June 25, 2024

Today in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, I’ll be flying the most iconic German fighter plane of World War II, the Messerschmitt Bf 109.

Willy Messerschmitt was born in Frankfurt in 1898. As a teenager, he became friends with Friedrich Harth, a leading German pioneer in gliders. Before and after they both served in World War I, the older man encouraged Willy to design his own glider aircraft.

In 1927, Messerschmitt joined the Bayerische Flugzuegwerke (BFW – Bavarian Aircraft Works), based in Augsburg, as their chief designer. However, several of the early powered aircraft he designed proved crash-prone. This led to the company’s bankruptcy in 1931, and the long-lasting enmity of the then-head of the German airline Lufthansa, Erhard Milch.

BFW managed to reorganize and survive. However, when the Nazis took power, and Milch took over as head of development for the new Luftwaffe (German air force), he tried to freeze Messerschmitt out completely from the competition for new warplane contracts.

When in 1934 the Luftwaffe invited several German companies to submit designs for a new, single-seat, monoplane fighter, BFW initially was excluded. But competing factions in the Air Ministry made sure that Messerschmitt did get the chance to enter.

Ultimately, the competition came down to Willy’s design versus a prototype from his arch-rival, Heinkel. Messerschmitt won and, to Milch’s chagrin, the Bf 109 was ordered into production.

As it so happened, when the first Bf 109s rolled off the assembly line in 1937, the perfect proving ground had emerged. General Francisco Franco had rebelled against Spain’s left-leaning Republican government, and asked Hitler for military support. German Luftwaffe pilots were given the chance to “volunteer” to fly for Franco in Spain as part of the Condor Legion.

At first, the German pilots flew older planes that were outclassed by the newer aircraft the Soviets had supplied the Spanish Republicans. But once the first Bf 109s were delivered, they found it far superior and soon came to dominate the air.

I’m flying over one of the Condor Legion’s most famous targets, the town of Guernica in the Basque region of northern Spain. On April 26, 1937, German bombers laid waste to the town center. Bf 109s provided air cover for the raid, and later came back to strafe ground targets.

Later that year, Pablo Picasso painted his famous “Guernica” to commemorate the death and destruction. Along with bombing attacks on Shanghai that August, Guernica introduced a shocked world to the potentially devasting impact of aerial warfare on civilian cities.

The Condor Legion was so dominant in the skies that the Bf 109s were able to turn their attention to strafing runs, providing close air support for Franco’s forces to advance.

By early 1939, Franco’s Nationalists had won their civil war, and Germany had a solid corps of pilots with combat experience – and the confidence to match it. They were the elite, with the best warplanes in the world, and they knew it.

When Charles Lindbergh flew the Bf 109 on a visit to Germany in 1938, it convinced him that the German air force was unbeatable, and the U.S. should stay out of any war in Europe – a conclusion that made him into one of the country’s most outspoken “isolationists”.

Some of the lessons learned in Spain, however – like the ability to continue relying on hand signals rather than radios, or the low priority placed on night flying – would come back to haunt Bf 109 pilots when they came up against tougher foes.

Fast forward to the summer of 1940. We’re at a German-controlled airfield outside of Calais, on the French side of the English Channel. Hitler has invaded Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, and Belgium with relative ease. France has just surrendered. Britain stands alone.

Before going any further, let’s take a closer look at this machine we’re flying. Messerschmitt built the all-metal Bf 109 to be small, light, and fast.

Despite being almost as long (just over 29 feet, from nose to tail) as the Spitfire it would battle over Britain, the Bf 109 had smaller wings, which spanned 32 feet 7 inches (versus almost 37 feet) and a wing area of 172.8 sq ft. (versus 242.1 sq ft). It was also just 8.5 feet tall, compared to almost 11.5 feet for the Spitfire.

The Bf 109 was noticeably smaller than the bulkier, American-made P-40s it would face – and often outclass – in North Africa, which had a wingspan of almost 37 feet and a wing area of 263 sq feet.

