The fighter’s revised designation, which has caused confusion and controversy among aviation historians for decades, reflected the complete acquisition of BFW stock by Willy Messerschmitt in late 1938. According to the Luftwaffe’s own historical records, the old ‘Bf’ reference was retained for the Bf-108, the Bf-109B through D, and the Bf-110A and B Zerstörer twin-engine fighters. All other Messerschmitt products, starting with the Me-109E and Me-110C, officially used the ‘Me’ prefix, although the issue would continue to be confused in the years to come by the appearance of the ‘Bf’ prefix on stamped plates on various Me-109 components as late as 1945.

Soon after the Me-109E-1 entered production, Messerschmitt designed a naval version with an extended wingspan, a strengthened airframe and an arrestor hook. Designated the Me-109T (for Träger, or carrier), it was intended for use aboard the aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin. The project was dropped when construction on Graf Zeppelin was halted in 1940, but some production Me-109T-1s and a fighter-bomber variant, the Me-109T-2, saw operational use with land-based units up to the summer of 1942.

The Luftwaffe had 946 operational Me-109s when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. In addition, some 300 Me-109Es were exported to Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Romania and Spain between April 1939 and April 1940. Three Me-109E-3s were also shipped to Japan for evaluation early in 1941. The Japanese soon abandoned the idea of producing Emils under license, but the Allies took the possibility seriously enough to give the ‘Japanese Me-109′ the code name ‘Mike.’

Two of the export orders were to cause some embarrassment later. In May 1940, three Heinkel He-111s that had strayed into Swiss airspace were shot down by Swiss-flown Me-109Es. Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring reacted by deliberately sending France-bound bomber formations over Switzerland with an escort of Me-110s. The clashes that ensued resulted in the loss of seven more German and three Swiss aircraft, after which Göring prudently relented. When the Germans invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941, the Luftwaffe again had to deal with opposition from its own Me-109Es, fiercely flown by Yugoslav pilots.

The Emil spearheaded German air offensives against Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands and France in 1940, overwhelming such opponents as the Fokker D.XXI, Morane-Saulnier MS.406 and Hawker Hurricane. The German Experten (aces with 10 or more victories) finally met their match over Dunkirk in May 1940, when they first encountered the Spitfire. The rivalry between those two classic fighters would continue throughout the Battle of Britain. The Messerschmitt had the advantage in high-altitude performance, as well as in the ability of its fuel-injected engine to function even while inverted, when a Spitfire’s Rolls-Royce Merlin power plant would be starved for fuel. The Spitfire’s lower wing loading endowed it with superior maneuverability, but the Messerschmitt’s principal disadvantage lay in its limited range. After 20 to 30 minutes over the average British target, a Messerschmitt pilot would have to break off his engagement or he would run out of fuel before he could return to base across the English Channel.

Even before the Me-109Es commenced their ultimately unsuccessful struggle for aerial mastery over Britain, work had begun on a new, aerodynamically refined model in the spring of 1940. One Me-109E was fitted with a 1,300-hp DB 601E-1 engine in a new symmetrical cowling, with the supercharger air intake set farther back to increase the ram effect. A larger, rounded spinner was fitted to the propeller, shallower radiators with boundary layer bypasses were incorporated under the wing and a cantilever tail plane replaced the strut-braced version. After being test-flown on July 10, 1940, the new type was further refined by the addition of new wings with rounded tips, a smaller rudder and a fully retractable tail wheel.

Designated the Me-109F-0, the new Messerschmitt was tested late in 1940 and accepted. The production Me-109F-1, powered by a 1,200-hp DB 601N, with an engine-mounted 20mm MG FF cannon and two cowl-mounted 7.9mm MG 17 machine guns, began to reach operational units in January 1941. The Me-109F-2 version of ‘Franz,’ as its pilots called it, replaced the MG FF with a higher velocity 15mm MG 151 cannon, while the Me-109F-3 returned to the DB 601E engine in early 1942.

