Me or Bf 109?

Just for the sake of clearing my curiosity.

Alfonso

--------------------------------
Alfonso,

The Me-109 and Bf-109 are the same airplane, the model 109 fighter designed
by Willi Messerschmidt in the early 1930s.

You will often see this plane referred to as the Bf-109, in reference to the
Bayerische Flugzeugwerke (the aviation arm of the Bayerische Motorenwerke,
or BMW), which was the factory that initially produced the 109.

However, BF produced only about 300 airplanes before Messerschmidt, whose
company was in the ascendancy at the beginning of the war, took over BF and
greatly expanded production. Over 33,000 Me-109s were produced by
Messerschmidt.

The Bf-109 designation seems to have stuck due to a curious little battle of
personalities between Messerschmidt and a Nazi government official who was
in charge of war procurement. There was bad blood between these two men and
the official insisted on designating the airplane as the Bf-109 in the
official paperwork.

Thus we have the situation that the airplane is interchangeably referred to
as both the Bf-109 and the Me-109. Both are correct, but Me-109 is
considered the correct designation by the pilots who actually flew the plane
and that's what counts, in my book.

Here's a good little article about the Me-109:

http://www.chuckhawks.com/me-109.htm

There are more articles by Chuck Hawks about a number of WW2 fighters here:

http://www.chuckhawks.com/index3.naval_military_history.htm


Regards,

Gordon.


The Rotary Engine NewsLetter. Powered by Linux.
ACRE NL web site. http://www.rotaryeng.net
Copyright 1998-2006 All world wide rights reserved.