Nevertheless, the Bf 109 featured an engine at least a powerful as its larger foes. By 1940, the Bf 109-E (dubbed “Emil”) sported a Daimler Benz DB601 inverted 12-cylinder piston engine, producing upwards of 1,085hp. Because the engine is inverted, or upside down, the exhaust outlets run lower on the nose than similar British or American planes. The circular device jutting out behind and above them on the plane’s left side is the air inlet for the supercharger.

The tail, which is where a German pilot displayed his kills, is rather small. As we’ll see, this made it hard to counter all the torque produced by the powerful engine, on taxi or takeoff. In earlier versions than this, the horizontal stabilizers were so fragile they had to be supported by struts.

The Bf 109’s landing gear are attached to the fuselage. This meant the wings could easily be detached from the standing plane for maintenance. But it also gave the Bf 109 a very narrow wheel base, even narrower than the Spitfire’s, for takeoffs and landings.

Arming the Bf 109 was a challenge. Originally, it was designed to only have two machine guns over the nose, shooting through the propeller. When the Germans discovered that the British Hurricane would have eight guns, four in each wing, Messerschmitt wracked his brains to accommodate more weapons, since the wings were too light and thin to follow suit.

One solution was to add a cannon firing explosive shells through a hollow propeller shaft. The later G (Gustav) model I’m flying here has this, along with “beule” (bumps) to accommodate heavier machine guns on the nose. But by 1940, the kinks in this approach hadn’t been worked out, and the Emils that fought in the Battle of Britain typically had one additional machine gun or cannon on each wing, with an elaborate belt mechanism that fed them ammunition (which wouldn’t fit) from the fuselage.

While he would have flown an Emil, the markings on the Bf 109 show it belongs to Adolf Galland, who in July and early August 1940 was the commander of III Gruppe, Jagdgeschwader (JG) 26, based at Caffiers. A Gruppe had 40-50 planes organized into three squadrons (Staffel).

Galland, now age 28, had flown open-cockpit ground attack planes for the Condor Legion in Spain and the Luftwaffe in Hitler’s invasion of Poland. An early crash as a student pilot left him with glass fragments in his eye, and that may have been why he asked to transfer to the closed-cockpit Bf 109 before the Nazis invaded France.

The canopy of the Bf 109 opened on a hinge to the right. Although the cockpit wasn’t pressurized, this meant that unlike most Allied fighters, the canopy couldn’t be opened in flight, unless it was completely jettisoned.

It was flown using a center stick, and it’s worth noting that the instruments are all in metric (kilometers per hour for airspeed, meters for altitude) which takes a little getting used to. The large round instrument in the panel’s center is the artificial horizon.

To the pilot’s right are the circuit breaker buttons for the electrical systems, and the blue-colored oxygen supply – a necessity where combat often took place, or at least started, close to the Bf 109’s maximum ceiling of 39,000 feet.

On the left is the throttle, the landing gear buttons, the tail wheel lock, and (at the bottom), two hand wheels that can be turned simultaneously to adjust flaps and trim.

Two instruments are worth special mention. The gauge labeled “ATA” give manifold pressure, not in units of mercury, but in atmospheres. Since the engine is off, it shows the ambient air pressure of one standard atmosphere. Below it, in the center, is a clock-like instrument that shows propeller pitch. The Bf 109’s variable pitch prop can be adjusted manually, but usually set to be regulated automatically. Every “hour” the “clock” advances indicates a 6-degree increase in pitch.

Engine start-up relies on an inertia starter, and is surprisingly a matter of just pushing the right buttons for the right length of time. The strong torque of the engine, the small rudder, and the narrow wheelbase all make it very difficult to turn right while taxing, and all too easy to swing left.

When you do finally position yourself for takeoff, you have to put in full right rudder, make sure the tailwheel is locked and increase power gradually. The Bf 109 has a known tendency to veer hard to the left, and it led to a lot of deadly accidents.

After the tail rises, it’s safe to increase throttle to full power – about 1.4 atmospheres on the manifold pressure gauge. Even seasoned test pilots remarked how wobbly the Bf 109 could be on takeoff, and how easily it could tip off balance on its narrow landing gear.

Once it’s airborne however, they noted, it suddenly becomes a bird and is much easier to handle – though it still has a tendency to roll if you’re not attentive.