Franz appeared as the Spitfire Mk.V was getting the better of the Me-109E in the cross-Channel duels that followed the Battle of Britain, and re-established ascendancy over the British fighter, especially at high altitudes. Me-109F-4/Bs, equipped with fuselage racks for a single 551-pound SC 250 bomb, frequently darted across the Channel on hit-and-run Jagdbomber, or ‘Jabo,’ missions. In the first year of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the veteran Me-109E and Me-109F pilots ran up astronomical scores against the outdated I-16s, as well as newer Lavochkin-Gorbunov-Gudkov LaGG-3s and Yakovlev Yak-1s flown by less experienced Soviet pilots. Me-109F-4/Trop variants, with tropical filters to guard their engines against sand and dust, took an equally heavy toll on British aircraft over North Africa and the Mediterranean. Among the desert Messerschmitt pilots of Jagdgeschwader 27 ‘Afrika‘ was the top-scoring German ace in the West, Hans-Joachim Marseille, who piled up 158 victories, including 17 in one day, before his death on September 30, 1942.

The next improvement in the series involved the introduction of the 1,475-hp DB 605A engine in the Me-109G-1, which entered service in the late summer of 1942. The first ‘Gustav,’ as the G model was nicknamed, had a basic armament of one 20mm MG 151 cannon and two 7.9mm MG 17 machine guns, but the Me-109G-5 introduced two 13mm MG 131 machine guns in place of the MG 17s. The cowlings of that and subsequent Me-109G models required enlarged fairings over the breechlocks and ammunition feeds that earned them the alternate sobriquet of Beule (’bump’).

The Me-109G was the most numerous of the Messerschmitts, with production reaching 725 a month by July 1943, and that year’s total reaching 6,418 aircraft. In spite of Allied bombing raids against German industry, Me-109 production for 1944 reached 14,212. In addition to the Messerschmitts produced in Germany, Hungary built about 700 Me-109Gs under license at Budapest and Györ until September 1944. Romania also began licensed production in the IAR plant at Brasov, but completed only 16 Me-109G-6s and assembled 30 others from German-delivered components before its facilities were destroyed by bombers of the U.S. Fifteenth Air Force on May 6, 1944.

Neutral Switzerland acquired 12 Me-109G-6s as part of a deal for destroying an Me-110G-4/R7 equipped with the latest Liechtenstein SN-2 radar and oblique-firing Schräge-Musik 20mm cannons, after the night fighter had accidentally landed at spy-infested Dübendorf on April 28, 1944. The Gustavs, and two other Me-109Gs that were interned after straying into Swiss airspace, were assigned to Fliegerkompagnie 7, but they were unreliable due to deteriorating German production standards at that point in the war, and saw little use.

Although somewhat past its prime as a first-line fighter, the Me-109G remained a foe to be reckoned with right to the end of the fighting, due in part to its fuel-injected DB 605A engine, but primarily due to the expertise and ingenuity of its pilots. The Gustavs were flown at one time or another by all the greatest aces of the Axis powers, including Finland’s Eino Ilmari Juutilainen (94 victories), Alexandru Serbanescu of Romania (45), Mato Dukovac of Croatia (40), Dezsö Szent-Györgyi of Hungary (32), Ján Reznak of Slovakia (32), Stoyan Stoyanov of Bulgaria (6) and Spanish volunteer Gonzalo Hevia Alvarez Quiñones (12). A squadron of anti-Stalinist Russians who had allied themselves with the Germans was also equipped with Me-109E-1s; several of its pilots scored 15 or more victories, and one, Leonidas Maximciuc, claimed 52. Some Italian aces added to their scores flying Me-109Gs in 1943 and 1945. The only noteworthy Axis aces who did not put in some flying hours in Me-109s were Japanese.

Leading them all, of course, were the Germans themselves. The all-time ace of aces, Erich Hartmann, scored all of his 352 victories in the Me-109, preferring to stay with it rather than take the time to familiarize himself with more advanced types. Gerhard Barkhorn, the Luftwaffe’s second-ranking ace with 301 victories, considered the Me-109F his favorite fighter. Günther Rall, the third-ranking German ace with 275 victories, flew all variants of the Me-109 from E to K, as well as putting in a brief stint in the Focke Wulf Fw-109D. Rall echoed Hartmann’s sentiments: ‘I liked the 109 most because I was familiar with it.’

