re: History in Pictures is a great twitter feed. Here is one just posted.

quote:

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Tons of respect for this man, but he is the first person I've heard say anything good about the He-162.

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I think that's a case of people repeating what they hear. You know, how everyone will tell you the P-40 was a terrible fighter - even though it remained in production until 1944 and the Japanese had tons of respect for it. Once a bad reputation gets out, it is hard to undo.

Much of the reputation probably came from Adolf Galland's opposition to the airplane - but he didn't oppose it from a technical standpoint. He opposed it because he felt it would take resources away from the 262 program.

Anyhow, the French used captured examples of the He-162 as an introductory jet trainer (something it most definitely was not) for most of 1947-1948 and only suffered a single accident.

It was a fast, agile, fighter with good visibility and said to be a stable gun platform. Given even 6 months more of development, it would have been a terror.

The design wasn't copied more for the same reason the 262 design wasn't. As good as those early models were, jet fighter technology (particularly engines) advanced so rapidly they were quickly rendered obsolete.