After the fall of France, Hitler’s eyes turned to Britain. He expected the British to surrender, but to ensure that, he had to be prepared either to invade or bomb it into submission. Both would require Luftwaffe fighters to establish air superiority across the Channel.

To gain that superiority – tactically, as well as strategically – I’ve entered a steep climb to gain as much altitude as possible by the time I reach the British coastline. The higher I can get, the greater advantage I have over the British fighters, alerted by radar, that will take off to meet me.

The Bf 109 has a climb rate of just over 3,000 feet per minute, faster than the British Spitfires and Hurricanes. But it slows the higher you get, and I found it a challenge to get much higher than 26,000 feet in the brief, 10-minute crossing of the Channel. I could circle to gain more altitude, but that would expend precious fuel.

Werner Molders, a friend of Galland’s who served with him in the Condor Legion, and commanded JG51 in the Battle of Britain, was instrumental in developing new tactics for the high-speed Bf 109, which fighter pilots continue to use to this day.

In particular, he devised the highly flexible “Finger Four” formation, consisting of two pairs of wingmen. The job of each wingman was to protect his partner, watching his back, as he pursued an enemy airplane and took his shot.

I’ve always wondered about the gray-pattern camouflage on the Bf 109. Flying over the English coast, I can see how it could be quite effective when viewed from an enemy above.

But we don’t want to be the prey, we want to be the predator. That means staying as high as possible, and keeping our eyes peeled for British fighters climbing up from their bases below and getting the jump on them.

When we do spot some unsuspecting fighters, we’ll dive onto them from on high – ideally with the blinding sun behind us. Many British pilots reported being blindsided by just such an attack, with Me 109s hitting them like a bolt from the blue.

I said Me 109, and that’s not a mistake. To the British, the Bf 109s were either “Messerschmitts” or “Me 109s” – a designation that Willy himself preferred. In 1938, BFW was renamed after its most famous designer, and future planes received the prefix “Me” instead of “Bf”, and even Luftwaffe documents began referring to the Me 109.

We’ll keep calling it the Bf 109, for consistency. One advantage it had over the Spitfire was a fuel injected engine, which enabled it to go straight into a negative-G dive. The Spitfire had a floating carburetor, which until they devised a fix, caused it to lose power in negative Gs, forcing the pilot to roll inverted or sideways first in order to dive, costing precious seconds.

It’s very easy to overspeed the Bf 109 in a dive. Officially, the maximum speed in 850 km/hr, or 459 knots. But you can feel it begin to shake over 700 km/hr. It also takes some time to pull out of a dive. If you wait too long, you can easily plow into the ground – or at least undershoot your opponent.

The Bf 109, with a top speed of 350 mph in level flight, definitely outclassed the slower Hurricane, which tried to focus their attention on shooting down German bombers. It was slightly slower than the Spitfire, which tried to engage them in combat, leaving the bombers unprotected.

However, because of the Bf 109s smaller wings, and greater wing loading, both the Hurricane and Spitfire could out-turn it in a level dogfight – crucial in getting out of the enemy’s sights and putting him in yours. The best option for a German pilot was often to break off by going into another sudden dive, or try to beat them in a climbing turn.

Most pilots considered the Bf 109 and the Spitfire fairly evenly matched, each with its own advantages. Which came out on top depended on the initiative and on each pilot’s ability to fly to their own plane’s strengths and the other plane’s weaknesses.

Galland clearly demonstrated his skill. By the end of 1940, he had shot down 57 enemy planes over Britain, making him the top-scoring ace of the war at that point – even higher than his friend Molders. Galland accounted for 14% of all kills scored by JG26, a unit with 120 pilots.

In late August 1940, Galland was promoted in Wing Commander of all of JG 26. In September, Hitler himself awarded Galland the second grade of the Knight’s Cross, with Oak Leaves, only the third awarded to a Luftwaffe pilot at that point.

One of the biggest disadvantages the Germans faced was that, being on the offensive, they were flying over enemy territory. If they were shot down and somehow survived, they would be captured. A British pilot who was shot down might parachute to safety and be back in a new plane the same day. If they were able to crash land, the plane might be repaired.

As the battle progressed, and more German bombers were shot down, the head of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Göring, imposed restrictions on German fighters that limited their effectiveness further. Against Galland’s strong protests, Göring wanted to the Bf 109s to stick close to the bombers as escorts.

