Planning and operational life of the German airplane Messers

The debuts

The evolution of the aircrafts from the end of the First World War until the Spanish Civil War was characterized by the predominance of two contrasted streams on the techniques of construction for the fight in flight. On one side, we can find the traditionalists that after having abandoned with reluctance the biplanes' models in favor of the most effective monoplanes, they didn't have any intention to grant other innovations to the new levers of engineers that proposed an audacious and inconceivable evolution for the builders educated to the prìnciples of the flight at the beginnings of the twentieth century. The hazard that they didn't want to do with obstinate slowness was the transformation of the streamlining of the airplanes with the use of a closed cabin and retractable landing carriages, at least for the machines that had their own bases on land. (For the hydroplanes and the airplanes transported by ships, the diatribe was for a long time still open.)

The reasons that pushed the innovators to operate so radical changes were mainly two. Firstly, with the quoted changes a greater aerodynamic control could be acquired that let the new models gain in speed and stability. Secondarily, the presence of a canopy, in many cases armored, removed a possible source of danger for the pilot who, surer in the maneuvers and in the aerial dogfight, acquired a liberty of action until then unknown. Although there were some evident advantages in planning the fight airplanes in this way, the oppositions of the traditionalists in Europe notably delayed the construction of the first flying prototypes.

Nazi Germany was shown particularly interested in the developments of the military aviation. With Hitler's conquest of the power, the denunciation of the agreements on the limitation of the Armed Forces and the increasing interference in the business of the small bordering states, the necessity to possess an efficient air military corp was well soon understood. In 1935, when Germany was still formally respecting the accords of Versailles, an engineer of the Bayerische Flugzeugwerke ( Bavarian Factory of Airplanes), Willy Messerschnitt succeeded in bringing in flight the first prototype of that that would have been known as Bf 109, from the name of the builder factory. The initial model was without heavy armament to disguise its real finality, but it was almost immediately definite to endow it with a machine-gun shooting through the propeller-boss of the helix, transforming it with the prototype D-IOQI in a perfect war aircraft.

As all genial ideas, also the Bf 109 had its denigrators that for several times affirmed its total ineffectiveness in fighting. It served therefore a test that put in relief the qualities of the machines. The propitious occasion was in 1937 with the Spanish Civil War. Germany and Italy from a part and the Soviet Union from the other one sent large military helps to the parts in conflict. The Luftwaffe, just reconstituted, sent the whole JaG (Jagdgruppe, fighter group) 88 of the Legion Condor armed with the Messerschnitts Bf 109. In the Spanish skies, the German airplane had to fight with the Soviet aircraft Polikarpov I-16. It was an evolution of the most elderly biplane I-15 that had fought in Spain in the first months of war, resulting too old for the active service. The new Russian model was founded on the same principles of the Messerschnitt, rather it was planned about ten months before its competitor, but really this prematurity had to mine its existence. Its radial motor, a Shvetsov from 745 kWs, disbursed an insufficient power, limiting the maximum speed to little more than 500 km/hs, 150 less than the Bf 109. This handicap would have been able to be forgotten in the fight at low height with the superb resistance of the Polikarpov if there was not a second insurmountable problem: the lack of agility. The superior maneuverability of the Bf 109 allowed having superiority in every direct clash, contributing in conclusive way to the birth of that that would have become a legend.

The experience matured in Spain also consented to understand what the intrinsic defects of the Messerschnitt were. The first one and the most important it was the scarce reliability of the motor Junkers Jumo that needed an elevated number of hours of ground standstill for reparations. The motor that had equipped the versions from A to C of the Bf 109 was replaced in the 1938 version D from the motor Daimler DB 600 that was surely more resistant than its predecessor. The winds of war already blew in Europe when the Luftwaffe brought an ulterior change reaching the version E (or Emil) on which was added a couple of light machine-guns that transformed the Bf 109 in a multi-role aircraft, even if it never became really effective in the ground bombardment.

Just this version started the Second World War. Sets in front of obsolete or badly planned airplanes as those of the military aviation of Poland and France, the Messerschnitt was clearly of another category dominating the skies in the first nine months of fight. With the defeat of France and the retreat of the British forces of the Expedition Corp, Hitler had the alternative between an armistice that would have consecrated him as master of Europe and the operation called Seelöwe (Sea Lion) that is the invasion of the British Islands. Refused disdainfully from the Great Britain the first hypothesis, the preparations for a landing in the coasts of the Sussex and the Cornwall were started. The air supremacy of the Luftwaffe was set as necessary condition to get success. The Feldmarshall Göring, in his well note haughtiness, had guaranteed the complete destruction of the Royal Air Force in the arc of only a month, confiding in the reliability of the airplanes of the German aviation. It was surely a wrong judgment.

"An unlucky legend" by Raul Larroque
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