Messerschmitt Bf 109

1. Lead

The Messerschmitt Bf 109 was the backbone of the German Luftwaffe’s fighter force throughout the Second World War, and the most-produced fighter aircraft in history, with about 35,000 built. Designed by Willy Messerschmitt and first flown in 1935, the Bf 109 was a small, fast, single-engine fighter built around a powerful liquid-cooled engine and a light, strong airframe.

It first saw combat in the Spanish Civil War, fought in every major campaign of the Second World War — from Poland and France to the Battle of Britain, the Eastern Front and the Defence of the Reich — and remained in production until the end of the war in 1945.

Its pilots included the three highest-scoring fighter aces in history: Erich Hartmann, with 352 victories, Gerhard Barkhorn, with 301, and Günther Rall, with 275. Although later versions of the aircraft were outclassed by newer Allied fighters such as the North American P-51 Mustang, the Bf 109’s long service, its enormous production run and the achievements of its pilots have made it one of the most famous aircraft of the war.

2. Key Facts

Type	Single-engine fighter
Origin	Germany
Designer	Willy Messerschmitt, Bayerische Flugzeugwerke (Messerschmitt AG)
Manufacturer	Messerschmitt AG, plus licensed production in Hungary, Romania, Spain and elsewhere
First flight	28 May 1935 (Bf 109 V1 prototype)
Introduced	1937 (Bf 109 B with the Condor Legion in Spain)
Produced	1937–1945 (Germany); about 35,000 built in total
Crew	1 pilot
Length	About 9.0 m (Bf 109 G-6)
Wingspan	9.92 m
Height	2.6 m
Empty weight	About 2,673 kg (Bf 109 G-6)
Maximum take-off weight	About 3,400 kg (Bf 109 G-6)
Engine	Daimler-Benz DB 605A-1 V-12 liquid-cooled, 1,475 hp
Maximum speed	About 640 km/h at altitude (Bf 109 K-4); about 621 km/h (Bf 109 G-6)
Range	About 850 km (internal fuel, Bf 109 G); up to about 1,000 km with drop tank
Service ceiling	About 12,000 m
Armament (G-6)	One 20 mm MG 151/20 cannon firing through the propeller hub, two 13 mm MG 131 machine guns above the engine
Bomb load	Up to 250 kg (fighter-bomber versions)

3. Background and Development

The 1934 Fighter Competition

The Bf 109 was born of the rearmament of Germany in the 1930s. After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Germany began to rebuild its air force in secret, in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles. In 1934 the new Luftwaffe issued a requirement for a modern single-seat fighter to replace the biplanes then in service — the Arado Ar 68 and the Heinkel He 51.

The specification called for a monoplane with retractable landing gear, an enclosed cockpit and a top speed of at least 400 km/h. Four firms competed: Messerschmitt, Heinkel, Focke-Wulf and Arado. Messerschmitt’s entry, designed by Willy Messerschmitt and Robert Lusser, was the most advanced — and the most controversial.

Messerschmitt was an outsider in the German aviation industry, and the head of the Luftwaffe’s technical office, Ernst Udet, reportedly disliked the design, which he considered too light and too difficult to fly. The Heinkel He 112 was the favourite of many officials, but in flight trials in 1936 the Messerschmitt prototype proved faster and more manoeuvrable, and it won the competition.

Combat Debut in Spain

The first prototype, the Bf 109 V1, flew on 28 May 1935, powered by a British Rolls-Royce Kestrel engine, because the intended German Junkers Jumo 210 engine was not yet ready. Early prototypes used the Jumo 210, and the first production version, the Bf 109 B, entered service in early 1937.

The aircraft was rushed into combat in the Spanish Civil War, where German pilots of the Condor Legion flew it against Soviet-built Polikarpov I-15 and I-16 fighters supporting the Spanish Republic. In Spain the Bf 109 proved superior to its opponents, and the lessons of the campaign — above all the value of speed, of the diving attack and of fighting in pairs rather than in rigid formations of three — shaped German fighter tactics for the Second World War.

The Spanish experience also drove a series of improvements: the Bf 109 C and D gave way to the Bf 109 E, the “Emil”, powered by the Daimler-Benz DB 601 engine, which became the standard fighter of the Luftwaffe at the start of the Second World War.