Galland knew this was a mistake. Rather than ambushing RAF fighters from on high, his Bf 109s would forfeit their advantages in surprise, altitude, and speed. Furthermore, by weaving back and forth to keep pace with the slower bombers, they would waste precious fuel.

The Bf 109, like the Hurricane and Spitfire, only had enough fuel for an hour’s worth of flying time. But the German planes had to cross the Channel and back, leaving them a much smaller window for combat. Many German pilots who pressed their luck ended up running out of fuel and ditching in the Channel.

I’ve been keeping a close eye on my fuel gauge, and in less than no time I’ve got less than half a tank left. Time to break off and head back.

During the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe shot down a total of 1,547 enemy planes, including 1,023 fighters. But it lost 1,887 planes, including 650 Bf 109s.

More importantly, the British were able to replace their losses, ending the year with slightly more planes than they started. In contrast, between August and December 1940, German fighter strength fell by 30% and bomber strength by 25%.

The Germans had failed to establish the air superiority needed to mount a cross-Channel invasion, and far from persuading the British to surrender, their bombing raids on London and other cities only rallied British resolve.

By December 1940, Hitler had shifted his attention to his planned invasion of Russia the following year. Many of the Luftwaffe’s best units were transferred to the Eastern Front, leaving its squadrons in France on the defensive.

In November 1941, after Molders was killed in a plane accident, Galland was selected to replace him as the commander of the entire German fighter force. At age 29, he became Germany’s youngest general. But it also meant his days flying combat missions were all but over.

On approach, the Bf 109’s landing gear can come down below 300 km/h, and flaps can be lowered a full 40 degrees below 250 km/h. The goal, on final approach, is to stay just about 200 km/h.

To compensate for its smaller wings, Willy Messerschmitt adopted a British innovation. At slow speeds and high angles of attack, slats along the forward edge of the wings would automatically slide open. This helped prevent stalls not only during landing, but also close-in dogfighting.

Messerschmitt also designed it so when the flaps (on the inside) were fully lowered, both ailerons (on the outside) slightly dipped and acted like expanded flaps.

Because of its narrow wheelbase, the Bf 109 was extremely tricky to land, especially on the grass or dirt fields that Luftwaffe fighters typically operated from. It’s estimated that 10% of all Bf 109 losses during the war were from botched takeoffs or landings.

Two of Adolf Galland’s brothers, Paul and Wilhelm-Ferdinand, also became Luftwaffe aces, but they were shot down and killed. Galland himself was outspoken and had a big falling out with Göring and Hitler as the war neared its end. He returned to flying front-line combat missions and ended the war with 104 kills, before surrendering to the Americans.

Galland was highly regarded by his former foes. After the war, he formed friendships with British aces Robert Stanford Tuck and Douglas Bader, wrote a bestselling book about the Luftwaffe (“The First and the Last”), served as a consultant to Argentina’s air force, and was welcomed as a guest speaker all around the world. He died in 1996, at the age of 83.

Galland’s tactics at the Battle of Britain may have established the fearsome reputation of the Bf 109, but there were many chapters in its story left to write. By the following year, 1941, the spotlight had shifted to the deserts of North Africa, and to a new German fighter ace.

Hans-Joachim Marseille was the charming, unruly product of a broken home. He had never flown a plane, but in 1938, with war on the horizon, his father – a World War I veteran with whom he had a stormy relationship – encouraged him to join the Luftwaffe to avoid being assigned to the infantry.

Marseille’s early flying career was plagued with disciplinary problems. He chased women and partied hard. More importantly, his fellow pilots saw him as unreliable. In the Battle of Britain, he crashed several of his planes. Worse, he abandoned his wingman and was blamed for getting his squadron leader killed.

Marseilles was kicked out of his unit and sent to another fighter wing, JG52. There, he got in even more trouble – including one time when a Gestapo officer showed up after he caught Marseille climbing out of his daughter’s bedroom window. He was a loner and a rebel, and many pilots refused to fly with him.

