It’s the most produced fighter aircraft in history.

It created the highest scoring aces ever to live with over 300 kills and shot down more aircraft than any other fighter ever built.

But all of that came at the cost of 90% of its pilots dying before World War II ended.

Today, we’re going to dive a bit deeper than we usually do and tell you some lesserk known details about the Messid BF 109.

Some of which are quite disturbing as you’re about to hear.

Okay, so let’s start with the time when the BF 109 was arguably the best fighter in the world.

And we’ll go from there to how in just a few short years it became almost obsolete.

In the years after World War I, the German military, as you probably heard, was under the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles.

What this basically meant, among many other things, is that they were limited to just a 100,000 men and banned from developing any modern weapons, and under those banned categories was aviation.

The treaty banned the production and importation of military aircraft, engines, and parts, and all existing military aircraft had to be surrendered and destroyed.

However, Germany kept its aviation industry alive by operating on paper as civil aviation, while in practice, they were preparing the most modern technology for the new war.

The national airline Lufanza operated aircraft that were deliberately similar to military models and trained pilots who could easily be converted to military use when the time came.

So when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party came to power in January 1933, Germany already had the foundations of an air force hiding in plain sight.

Now one of the new fighters they wanted was a single engine design to replace the old World War I style biplanes.

And to not bother you with the competing firms and models, the prototype of the subject of our video today was designed by Willie Messesmidt.

What they wanted to do was create the smallest possible airframe that could be wrapped around the most powerful available engine while still carrying useful arament.

The result was a compact, sleek, lowwing monoplane that looked like nothing else in the world at that time.

And what’s a bit ironic during this development is that German engines that were supposed to power it weren’t ready yet.

So, the first BF 109 actually flew with one of two British Rolls-Royce Kestrel engines they somehow got their hands on.

The first BF 109 prototype flew just two months after Germany had officially established the Luftwaffer on March 1st and publicly renounced the Treaty of Versailles restrictions.

The world was shocked as the masks were finally coming off.

Now to understand why the BF 109 was so special, you have to understand what fighter aircraft looked like at that time.

So you’ll see the real difference and the shock Messesmmit created.

The typical combat aircraft of the early 1930s was still basically a World War I design that had been refined but not fundamentally changed.

Most fighters were fabric covered biplanes with fixed landing gear, open cockpits, and relatively lowowered engines.

The American Boeing P26, which entered service in 1934, was considered modern because it was a monoplane, but it still had fixed landing gear and an open cockpit.

The British were flying Glouester Gladiators and Hawker Furies, both biplanes.

The BF 109 was something entirely different.

It was an all- metal mono coat construction, meaning the aircraft’s skin carried the structural loads rather than an internal framework covered in fabric.

It had a fully enclosed cockpit with a canopy, retractable landing gear, and it was powered by a liquid cooled inverted V12 engine.

It also had automatic leading edge slats on the wings that improved handling at low speeds and allowed for shorter takeoffs.

Another feature was the slightly reclined seating position, which may have allowed pilots to sustain more G-forces during intense maneuvers because blood couldn’t rush away from the head as easily.

All of these features together made it one of the first truly modern fighters in the world.

As for the initial armorament, which by the way would drastically evolve, as you’re about to see, it started with two 79 2mm machine guns mounted above the engine firing through the propeller arc.

They use synchronization gear that prevented the machine guns from firing at the moment when a propeller blade was directly in front of the barrel so the plane wouldn’t shoot itself down.

The advantage of this setup was accuracy because wing-mounted guns were farther apart from each other and had to be converged for their fire to meet at a specific distance.

While this way the guns were much closer together and the fire was more accurate, especially at longer range.

The first public glimpse of the new fighter came during the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games.

As part of the spectacle, 14 pilots flew displays in the new BF 109, dazzling spectators with speeds and maneuvers never seen before.

It was a deliberate show of strength meant to demonstrate that Germany was back as a major military power.

The following year, a specially modified BF 109 set a new world land plane speed record of 610 km/h, which the Germans used as propaganda, making it seem like all their fighters were this fast.