The Name Bf 109 and the Road to War

The designation “Bf” — rather than “Me” — reflects the aircraft’s origin: it was designed by the Bayerische Flugzeugwerke (Bavarian Aircraft Works), which only became Messerschmitt AG in 1938. Official German documents continued to use “Bf 109” throughout the war, although “Me 109” became common in Allied and popular usage.

By the time of the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the Luftwaffe had about 1,000 Bf 109s in service, and the aircraft would be developed continuously for the next six years, through the F (“Friedrich”), G (“Gustav”) and K (“Kurfürst”) series, each with a more powerful engine, heavier armament and higher weight.

The Bf 109 was therefore not a single aircraft but a family of fighters, and the pilots who flew it in 1945 were flying a machine that shared little more than a name and a basic shape with the aircraft that had first flown ten years earlier.

4. Design

A Small Airframe Around a Big Engine

The Bf 109 was designed around a single idea: the smallest possible airframe wrapped around the most powerful available engine. Its fuselage was a light, semi-monocoque structure of aluminium alloy, its wing was a single-spar, low-mounted monoplane wing with automatic leading-edge slats, and its landing gear retracted outwards into the wings. The result was an aircraft that was fast and quick to climb, but also cramped, narrow and unforgiving.

The cockpit was small, the pilot sat with his legs almost straight, and the narrow-track landing gear — attached to the fuselage rather than to the wings, so that the wings could be removed without jacks — made the aircraft prone to ground loops and to landing and take-off accidents.

Historians estimate that a large share of Bf 109 losses, perhaps as many as one in ten of all aircraft lost, occurred in take-off and landing accidents rather than in combat, although exact figures are disputed.

Armament and the Short-Range Problem

The Bf 109’s armament changed throughout its life. The early B version carried two 7.92 mm MG 17 machine guns above the engine. The E version added two 20 mm MG FF cannons in the wings, giving it a much heavier punch, and the F version introduced the engine-mounted cannon firing through the propeller hub — the so-called Motorkanone — with two machine guns above the engine.

The G-6, the most-produced version, carried one 20 mm MG 151/20 cannon through the hub and two 13 mm MG 131 machine guns, with the distinctive bulges — known to German pilots as Beulen — on the engine cowling to house the larger machine guns.

Later versions could carry two additional 20 mm cannon in underwing pods, bombs, or a drop tank, but every addition cost speed and climb, and pilots often preferred the clean fighter configuration. The aircraft’s short range was its most serious operational weakness: with only about 400 litres of internal fuel, the Bf 109 E could spend only about 20 minutes over London during the Battle of Britain before it had to turn for home, and the lack of a drop tank in 1940 was a major handicap.

5. Variants

The Main Production Series

Variant	Years	Key features	Production
Bf 109 A–D	1937–1938	Early versions; Jumo 210 engine; two machine guns, later wing cannon on some	About 700 (all early versions combined, approximate)
Bf 109 E “Emil”	1938–1941	DB 601 engine (about 1,100 hp); two MG 17 and two MG FF 20 mm cannon; Battle of Britain fighter	About 4,000
Bf 109 F “Friedrich”	1940–1942	Streamlined airframe; DB 601E engine; hub cannon and two machine guns; regarded as the best-handling version	About 2,200
Bf 109 G “Gustav”	1942–1945	DB 605 engine; heavier armament (MG 131s on the G-6); most-produced series	About 23,000 (all G versions)
Bf 109 K “Kurfürst”	1944–1945	DB 605D engine (up to 2,000 hp); streamlined cowling; fastest Bf 109	About 1,700
Bf 109 T	1939–1941	Carrier version for the unfinished aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin; longer wings, arresting hook	70 built
Bf 109 H	1943–1944	High-altitude version with long-span wings; few built	About 10 (estimated)
Avia S-199 / Hispano HA-1112	1946–1950s	Post-war Czech and Spanish versions with different engines	Several hundred

The Bf 109 E was the fighter of the Battle of Britain, and the Bf 109 F, introduced in late 1940, is often described by pilots and historians as the finest-handling of all the versions, because it combined the powerful DB 601E engine with a clean, light airframe before the weight of later armament and armour was added.