Not everyone who flew the Me-109 liked it. Walter Nowotny, the leading Austrian ace, scored his first successes in Me-109Es but soon moved on to the Fw-190A, in which he gained most of his 258 victories. For every German who preferred the familiarity of the Me-109 there was another who was happier flying the Fw-190, the Me-262 jet or anything else.

By mid-1943, the Allies were fielding a new generation of fighters equal or superior to the Me-109G, such as the Spitfire Mk.IX and XIV, P-51B Mustang, P-47D Thunderbolt and Yak-9D. British Captain Eric Brown said that the captured Me-109G-6/U2 he test-flew in 1944 was ‘delightful to fly’ at its cruising speed of 240 mph, but in a 400-mph dive, ‘the controls felt as though they had seized!’ On the whole, he concluded that ‘providing the Gustav was kept where it was meant to be (i.e., above 25,000 feet/7,620 meters), it performed efficiently both in dogfighting and as an attacker of bomber formations.’

Even when outclassed, the Messerschmitt could surprise its adversaries. Thomas L. Hayes, Jr., a P-51 ace of the 357th Fighter Group with 8 1/2 victories, recalled diving after a fleeing Me-109G until both aircraft neared the sound barrier and their controls locked. Both pilots took measures to slow down, but to Hayes’ astonishment, the Me-109 was the first to pull out of its dive. As he belatedly regained control of his Mustang, Hayes was grateful that the German pilot chose to quit while he was ahead and fly home instead of taking advantage of Hayes’ momentary helplessness. Hayes also stated that while he saw several Fw-190s stall and even crash during dogfights, he never saw an Me-109 go out of control.

Allied pilots who had the opportunity to sit in the Me-109’s cockpit claimed it to be so narrow that they could barely work the control column between their knees. ‘The windscreen supports were slender and did not produce serious blind spots,’ said Eric Brown, ‘but space was so confined that movement of the head was difficult for even a pilot of my limited stature.’ The British and their American colleagues were also appalled at its minimal instrumentation. Soviet ace Vitali I. Popkov, who scored 41 victories in LaGG-3s and La-5FNs, flew a captured Me-109 and, like his Western colleagues, came away amazed that its pilots had been able to perform as well as they did.

It has been said, however, that where you sit is where you stand, and German Me-109 pilots saw things from a decidedly different perspective. Franz Stigler, a 28-victory Experte, test-flew captured American fighters and commented: ‘I didn’t like the Thunderbolt. It was too big. The cockpit was immense and unfamiliar. After so many hours in the snug confines of the [Me-109], everything felt out of reach and too far away from the pilot. Although the P-51 was a fine airplane to fly…it too was disconcerting. With all those levers, controls and switches in the cockpit, I’m surprised [American] pilots could find the time to fight.’

As the war turned against Germany, Me-109Gs carried a variety of armament to counter the growing armadas of Allied bombers. One such weapon was the 210mm Nebelwerfer 42 rocket, two of which were mounted in Wfr.Gr.21 Dodel launchers under the wings of Me-109G-6/R2 Pulk Zerstörer (’formation destroyers’). Although inaccurate, the rockets were capable of throwing bomber groups into disarray. The Germans added two 20mm MG 151 cannons in Rüstsatz 6 underwing-mounted gondolas on the Me-109G-6/R6, and 30mm MG 108s on the Me-109G-6/U4. Although devastating against American bombers, the Kanonenboote (’gunboats’), as their pilots called them, were unable to outmaneuver or outrun the Allied fighter escorts.

In 1943, JG.1’s Me-109G pilots began dropping 551-pound bombs on American bomber formations in hopes of dispersing them. The Me-109G-6/N, equipped with a variety of navigation equipment, including an FuG 350 Naxos Z receiver in a small glass dome aft of the cockpit for homing in on the H2S radar of RAF Pathfinders, was briefly employed by JG.300 early in 1944 for lone Wilde Sau (’wild pig’) attacks on British bombers at night. A spate of landing accidents at night and in bad weather led to the abandonment of the night-fighting Gustavs. In the Mistel (’mistletoe’) project, Me-109Fs and Fw-190As were mounted on the backs of unmanned Ju-88s packed with explosives. When they neared a target, the manned fighters would separate from the Ju-88s, and the pilots would guide the flying bombs to the targets by radio.

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