Walter Nowotny was a person to prove Me-262 is much better and usefull as a fighter not a bomber. He was commander of III/JG6 or “Kommando Nowotny”.

Flying Me-262 Nowotny claimed on 3 air victories, 2 of them on the 8th of November, when during the flight against bombers he crashed. Exact details of his death are still unknown. He reported about two shot down planes (probably B-24 and P-51), afterwards it was unreadable, something like “he is burning” or “I’m burning”. Ground control confirmed they see Me-262A-1 has dived out of the clouds vertically down with its engines burning. Later it was found that Nowotny tried to jump out on about 300-400 meters altitude, but his parachute was hooked by the plane tail.

During the Kommando Nowotny lifetime (26 September - 9 November) they took down 22 allied aircrafts, 4 victories weren’t confirmed officially. The own losses were: 26 Me-262 out of total 30, 6 pilots died, including Nowotny and two squadron commanders. Pure combat losses were about 30% of the number (most of them during take-off and landing process), everything else was the result of technical promblems (usually engines problems) or pilots mistakes.

After Nowotny death idea to use Me-262 as a fighter became very unpopular again till the moment Adolf Galland created his own group.