The world was watching and sweating, knowing that they had nothing remotely near the performance of these fighters suddenly appearing.

The German fighter also had a floor that would kill more of its pilots than the enemy ever did.

The landing gear was mounted directly to the fuselage rather than the wings, which gave the aircraft a clean aerodynamic profile and allowed the fuselage and wings to be produced separately for easier manufacturing.

However, this placed the wheels very close together and made ground handling extremely unstable.

During takeoff, if pilots didn’t pay close attention to the acceleration as the tail lifted and the propeller began to turn, the aircraft could easily veer to the left.

And once that happened, there was nothing you could do.

It was a major problem that happened quite frequently and roughly 1,700 aircraft were lost to undercarriage accidents during the war.

An estimated 10% of all BF 109s ever built were destroyed during takeoff and landing.

During training alone, around 1,700 Luftvafa pilots were killed in non-combat accidents.

This deadly flaw would never be fully resolved throughout the aircraft’s entire service life.

The BF109 made its combat debut in early 1937 with the B variant arriving in Spain where the Germans used the Spanish Civil War as a testing ground for their new weapons and the BF 109 was of course one of them.

It proved vastly superior to the Soviet supplied fighters opposing it which were considered capable fighters at the time.

By the time the Spanish Civil War ended in April 1939, the BF 109 had established itself as the best fighter in the world.

German pilots had gained invaluable combat experience, and the aircraft itself had been continuously improved based on lessons learned.

The first production B variants gave way to the C and D models, and by December 1938, the first E models arrived, powered by the much more powerful Dameler Benz engine, producing about a,000 horsepower.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world was only beginning to catch up.

The British Hawker Hurricane made its first flight in 1935, and the Supermarine Spitfire flew for the first time in 1936, but neither entered squadron service until 1938.

The French were still flying older designs, and the Americans were years behind with their first modern monoplane fighters not entering service until the very end of the decade.

When Germany invaded Poland on September 1st, 1939, triggering the Second World War, the Luftvafa had about a thousand BF 109s in service with around 850 of them being the latest E- model.

Poland fell in a month.

Then the pattern repeated when France was invaded, where the BF 109 simply outclassed everything it encountered in the air.

In May 1940, they encountered the British Spitfire for the first time, finally having an opponent that could test them on somewhat equal terms.

Pilots of both sides quickly learned that at this moment almost everything came down to who was sitting at the stick as these two fighters were pretty close in performance.

In aerial combat, the Spitfire could outturn and outmaneuver the 109, but the German fighter could outclimb and outdive its British opponent.

The 109 also had a significant advantage over British fighters when it came to the engine.

Instead of a float carburetor, the Dameler Benz used a fuel injection system.

This allowed pilots to perform negative G maneuvers without the fuel being cut off, something that early British fighters couldn’t do.

When a Spitfire pilot pushed into a dive, the carburetor would flood and the engine would stall momentarily.

German pilots learned to exploit this, diving away during dog fights, knowing their opponents couldn’t immediately follow.

Okay, so now Western Europe was under firm occupation by Nazi Germany.

and everything was being prepared for what would become known as the Battle of Britain with more than 2500 German aircraft ready to attack from bases in France and the Low Countries.

On the BF 109, armor plating was added to protect the pilot and provision was made for drop tanks to extend range as they now needed to fly from bases in France, cross over the English Channel, and then escort Luftwaffer bombers over land while engaging in fierce dog fights with British fighters that were defending their homeland.

And this is where the 109 encountered its first significant problems in its combat career and where enemy fighters had a real advantage over it.

The first thing was that the fighter was designed as a short range interceptor, not a long range escort.

It had a restricted range of just 400 m.

When escorting bombers from French airfields, pilots had fuel for only about 15 minutes of actual combat over England before they had to turn back.

Any longer or any damage, and they wouldn’t make it home.

Time and again, 109 pilots had to break off engagements or leave bombers exposed so they could make it back to France.

Many didn’t make it.

Dozens of pilots were lost crashing into the English Channel because they ran out of fuel.