He was reassigned again, to JG27, which was packing up to head to North Africa, where Rommel’s Afrika Korps was advancing on the British in Egypt. Based in desert airfields far away from the nightclubs, flying “Yellow 14”, Marseille began to take his work more seriously.

The North African desert presented new challenges to the Bf 109 as well. The Germans had to devise a “tropical filter” to fit over the supercharger intake, to keep sand and dust from getting inside.

The Bf 109’s engine was liquid cooled. The fluid passed through radiators in the wings to cool it off. Unlike over Britain, in North Africa the radiator doors had to be kept wide open to avoid overheating, even though it creates more drag.

One new advantage that Bf 109s had, by this point in the war, was 300-liter drop tanks. Hanging from their bellies, these nearly doubled the 400 liters of fuel carried internally, allowing for longer-range missions and more time to engage the enemy. Of course, the tanks were jettisoned at the start of combat, to regain speed and maneuverability.

German fighter missions in North Africa mostly took place at lower altitudes (below 16,000 feet) and involved escorting Stuka dive-bombers or strafing British tanks and ground troops, who had little cover.

The Bf 109’s main adversary in the air was the American-made P-40s that had been exported to the British. Though they performed poorly at higher altitudes, the P-40 packed a lot of firepower and could take a beating, making it a more equal opponent in this environment.

In contrast to the ambush tactics developed by Molders and Galland, Marseille showed no reluctance to get into extended dogfights. And often as not, he operated alone, taking on – and besting – several opponents at once, all by himself.

Many believed that Marseille’s recklessness – a huge liability up until that point – gave him the critical edge in this type of combat, his nerves holding when his opponent might hesitate, just for a split second. Marseille said he never used the same tactic twice, always improvising.

He violated every rule, but it worked. By June 1942, Marseille scored his 100th kill, winning the third grade of the Knight’s Cross. In news accounts back home, he became known as the “Star of Africa”.

Even to his enemies, Marseille was a bit of a star. On several occasions, he violated orders to fly over British airfields and drop messages with updates on the condition of British pilots he had shot down. They came to recognize “Yellow 14” with a mixture of fear and respect.

The Luftwaffe’s golden child was a hero to millions, but he couldn’t stay out of trouble. On morale-raising visits to the home front, Marseille repeatedly disappeared AWOL, chased women (not all of them single), showed up drunk to public events, and made snarky remarks about the Nazi Party.

Back in North Africa, Marseille befriended a black South African POW, Corporal Mathew Letuku, aka “Mathias”, who he made his personal valet. The two became inseparable – a relationship that flew in the face of Nazi racial ideology.

Marseille had a passion for ragtime, jazz, and other “Negro” music, a pastime which was banned under the Nazis and rubbed his squadron leader the wrong way. After one shouting match, Marseille climbed in his Bf 109, took off, and strafed his superior’s tent with bullets — with him in it.

The court martial charges for nearly murdering his squadron leader arrived on Göring’s desk at the same time as another Knight’s Cross. Göring decided that Germany needed its hero, so buried any talk of disciplinary action against him.

Still, Marseille pushed boundaries. At one party, with Hitler and all the top Nazi leaders present, the fighter ace started playing a ragtime song on the piano. Hitler supposedly stormed out of the room.

There was a more serious side to Marseille’s misbehavior. He had Jewish friends before the war, and on his trips back to Germany, began hearing rumors about the Holocaust. On returning to North Africa, he shared his concerns with his fellow pilots, who found him increasingly melancholy.

If he was feeling any doubts, it didn’t affect his performance in the sky. In September 1942, he shot down 54 more planes, including 17 in one day, bringing his total to 158 kills. But late that month, he turned down a request from General Rommel to return with him to Berlin for one of Hitler’s speeches.

His decision was to have fateful consequences. On September 30 – the day he and Rommel were scheduled to sit on either side of Hitler in Berlin – Marseille took off in a new Bf 109G-2 to escort Stuka dive bombers on the outskirts of El Alamein, in the Egyptian Desert.

On the way back, smoke from his engine began filling his cockpit, and pilots reported seeing his plane lose power and drift lower. A later inquiry showed that the engine had a mechanical failure.

Marseille rolled his plane inverted to bail out, but his body struck the tail and he fell to the ground. His parachute never opened. At the age of 22, Hans-Joaquim Marseille was dead.