The G series, which began in 1942, was the workhorse of the Luftwaffe for the last three years of the war: it was faster and more heavily armed than the F, but heavier, and its handling at high altitude was poorer. The G-6 alone accounted for about 12,000 aircraft, more than a third of all Bf 109s ever built.

The final K-4, which entered service in late 1944, could reach about 640 km/h with the DB 605DB engine at emergency power, and on paper it was competitive with the best Allied fighters — but by then Germany was short of fuel, of trained pilots and of time, and only about 1,700 K-series aircraft were built before the war ended.

The K Series and Post-War Derivatives

The final wartime version, the K-4, was an attempt to combine everything Messerschmitt had learned into a single standard fighter: a streamlined cowling, a more powerful DB 605D engine, a 30 mm MK 108 cannon firing through the propeller hub and a simplified airframe that was easier to build.

It was fast on paper, but it arrived when Germany could no longer supply it with fuel or with pilots trained well enough to exploit it, and its production run of about 1,700 aircraft was small beside the 12,000 G-6s that had come before it.

Two specialised versions deserve mention: the Bf 109 T, a carrier fighter with longer wings and an arresting hook built for the unfinished aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin, of which 70 were built and then used from land bases; and the Bf 109 H, a high-altitude version with long-span wings, of which only about ten were built.

After the war the design lived on in Czechoslovakia as the Avia S-199 and in Spain as the Hispano HA-1112, and the Spanish aircraft, fitted with Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, remained in service until 1965 — a full thirty years after the first prototype flew.

6. Operational History

Spain, Poland and France, 1937–1940

The Bf 109’s combat debut came in Spain, where the Condor Legion’s fighter pilots — among them Werner Mölders, who would become the first pilot to score 100 aerial victories — developed the tactics that the Luftwaffe used in the Second World War.

The Rotte (pair) and the Schwarm (four aircraft in two pairs) replaced the rigid three-aircraft Kette, giving German pilots the freedom to look around, to cover each other and to attack from above. In September 1939 the Bf 109 flew over Poland, where it met little serious opposition, and in May–June 1940 it flew over France, where it faced the French Air Force and the Royal Air Force.

German pilots claimed large numbers of victories in France — claims that modern historians have shown to be considerably exaggerated, as with all air forces of the period — but the Bf 109’s superiority in speed and climb was real, and by the end of the French campaign the Luftwaffe had air superiority over northern France.

The Battle of Britain, 1940

The Battle of Britain was the Bf 109’s first great test — and its first failure. In the summer and autumn of 1940, the Luftwaffe’s Bf 109 E fighters escorted bombers over southern England, where they met the Hawker Hurricane and the Supermarine Spitfire.

The Bf 109 was faster in a dive and could out-climb the Spitfire, but the Spitfire could turn more tightly, and the British fighters had the advantage of fighting over their own territory, with radar direction and with pilots who, if shot down, could return to duty.

The Bf 109’s short range was decisive: with only about 20 minutes of combat time over London, German fighters could not stay to protect their bombers, and the bombers suffered heavily. German fighter pilots claimed about 1,000 British aircraft destroyed in the battle; the true British losses were about 1,500 aircraft of all types, against German losses of about 1,700 aircraft, including about 600 Bf 109s.

The battle ended in October 1940 with the Luftwaffe’s daylight offensive abandoned.

The Eastern Front and the Defence of the Reich, 1941–1945

The last four years of the Bf 109’s war were fought on two fronts, and the two fronts tell two different stories. On the Eastern Front, from 1941 to 1943, the Bf 109 was the dominant fighter, and its pilots scored victories in numbers that no other fighter pilots in history have equalled.

In the west, from 1943 to 1945, the Bf 109 fought a losing battle against the American daylight bombing offensive, and its pilots died in numbers that no other fighter force in history has suffered. The two stories are the story of the Luftwaffe itself: of an air force that was supreme in 1941, and that was broken by 1944, and of an aircraft that was good enough to win in the east, but not good enough to survive in the west.

