an engine failure of one them.
The pilots of II./KG 51 (J) flew 410s before, so it was even easier.
The pilots of KG 54 (J) had no problems with the aircraft, but they lacked the aggressiveness and skill of fighter pilots as they were formally bomber pilots. That’s why most published combat losses were allocated to them.
Whilst agree in general you might consider that historical accuracy and wt are two seperate things - and wt game play is purely fictional and not even remotely somewhere near irl scenarios.
So if untrained pilots drag props way too low in BRs (like P-51 H-5) and they do the same with Cold War jets you have exactly the current BR set up.
On top of that wt sets BRs still partly based on potential firepower and not if you are actually able to bring guns on target.
So if the majority of pilots are unable to avoid turnfights and the guns of the 262s are hard to use you have the situation that the British Meteor F 3 sits even higher in BR - despite it is technically seen the inferior aircraft.
It boils down that you need an US premium version of 262 A-1a to lower the BR:
Whilst i see your point i think the fellow players asking for a lower BR have some valid points. I would even argue that the necessary adaption of play style from prop to jet is especially for the fellow German players artificially hampered as the age and technology gaps to other 7.0 and 7.3 jets (except Meteor F 3) is far too large.
I mean if you have watched some vids on yt regarding the 9.3 F-104 A you might agree that the played nation decides if a plane is able to dominate a BR or not. Gaijin decided to push Korean war era jets lower just to avoid an uptier of the 104.
The imho decisive top speed difference of a 262 A-1a to a fast 5.3 or 5.7 fighter is within the range of the top speed difference of a 4.7 F8F or a 4.3 Wyvern (both at certain altitudes) in a full downtier. Same as a P-51 H-5 to an A6M5 Ko with around 240 kmph top speed difference.
But - if i see 776 kmph for the H-5 and 870 kmph for the 262 A-1a - where is the problem to have the same BR? All the Mustang pilot has to do is to drain the energy of the 262 - like every other pilot in a slower plane…
To my knowledge, the Meteor F3 is an outright superior plane to the Me 262, largely due to significantly increased engine power. It was the Meteors F1 and F2 that were inferior to the 262, and in my opinion these should be added somewhere in the 6.3-6.7 bracket alongside the early Me 262s. This BR suggestion for them is based on their engines, as while they were historically noted as being more manoeuvrable than the 262, we don’t know how Gaijin would implement that.
Can you fight the He 162? The majority of players seem to think it’s a hard plane to fly and an easy plane to beat (through frustrating to fight). The Me 262 would be very much of the same, but with somewhat better performance and thus somewhat higher BR.
Personally I love the He 162, but it’s absolutely balanced where it is. The pilot has to fly extremely cautiously to fight the enemy, and you can’t carry a game in it unless the enemy is mentally challenged.
This is how the Me 262 would play at 6.7, as it would be outturned, likely outclimbed, and often outgunned by enemy superprops (when you factor in muzzle velocity). Any time it turned to face a prop it would make itself a huge target, and against .50 cals and anything larger it almost always loses all functionality of at least one engine or wingroot (which is admittedly how it should be).
Maybe you mix it up with the 2 1948 prototypes called Sea Meteor F 3 sitting somehow at the same BR of 7.3?
Whilst i agree to your claim regarding engine power - have in mind that the thrust increase was just about 20% from the F 1 to the final version of the F 3. The increase from the F 1 to the 1948 Sea Meteor F 3 is about 70% - and it is still slower than a 1944 Me 262.
The technical inferiority i claimed was based on the design and aerodynamics in itself (swept wings), used engine concept (axial flow) and the most decisive performance feature of a jet: Top speed including way higher critical Mach numbers.
So imho you are not wrong about your claim regarding the game setup wt can offer (and how planes are used by their players) that the F 3 performs better in wt, but irl manoeuvrability was not decisive - otherwise A6Ms would have won the war in the Pacific. Same as the ability to bring guns on target (including range and ballistics) - decisive in wt, secondary irl.
Edit: After a longer search i found no evidence that F 2 versions were produced or saw service. If you really want to add two Meteor versions i would recommend the F 1 and a F 3 (early) version as they had the same (and compared to the final F 3 version) weaker engines.
Iirc the top speed of the F 1 was about 660 - 670 kmph…
Have a good one!