A few weeks after Marseille was killed, British General (later Field Marshal) Montgomery launched his offensive at El Alamein. Rommel’s Germans were forced to retreat, and ultimately expelled from North Africa. Marseille’s unit, JG27, was relocated back to Germany, to face a new and menacing threat.

By 1943, American B-17s, flying from bases in England, were bombing the German homeland. As depicted in “Masters of the Air”, the battle between German fighters and the “Flying Fortresses” at ice-cold altitudes up to 30,000 feet were savage and brutal.

But one incident, unknown at the time, stands out as a rare exception to this brutality. On December 20, 1943, “Ye Olde Pub“, flown by 21-year-old 2LT Charlie Brown, took part in a raid on Bremen, Germany. Before reaching its target, the bomber was badly damaged by anti-aircraft fire and nearly crashed.

Franz Stigler, a Bf 109 pilot with JG27 was refueling and rearming at an airfield below when Brown’s wounded B-17 flew low overhead. He immediately jumped in the cockpit to follow and shoot it down.

A Lufthansa pilot before the war, Stigler had flown Bf 109s with JG27 in North Africa and Italy. 28 years of age, he was a hardened veteran who already had 27 kills to his credit.

According to Stigler’s account, he had already shot down one B-17 that day and needed just one more to earn a Knight’s Cross.

However, as Stigler approached the B-17 for the kill, he was struck that it took no evasive action, and its machine guns hung limp. Warily, he came alongside and, though gaping holes in the fuselage, could see the crew struggling to assist their badly wounded comrades.

While serving in North Africa, Stigler’s squadron commander once told his men, “If I hear of one of you shooting a man in a parachute, I’ll shoot you myself!” It left a lasting impression on him. In this instant, it struck Stigler that the men in this crippled, helpless B-17 were no different.

Brown waited for the burst of fire from the approaching Bf 109 that would end his life, and that of his crew. But it never came. When he looked out, he saw the mysterious German fighter flying close alongside him.

Stigler tried to signal to the B-17 to turn north, towards neutral Sweden. But Brown either couldn’t understand or wouldn’t comply. So flying at low altitude, the Bf 109 stayed close, effectively shielding the bomber from German anti-aircraft guns on the ground.

The Bf 109 escorted the bomber to the edge of German-controlled airspace on the coast of the North Sea. At that point, the B-17 rotated one of its turrets in Stigler’s direction, signaling that he should depart.

Stigler’s failure to down the crippled B-17 was potentially a court martial offense, so after returning to base, he never breathed a word of what had happened. Miraculously, Brown’s B-17 made it back to England, with only one crewman killed. After his mission debriefing, Brown was ordered to stay mum as well, lest bomber crews came to believe they could expect similar mercy at the hands of German fighters.

The entire incident remained secret until decades later, when Brown decided to see if he could locate the German fighter pilot who had spared him and his crew. He found Stigler living in Canada, and the two became friends, touring and speaking about their unusual story.

Brown and Stigler both lived until 2008. Their tale – a rare exception to the brutal aerial combat over Germany – came to be told by author Adam Makos in his book “A Higher Calling”, published in 2012.

Starting in late 1941, Germany introduced the Focke-Wulf 190, a new fighter which was more powerful and better armed than the Bf 109.

However, many of the Luftwaffe’s highest-scoring aces – which they called experten (“experts”) – continue to prefer and fly the Bf 109, throughout the war. This included the highest-scoring ace of all time, Erich Hartmann.

Erich Hartmann had almost the opposite temperament and background as Hans-Joaquim Marseille. He learned to fly gliders as a boy, from his mother, who ran a glider school. As a 14-year-old, Erich became a flying instructor himself in the Hitler Youth.

At the age of 20, he became a fully-fledged Luftwaffe pilot, joining the elite JG52 in southern Russia. Unlike Galland and Marseille, Hartmann would spend the entire war flying on the Eastern Front, against mainly Soviet opponents.

The Bf 109 I’m flying has the Erla Haube canopy, adopted later in the war. While not exactly a “bubble” canopy, it offers the pilot a far less obstructed view than the original heavy-framed cockpit.