The contrast between the two fronts is the key to understanding the Bf 109’s war. In the east, German pilots flew against an enemy that was brave but poorly trained, in aircraft that were often obsolete, and they scored victories in numbers that seem incredible today. In the west, they flew against an enemy that was well trained, well equipped and numerous, and they died in numbers that are still shocking. The same aircraft, flown by the same men, produced two very different wars.

The Eastern Front, 1941–1943

On the Eastern Front, from June 1941, the Bf 109 found the conditions in which it was most successful. Against the Soviet Air Force, whose pilots were often poorly trained and whose aircraft were older, German fighter pilots scored enormous numbers of victories.

Erich Hartmann, who flew the Bf 109 G almost exclusively, scored 352 victories between 1942 and 1945 — the highest total of any fighter pilot in history — and Gerhard Barkhorn scored 301. These totals have been debated by historians: Soviet records confirm many, but not all, of the claims, and the figures reflect both the skill of the German pilots and the fact that they flew hundreds of combat sorties against an enemy that, for much of the war, was weaker in training and equipment.

The Bf 109’s best years on the Eastern Front were 1942 and 1943; by 1944 the Soviet Air Force had better aircraft, such as the Yak-3 and the La-5FN, and better pilots, and the balance began to shift.

The Defence of the Reich, 1943–1945

In the west, from 1943, the Bf 109 fought a losing battle against the American daylight bombing offensive. The G-series aircraft were increasingly fitted as bomber-destroyers, with underwing cannon pods and rockets, but they were no match for the long-range P-51 Mustang escorts that appeared in 1944. German fighter losses mounted catastrophically — in the first five months of 1944 the Luftwaffe lost about 2,000 fighter pilots — and the shortage of fuel and of trained replacements meant that, by the end of the war, many Bf 109s sat on the ground for want of pilots or petrol. The last Bf 109s fought over Berlin in April–May 1945, and production ended with Germany’s surrender.

The crisis of the German fighter force reached its peak in the spring of 1944, during the American “Big Week” offensive of February 1944 and the battles that followed it. The Luftwaffe lost not only aircraft, which its factories could still replace, but experienced pilots, who could not be replaced: new pilots arrived at the front with as little as 100 hours of flying time, against American pilots with several hundred, and many were shot down on their first sorties.

The shortage of aviation fuel, made worse by the Allied bombing of the synthetic fuel plants from May 1944, meant that even the aircraft that survived could often not fly, and training hours were cut still further. By the winter of 1944–45 the Bf 109 units were shadows of what they had been: short of fuel, short of pilots, and facing enemies who outnumbered them many times over.

The aircraft itself was still competitive in the hands of an expert, but the system that had once produced those experts had collapsed.

7. Performance and Specifications

Specifications by Version

The table below compares the three most important production versions of the Bf 109 — the E-4 of the Battle of Britain, the G-6 of 1943 and the K-4 of 1944 — and shows how the aircraft grew heavier, faster and more heavily armed over the course of the war, while its basic dimensions hardly changed at all.

Specification	Bf 109 E-4 (1940)	Bf 109 G-6 (1943)	Bf 109 K-4 (1944)
Engine	DB 601N, 1,175 hp	DB 605A, 1,475 hp	DB 605DB, 1,850 hp (emergency)
Maximum speed	About 570 km/h	About 621 km/h	About 640 km/h
Range (internal)	About 665 km	About 850 km	About 850 km
Service ceiling	About 11,000 m	About 12,000 m	About 12,500 m
Rate of climb	About 15 m/s	About 17 m/s	About 22 m/s (estimated)
Armament	2 × MG 17, 2 × MG FF	1 × MG 151/20, 2 × MG 131	1 × MK 108 30 mm, 2 × MG 131
Empty weight	About 2,010 kg	About 2,673 kg	About 2,700 kg (approximate)
Number built	About 4,000 (all E)	About 12,000 (G-6)	About 1,700 (all K)

The table shows how the Bf 109 grew during the war: its engine power rose from about 1,175 horsepower in the E-4 to about 1,850 horsepower in the K-4, its maximum speed rose from about 570 km/h to about 640 km/h, and its armament grew from two machine guns and two cannon to a 30 mm cannon and two heavy machine guns.