Edit: Despite it is almost irrelevant within this context i tried to research the total number of Meteors put into WW 2 service. It looks like that i was unable to find any reliable data how many Meteors in which version were provided to No 616 squadron RAF. Even their armed reconnaissance sorties over the Low Countries and their 46 ground kills speak either just about 4 aircraft or “the squadron” and is not telling any numbers.
As i direct result it is for me totally unclear if the RAF actually used the F 3 as presented in wt (with the mentioned 20% thrust increase) before VE day or not as the production numbers were very low and the first 15 aircraft had the weaker engines of the F 1 version and therefore obviously a much slower top speed than the 780 kmph of the implemented F 3 version.
To be fair it was also thanks to doctrines and such that allowed us to learn the flaws of the A6M5, good thing the pilot meant to shoot the Aleutian didn’t destroy it as he believed the pilot of this craft was still alive, rip to that guy but still a weird happy and sad accident.
I don’t fully know what your point is. I did not say or imply that the two were the same plane. I’m comparing two German early jets from around the same time period that would fight in roughly the same BR bracket if the 262 were lowered. Seeing how the He 162 performs at 6.0 is not a bad way to start thinking about how the Me 262 might perform at 6.7.
Let me sum up what everyone is saying.
The Me-262 would dominate the playing field. MOVIES do not accurately depict how much pain it was to engage a 262 and at best have a couple of seconds to shoot one down. Oh, wait. That rarely actually happened.
The majority were US pilots destroying them while the German pilots were preparing to land on their airstrips. This applies to the Me-163 as well.
Neither is going to be placed on a BR where it is fighting aircraft that cannot match the 262. If you want that go play sim, where the odds are less likely.
Maybe if it was 6.3, but not at 6.7. If the F-84B can be 7.0 with an airspawn, the Me-262 can be 6.7 without one (it also has worse flight performance than the F-84B).
We’re not talking about movies and real life. We’re talking about War Thunder, where third person camera, lack of G-force consequences, and various other factors make BnZ significantly less important (in that it isn’t completely dominant) than real life. The Me 262 will be significantly easier to shoot down in-game than in real life.
I have to ask if you’ve ever played the Me 262 or the He 162 (which, while not the topic of this discussion, is very relevant to the overall question here). The only manner in which it can even remotely compete against aircraft at its current battle rating is if the enemy pilot is completely braindead. It fully relies on the enemy’s incompetence, and we tend to call planes like that bad for their BR.
As for what everyone saying, if I scroll up in the discussion I see a pretty significant portion of people either agreeing with the BR decrease or giving the idea its full due. Most of the people who are vehemently opposed are complaining due to the basic idea of putting a jet against props, and I’m going to wager a guess that they’re overestimating the capabilities of the Me 262 in game because they’ve only played the other early jets that actually have functioning engines.
If you put any of the Me 262s current opposition at 6.7, then they would be incredibly overpowered. The Me 262 is so massively outclassed that this is not the case if you pit it against props.
Yeah. How it is the same BR and the F80A or F84B is wild. One of those has an airspawn(which should be removed, it ruins that BR bracket), the other is just better performing. The Me-262 has all the bad qualities of an F84 but with none of the good stuff, and it doesn’t have an airspawn either.
He-162s aren’t hard to face and it’s only slightly worse than the Me-262.
Me-262s are just overtiered, and anyone who has played them would agree(or their opposition is undertiered which is also true).
I’ve recently got the pleasure of witnessing a Me262 in a full-downtier F3H-2 match in ARB.
Why is there a 8.0 Me262. What is it doing fighting missile jets. Why.
A late WW2 experimental aircraft should never have to fight a plane with radar missiles from 1956. At least the hortons and Me262s shouldn’t.
(Just don’t make props fight the Me163 in ARB. That thing is very annoying given the short matches, at least in sim you can just… hit the bricks and watch it fall out of the sky if it keeps chasing you).
That’s a good portion of my argument here. The vast majority of people I’ve seen discuss the He-162 either consider it easy to kill or annoying to fight, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone think it’s overpowered or anything . I think it’s pretty good, personally.
So if the He 162, with what is, to my knowledge, the same engine or very similar to the Me 262, is widely considered fine at 6.0, then what would make the Me 262 overpowered at 6.7? I think it is pretty evident that the Me 262 should not be fighting most jets from two years after it, let alone ten. When you’re talking about ww2 aviation, that time gap makes a big difference in technology, considering most major advancements happened more on the scale of 3-6 months for aircraft during ww2.