Hartmann’s plane sports a red heart with “Usche” on it, a tribute to his long-time teenage sweetheart Ursula Paetsch, who he eventually married in September 1944.

Initially, Erich was impulsive, like a young, eager puppy. But he was fortunate to have many more experienced mentors in JG52, including some of the top German aces of the war. They nicknamed him “Bubi” (or “Kid”) and chastised him for his rookie mistakes.

Eventually, “Bubi” learned to adopt a much more cautious, calculating approach. He and his fellow hunters would lurk a high altitude, waiting to pick out vulnerable prey below.

Soviet ground attack planes, like the Il-2 Sturmovik, tended to fly at low altitude. When he spotted some, Hartmann would go into a steep dive to catch them by complete surprise.

Hartmann’s mentors taught him to get in close before firing, to maximize the chance of a kill against the heavily armored Il-2. Sometimes he flew so close that his own plane was hit and damaged by flying debris.

In contrast to Marseilles, Hartmann avoided getting into extended dogfights. And if he felt the odds weren’t in his favor, he might decide not to attack and avoid combat completely.

Nevertheless, he racked up an astonishing total of 352 kills, more than four times the infamous Red Baron. Hartmann had to crash-land his own plane 16 times, due to damage or malfunction, but was never directly shot down by an enemy in combat.

Some argue this record was due to the poorer quality of Russian pilots and aircraft, compared to the Western Front. But there were plenty of Russian aces who sent their share of Hartmann’s comrades to an early grave.

Even more than his score of victories, Hartmann was proud of the fact that he never lost a wingman in combat. Whereas Marseille saw himself as a loner, and was often disliked by other pilots, Hartmann saw himself as a team player.

Hartmann painted a distinctive black tulip design on the nose of his Bf 109. and came to be known by the Russians as Cherniy Chort, the “Black Devil”. They placed a reward of 10,000 rubles on his head, for whoever could shoot him down.

One reason German experten were able to achieve such high numbers of kills was that unlike the Allies – who brought their best aces back home to train new pilots – the Luftwaffe kept them flying on the front lines, until they were either shot down or the war ended.

By 1944, the Germans were in retreat, and JG52 fell back to Hungary. In January 1945, Hartman, now 24 years old, was placed in command of Gruppe I, at Budaörs airfield just outside of Budapest. His aircraft at that time is the one I’ve been flying.

Hartmann surrendered to the Americans, but under the terms of the Yalta Agreement, he was turned over to the Soviets. They charged him with war crimes and placed him in a gulag for 10 years, only releasing him in 1955.

He returned to West Germany, where he became a general in the new Luftwaffe, now part of NATO. Hartmann trained to fly jets at Luke AFB in Arizona and commanded a unit of F-86 Sabres. His own Sabre was decorated with the Black Tulip.

At the end of his career, Hartmann sharply criticized the new F-104 as unsafe. His outspoken views – which were later vindicated as accurate – created frictions with higher-ups and led to his early retirement in 1970. Hartmann died, age 71, in 1993. (You can read more about Germany’s problems with the F-104 here.)

Germany was not the only country to fly the Bf 109. Allies and puppet states such as Italy, Finland, Romania, Hungary, Croatia, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and even Japan did as well. Spanish volunteers flew on the Eastern Front, and Spain continued flying a version of the Bf 109 all the way until 1965.

The plane I’m flying now belongs to Constantin “Bazu” Cantacuzino, Romania’s top fighter ace, with at least 43 aerial victories.

Bazu was the scion of an aristocratic Romanian family. Before the war, he raced cars and motorcycles, captained the national ice hockey team, and was a champion aerobatics pilot.

Romania joined the Axis after the Fall of France in 1940 and participated in Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union. Bazu joined the air force as a fighter pilot, initially flying a British-made Hurricane, but quickly graduating up to a Bf 109.

Bazu flew against Russian pilots for most of the war, but in April 1944 he was relocated back to Romania, to defend the huge oil refineries at Ploiești from U.S. bomber raids. He and his wingman shot down six American B-24 Liberators.

On August 23, 1944, the Romanians – seeing the writing on the wall – switched sides and joined the Allies. Now Bazu began flying missions to defend Bucharest from German planes bombing the city.