But the table also shows the price of that growth: the aircraft’s empty weight rose from about 2,010 kg to about 2,700 kg, and its handling, which had been superb in the light E and F versions, became heavier and less forgiving in the G and K. The Bf 109’s development was a race between power and weight, and by the end of the war, weight was winning.

Against Its Rivals

Compared with its rivals, the Bf 109 was always a fast climber and a good diver, but it was never a good turner, and its cockpit gave the pilot a poor view to the rear. Against the Spitfire it was roughly equal in 1940; against the P-51 Mustang and the late-war Soviet Yak-3 it was inferior in speed, range and handling, although in the hands of an experienced pilot it remained dangerous to the end.

Its greatest strength was not any single quality but its adaptability: the same basic airframe, developed over ten years, could be fitted with a new engine, a new gun and new equipment and kept in production when a new design would have taken years to develop.

The later Spitfire Mk XIV, with its Griffon engine, and the P-51D Mustang were both faster than the Bf 109 G at most altitudes, and the Mustang’s range of more than 2,000 kilometres with drop tanks was something the Bf 109 could never match.

8. Operators

Wartime Operators

The Bf 109 was flown principally by Germany, but it was also exported and licence-built in large numbers. Before the war, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Spain all bought Bf 109s, and during the war Hungary and Romania flew them on the Eastern Front alongside Germany, while Finland bought 162 Bf 109 G aircraft and used them against the Soviet Union with great success — the Finnish ace Ilmari Juutilainen scored 94 victories, 58 of them in the Bf 109.

Switzerland’s Bf 109s saw an unusual kind of combat: Swiss pilots shot down aircraft of both sides that violated Swiss airspace, including German and American bombers and fighters. Bulgaria’s Bf 109s defended Sofia against American bombing raids in 1943–44, and the aircraft was also flown by Croatia, Slovakia and the Spanish Air Force during and after the war.

The Bf 109 was also the most widely exported German fighter of the war, and its presence in so many air forces is a measure of its reputation: even Germany’s enemies, after the war, studied the aircraft and copied its features.

Post-War Service

After the war, Czechoslovakia built the Avia S-199, a Bf 109 G airframe fitted with a Junkers Jumo 211 bomber engine, and sold 25 of them to Israel, where they flew in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The S-199 was widely disliked by its pilots, because the heavy bomber engine and its large propeller made the aircraft difficult to handle, and several were lost in accidents — but in Israeli hands it was the country’s first fighter aircraft, and it flew combat missions against Egyptian forces in 1948.

Spain built the Hispano Aviación HA-1112, a Bf 109 G with a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, which remained in service until 1965 and famously appeared in the film Battle of Britain (1969) as a stand-in for the German fighters. The long post-war career of the Bf 109 family — thirty years from the first flight of the prototype to the retirement of the last Spanish aircraft — is itself a measure of the soundness of Willy Messerschmitt’s original design.

9. Legacy and Influence

An Aircraft Kept in Production Too Long

The Bf 109’s legacy is a paradox. It was the most-produced fighter in history, it was flown by the highest-scoring aces in history, and it served from 1937 to 1965 — yet it is often remembered as an aircraft that was kept in production too long, and that Germany failed to replace.

The aircraft that were meant to replace it — the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter, and the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, which gradually took over some of its roles — arrived too late or in too small numbers to change the outcome, and the Bf 109 had to carry the burden of the air war long after it had been outclassed.

The decision to keep building the Bf 109 was understandable: its factories, its tooling and its supply chains already existed, and a new design would have interrupted production for months at a time when Germany could not afford interruption. But the price was that German pilots spent the last two years of the war flying an aircraft that was inferior to its enemies in speed, range and handling.

Tactics and Pilots

The Bf 109’s lasting influence lies less in its airframe than in its tactics and its pilots. The pair, the four-aircraft Schwarm and the diving attack from above, developed by German pilots in Spain and refined over France and Britain, became standard in air forces around the world and remain in use today.

Its pilots, above all Hartmann, Barkhorn and Rall, are still studied, and the aircraft’s long production run is a case study in how a good design, developed incrementally, can outlast the war it was built for. The Bf 109 also taught a harder lesson, which every air force has had to learn since: that the best fighter is not the one with the highest top speed or the heaviest guns, but the one that can be built in large numbers, flown by pilots who have been trained properly, and kept flying by a supply system that works.

