[Windflier]

One of my neighbors (he passed away several years ago) was a waist gunner on a B-17 over Europe. He and the nose gunner combined to down an Me-262. Unfortunately, on their next mission another 262 got them.

It's amazing to me that they even got the first one. Those things flew faster than anything they'd ever seen.

[Stonewall Jackson]

Both incidents occurred in late 1944, so the jets involved were from Kommando Nowotny, the experimental squadron tasked with developing jet combat tactics. The squadron downed 22 Allied aircraft but lost 15 jets in combat and 11 others to operational accidents.

By early 1945, the Germans had vastly improved their jet tactics and managed to achieve a more than 4:1 kill ratio during the last three months of the war.