Because it became known that the easiest time to shoot them down was during landing and taking off procedures, let to squadrons of Focke-Wulf 190D to fly aircraft protection roles over the airfields, thus taking these valuable 190Ds away from protecting the  skies from Allied bombers. This particular 262 was used operationally in the defence of Berlin in the early months of 1945. At that time by the Kommando Stamp. Eventually this Kommando was altered to Kommando Welter in honour of its top scoring pilot, Oberleutnant Kurt Welter. This unit later officially changed name yet again to Nachtjaggeschwader 11 Staffel 10. They were stationed at Burg-bei-Magdeburg and this is where it was captured at the end of hostilities. As was done with many other captured German aircraft, it was moved to the Central Flying Establishment for flying trials and here some of the original equipment and instruments were removed and replaced by British flying instruments.

Some of these instruments and British lettering are still found in the cockpit today. In 1947 it was shipped to SA and was donated to the museum only a few years later. At first it was kept in a hanger at Central Flying School, Dunnottar, where it was left to deteriorate until it was eventually restored at the South African Museum of Military History in Saxonwold. This aircraft was fitted with 16 flare signal tubes on the port side of the rear fuselage for the firing of coloured recognition signals. These flares were also used to immediately switch on flare paths during the night when they came into land, because of the already mentioned threat of ever lurking night fighters over the German aerodromes. These aerodromes were normally kept dark right until the final stages of landing in order to conceal the location of the airfields. The example in the museum is known as “Red-8” and has a non-standard colour scheme, possibly because of the fact that as many other German units, Staffel 10 of NJG-11 was forced to use make-shift airfields towards the end of the hostilities, and they had to park their aircraft between the trees to hide them from daylight intruding aircraft. They are thus not standard as seen on the other known 262 aircraft. In Ron Belling's book "Military Aviation in South Africa", he mentions that he was able to examine and note the colouring as early as 1955. At that time he said that it was finished in a bright green and brown mottle which did not correspond to the soft blue-grey (RLM 76) with purple-grey (RLM 75) mottle, as was used for later night fighters. The upper surfaces also appeared to have a satin sheen to the light green (RLM 83) on the flying surfaces of the wings and horizontal stabilizers. The fuselage and vertical tail surfaces first had an undercoat of (RLM 76), which by that time appeared to have faded to a yellowish colour as noted in the Imperial War Museum on the ME 110 that belonged to Rudolph Hess. Over the (RLM76) a fine mottle of (RLM 83) and brown violet (RLM 81) were applied. Ron Belling states that the RLM 83 contained a stronger yellow constituent which changed the RLM to a yellow colour, but it is quite possible that it was a fading of the RLM 76 to yellow colouring, as has been described by numerous authors. The underside of the aircraft was matt-black and the black turbine nacelles were green (RLM 82) on the upper surfaces forward of the leading edge.

The serial no was 305 and it was painted on the nose in white and it had a white outlined red 8 roughly painted with a slight forward slope at about the edge of the wing anterior to the cockpit on the fuselage. At the time the insignia was changed but on the recent 262 restoration project they were replaced by the black outline cross on the fuselage with no white in the centre, and the swastika on the vertical fin. On the underside the Balkenkreuz was white. The 262 at the museum was restored to the colours as noted by Ron Belling after it had spurious colours for many years. To date it still looks in mint condition, with no fading since it was housed under a roof for many years. With the current expansions to SA Museum of Military History completed during 2005, this historic Me262 as an only example finally received a place indoors.

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