In the end, the Bf 109 was a fine aircraft let down by the system around it.

10. Surviving Examples

Museums

About 60 complete Bf 109s survive in museums and private collections around the world. The best-known museum examples include the Bf 109 E-3 displayed at the Royal Air Force Museum in London — an aircraft that fought in the Battle of Britain and was shot down over England in 1940 — and the Bf 109 G-6 at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, which was captured in North Africa.

The largest collections are in Germany, at the Deutsches Museum in Munich and the Luftwaffenmuseum in Berlin-Gatow, and other examples are held in Britain, the United States, Australia, Finland and South Africa. Several Bf 109s are displayed in the countries where they once served, and for many visitors the sight of the small, narrow fighter, standing beside the much larger Allied aircraft it fought, is a surprise: the Bf 109 looks far smaller than its reputation suggests.

The RAF Museum’s E-3, which was shot down over England in 1940 and recovered decades later, is displayed as it was found, with its battle damage preserved, and it is one of the most visited exhibits in the museum.

Flying Examples and Replicas

A small number of restored Bf 109s still fly, including the Bf 109 G-14 and K-4 aircraft operated by the Messerschmitt Foundation in Germany and the Hispano HA-1112s converted with Daimler-Benz engines that fly at airshows in Europe and the United States.

Several Bf 109s have been recovered from crash sites and lakes in Russia and Scandinavia and restored to flying condition, a process that can take many years and cost millions of euros, because so few original parts survive. For most visitors, the easiest way to see a Bf 109 is at the RAF Museum in London or the Imperial War Museum at Duxford, where restored examples are displayed alongside the Spitfires they fought, and where flying examples appear at airshows in the summer months.

The Messerschmitt Foundation’s aircraft are maintained to airworthy condition by a team of engineers in Germany, and they appear at airshows in Europe, where the sound of their Daimler-Benz engines is one of the most recognisable sounds in aviation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Messerschmitt Bf 109?
The Messerschmitt Bf 109 was Germany’s main single-engine fighter of the Second World War, designed by Willy Messerschmitt and first flown in 1935. About 35,000 were built, making it the most-produced fighter aircraft in history.

How many Bf 109s were built?
About 35,000 Bf 109s were built between 1937 and 1945, including licence production. The most-produced version was the Bf 109 G-6, with about 12,000 built.

Who was the highest-scoring Bf 109 pilot?
Erich Hartmann, with 352 aerial victories, is the highest-scoring fighter pilot in history. He flew the Bf 109 almost exclusively on the Eastern Front from 1942 to 1945.

Why is it called Bf 109 and not Me 109?
The aircraft was designed by the Bayerische Flugzeugwerke, so its official designation was “Bf 109”. The company became Messerschmitt AG in 1938, and “Me 109” became common in Allied and popular use, but German documents used “Bf 109” throughout the war.

What was the Bf 109’s main weakness?
Its short range and its narrow-track landing gear. In the Battle of Britain it could spend only about 20 minutes over London, and its landing gear made take-offs and landings dangerous, causing many accidents.

Where can I see a Bf 109 today?
At the Royal Air Force Museum in London, the Imperial War Museum at Duxford, the Deutsches Museum in Munich, and the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, among other museums. A small number of restored Bf 109s still fly at airshows.

Related articles

• B-25 Mitchell
• F6F Hellcat
• Panzerfaust

Sources

1. Wikipedia, “Messerschmitt Bf 109” — production of about 35,000, variants, specifications, Hartmann’s 352 victories.
2. John Weal, Bf 109 Aces of the Russian Front (Osprey Publishing, 2001) — Hartmann, Barkhorn and the Eastern Front.
3. Martin Caidin, Me 109 (Ballantine Books, 1968) — development and the Spanish Civil War.
4. U.S. National Air and Space Museum, “Messerschmitt Bf 109” — specifications and surviving aircraft.
5. Royal Air Force Museum, “Messerschmitt Bf 109E-3” — the Battle of Britain and the surviving E-3 in London.
6. Walter A. Musciano, Messerschmitt Aces (Arco, 1982) — aces and operational history.