In July 1944, the world’s first two jet fighters began operational service. The Nazis’ Messerschmitt Me 262 was being flown by an evaluation unit, as it had been for several months, but the skies over Germany were a dangerous place, full of Allied aircraft. On 26 July 1944, test pilot Lieutenant Alfred Schreiber engaged a Royal Air Force (RAF) de Havilland Mosquito reconnaissance aircraft. Over the following weeks, the type would see increasing action even while still under development, with the first front-line unit, Kommando Nowotny, being formed in October 1944.
In July 1944 the RAF re-equipped No. 616 Squadron with the Gloster Meteor. Restricted to operations over the UK, the type was soon in use against German V-1 rockets over southern England. Only in January 1945 would they be tentatively sent to the European continent, but forbidden from crossing the front lines until that April. They would claim nearly 50 enemy aircraft by the end of World War II, but all of them on the ground during attacks on airfields. The Me 262, meanwhile, would claim over ten times as many victories in air-to-air combat.
