'Red 8' operated with Kurt Welter's 10./NJG II at Magdeburg. The Me-262 night fighter at Jobur Museum is called Red 8.
I think that Red 8 was piloted by Welter. I E-mailed the Museum where Red 8 stand in Joburg and I will post what they said and will come back to you.
Read this.
Not more than fifteen of the trainers were built before the Luftwaffe identified an even greater need, an aircraft which could combat the growing number of RAF Mosquito night fighters which were roaming the night skies of the Reich with impunity preying on German night fighters like the Ju-88, Bf-110, and He-219. This quest led to the impressive Me-262B-1a/U1 night fighter, fitted with FuG-218 Neptun long-wavelength search radar and its attendant Hirschgeweih (Stag antlers) antennae as well as Naxos centimetric-radar-homing gear that detected the H2S radar scanners of RAF bombers. The Hirschgeweih slowed the aircraft down but it was still faster than the Mosquito. . The type was put through trials in October 1944 by the well-known Hajo Hermann and during the following winter, Kurt Welter, head of Kommando Stamp, used Me-262A-1a day fighters for Wilde Sau (Wild Boar) tactics , a type of visual night fighting done in conjunction with ground-based searchlights, and in April the unit obtained a few of the Me-262B-1a/U1 night-fighter variants. Despite all the difficulties, Welter claimed 20 kills, making him one of the first jet aces and likely the highest-scoring jet ace in all history. By the end of the war, Messerschmitt was working on a prototype of the improved Me-262B-2a night fighter with a longer fuselage, increased fuel capacity, and most importantly Berlin centimetric radar, with improved range and resolutions and a dish hidden in the nose, instead of the clumsy and drag-inducing Hirschgeweih of the long-wavelength radar.
This comes from
www.studenten.net/customasp/ axl/profile.asp?cat_id=10&ple_id=97 - 42k.
Here are a few pictures of how she looks today from triplane.net
Henk