Before it changed sides, Romania was holding over 1,000 Allied airmen, most of them Americans, who had been shot down over Ploiești and taken prisoner. Now the Romanians hoped to somehow repatriate them, so they could rejoin the war.

The plan was to fly LTC James Gunn, the highest-ranking American POW, to Italy to coordinate an airlift. But the plane that was initially supposed to take him malfunctioned. Bazu stepped forward and offered to take Gunn in the empty radio compartment of his Bf 109, behind the cockpit.

With a hastily painted American flag on the side of his Bf 109, Bazu made the risky, two-hour flight across German-controlled airspace to reach an American airfield near Foggia, relying solely on a map sketched by Gunn.

Once there, Gunn made arrangements for a group of specially-outfitted B-17s to retrieve the POWs from Romania, in Operation Reunion. Bazu himself was given a brand new P-51 Mustang to fly home, to replace his damaged Messerschmitt.

In February 1945 Bazu, flying a Bf 109 again, shot down a German Fw 190 over Czechoslovakia, making him the only pilot in World War II to score victories against Russian, American, and German aircraft.

When the Communists took over Romania after the war, Cantacuzino lost all his land and property and fled the country. He eventually settled in Spain, where he worked as a cropduster and aerobatics performer until his early death, at age 52, in 1958.

For many, Messerschmitt’s Bf 109, its tail emblazoned with the swastika, embodies the Nazi war machine. As the war turned against Germany, many concentration camp inmates were forced to help manufacture component parts for new Bf 109 fighter planes.

Overall, a total of 34,248 Bf 109s were produced – the largest number of any warplane in history, second only to the Soviet Il-2. The Czech firm Avia produced another 865 Messerschmitt variants, called S-99s and S-199s. And it’s a handful of these Czech airplanes that add one final, ironic act to the Bf 109’s story.

In the spring of 1948, Israelis were preparing to declare their own independent state. Their Arab neighbors – Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon – all threatened to crush any attempt to do so.

The Arab states all had militaries, including air forces, supplied by Britain and other European nations. Their air forces flew Spitfires left over from the war. The Israelis, in contrast, faced an arms embargo. Most countries wouldn’t sell them modern weapons, including warplanes.

The Czechs also had a problem. Short on Daimler Benz engines, they replaced it in the S-199 with Junkers Jumo engines intended for bombers. They were of similar size and fit the airframe, but were heavier, less powerful, and required much larger propellers.

The resulting hybrid fighter plane was nose-heavy and handled poorly. Czech pilots called it Mezek, “Mule”, both for its ornery nature and its dubious parentage. Export customers showed no interest in taking them off the Czechs’ hands.

The Israelis, however, were desperate – desperate enough to pay $180,000 each for 10 planes, at time when other buyers could pick up surplus P-51 Mustangs for $3,000 a pop. On May 11, 1948, a group of Israeli volunteers arrived in Czechoslovakia to begin their training.

It did not go well. The huge torque and p-factor from the mismatched Jumo engines made the planes veer dangerously off the runway. But just a few days later, on May 14, Israel declared independence and the pilots insisted on returning immediately to join the fight.

Based out of Ekron airfield, now Tel Nof Airbase, the “First Fighter Squadron” had trouble from the start. Several S-199s crashed, and others mysteriously disappeared. It turned out, with the latter, that the synchronization mechanism for the nose machineguns was flawed and they had shot their own oversized propellers off.

Israeli pilots dubbed the planes Messers, or “knives” in Yiddish (the name Messerschmitt also means “knifemaker” in German). In this case, it was all too easy to stick yourself with your own knife.

But the presence of any air cover made a difference, raising Israeli morale and surprising enemy forces. By the time Israel had survived the war, the Israeli Messers had shot down 7 enemy aircraft, as well as strafing enemy forces on the ground.

It was a strange twist of history: these ersatz Bf 109s had helped win a nation for the same people the Nazis who designed and flew it had tried to enslave and exterminate.

Perhaps, after all, Willy Messerschmitt’s Bf 109 was just a machine – neither good nor evil in itself, but like a knife, only as good or evil, noble or base, as the hand that wields it.

Thanks for joining me on the journey.