Bf 109 K-4

Flown first with a British engine

The most-produced fighter in history first flew with a Rolls-Royce engine. When Willy Messerschmitt and Robert Lusser’s prototype was ready in 1935, no suitable German engine existed, so the German air ministry traded Rolls-Royce a Heinkel He 70 for four Kestrel engines, and the Bf 109 V1 took off on a British V-12. [1] [3] It was built on Messerschmitt’s “lightweight construction” principle: a small airframe with few separate parts, a single main spar, and leading-edge slats that opened automatically to help it turn. The landing gear was attached to the fuselage, so the wings could be removed for servicing. [1]

Luftwaffe pilots used to open-cockpit biplanes were critical of it at first, and the Heinkel He 112 was the favourite of the service’s leaders. But the Bf 109 was faster and climbed and dived better, and when Messerschmitt’s test pilot flew spins, dives, flick rolls and tight turns in full control, the commission chose it. News that Britain had ordered the SpitfireSpitfire LF Mk IX AircraftThe elliptical-winged British fighter; the Merlin 66-powered Mark IX answered the Fw 190. into production hurried the decision. [1] In 1937 a special Bf 109 set a world speed record for landplanes of 610.95 km/h. [1]

Messer

The Bf 109 first fought in the Spanish Civil War and was the Luftwaffe’s main fighter when the Second World War began. [1] [3] Over Britain in 1940 it met the SpitfireSpitfire LF Mk IX AircraftThe elliptical-winged British fighter; the Merlin 66-powered Mark IX answered the Fw 190., which was slightly faster and more manoeuvrable but weaker at altitude; its limited fuel gave it only about 20 minutes over England, and many pilots ran dry and crashed into the Channel. [3] Its narrow undercarriage made it tricky on the ground: at least 10% of all Bf 109s were lost in take-off and landing accidents. [1]

The Allies called it the Me 109. German crews and their opponents called it Messer, short for Messerschmitt and also the German word for “knife”; Soviet pilots called it “the skinny one”. [1] It was flown by the three highest-scoring fighter pilots in history, all of Jagdgeschwader 52 on the Eastern Front, led by Erich Hartmann with 352 victories, and by Hans-Joachim Marseille, who claimed 158 in North Africa. [1] More aircraft were shot down by the Bf 109 than by any other aircraft of the war. [1]

Kurfürst: the last 109

By 1943 the Bf 109 came in a bewildering range of versions, kits and conversions that Germany could no longer afford to build and maintain. The air ministry ordered one standard model with interchangeable parts, the K series, or Kurfürst. The K-4 was the only version mass-produced. [2] Deliveries began in mid-October 1944; by the end of January 1945 about one in four Bf 109s in front-line units was a K-4. [2] With methanol-water injection it reached 710 km/h, the fastest Bf 109 of the war. Its 30 mm cannon fired through the propeller hub, though it often jammed when the pilot manoeuvred hard, leaving only the two machine guns. [2]

Some Bf 109s were built by slave labour in Nazi concentration camps. [1] After the war the type flew on: it was the first aircraft of the Israeli Air Force, Finland kept its Bf 109Gs until 1954, and Spanish-built versions served into the late 1960s. [1]