The British also had radar, which could detect incoming German raids over a 100 miles away and give fighter command time to scramble interceptors.

The 109 pilots crossing the channel with barely enough fuel, would find Spitfires and Hurricanes waiting for them with full tanks and quite a motivation.

And that’s not even mentioning the anti-aircraft fire from the ground.

By the time the battle concluded in late October, Germany had lost over 1,700 aircraft, including about 600 BF 109s.

Now, perhaps we need to explain to you what it actually meant to fly this type of fighter at the time.

You see, unlike the Fauler Wolf 190 or American Thunderbolt that were about to come with air cooled radial engines, early fighters like the 109 or British Spitfire had water cooled inline engines.

pretty much the same thing you’d have in your car.

And while comparing it to a car, it had about the same armor as Toyota Yarus.

Besides some bullet resistant glass and plating to stop some of the bullets and shrapnel from hitting the pilot, most of the aircraft was as softed as an automobile, and a single bullet hitting an oil or fuel or coolant line or piercing the engine block or radiator could doom the fighter.

The engine would either overheat or go out, and you’d be gliding toward the ground or water, looking for a place to crash land or attempt to bail out if you had enough altitude.

Those air cooled fighters we mentioned were much harder to kill like this because their engines didn’t rely on coolant fluid, and were much more robust, could still work with several cylinders shot out and bring you back to base.

Now, you see that speed and maneuverability were the only forms of protection these pilots could get.

The 109’s cockpit was also described by Allied pilots as unquestionably too cramped for any comfort.

It was narrow.

The seating was extremely tiring and visibility was far from ideal as every form of comfort was sacrificed to create as small and sleek a fighter as possible.

The following spring after the Battle of Britain brought a strange episode.

A few years earlier, Germany had sold roughly 70 BF 109 fighters to Yugoslavia.

When Hitler invaded in April 1941, the Yuguslavs had to defend themselves with the very aircraft they had purchased.

During the 11-day battle, there were multiple clashes where BF 109s of the Luftwaffer fought BF 109s of Yugoslavia.

On the first day, Yuguslav fighters claimed seven German 109s while losing five of their own.

One problem was that Yugoslav anti-aircraft gunners had no way to identify their own aircraft from the ground.

And on multiple occasions, they accidentally fired at their own planes.

As the war spread to North Africa and the Middle East, the 109 was adapted with sand filters over the engine air intake to cope with dusty conditions.

This tropicalized version performed well in the desert, but faced its own challenges from heat and harsh terrain.

In June 1941, Germany launched Operation Barbarasa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.

The opening attack was supported by 450 BF109s, and a new variant called the Friedrich entered service.

The F model incorporated improvements from lessons learned in the Battle of Britain, including a larger propeller spinner, redesigned engine cowling, and rounded wing tips that enhanced performance.

It abandoned wing cannons entirely and concentrated all armament in the nose, which improved accuracy and handling.

To many experienced Luftwaffer pilots, the F model was the finest 109 variant ever built.

You had your two synchronized machine guns mounted above the engine, firing through the propeller arc, and then a single cannon firing through the hollow propeller hub, which the Germans called the motor cannon arrangement.

The 20 mm mine shell or minos was particularly devastating because it used a drawn steel construction rather than casting allowing for very thin walls and a much larger explosive filling.

Many experienced German aces actually loved the F model precisely because of this concentrated nose armorament.

The results on the Eastern front were staggering.

German pilots claimed more than 4,000 Russian aircraft for the loss of only about 150 of their own.

The Soviet Air Force was badly organized and flying outdated biplanes and early monoplanes and German pilots achieved astonishing numbers of victories during this period.

In May 1942, the BF109G or Gustav began replacing the F model.

Powered by the Dameler Benz engine producing nearly 1,500 horsepower.

It was the most widely produced variant with over 12,000 of this model alone built.

It had even heavier armament now with 13 mm heavy machine guns and cannon combinations, but the variants experienced high failure rates due to substandard metallurgy and critical components like exhaust valves.

This led to frequent breakdowns and contributed to pilot losses.

Some early G models delivered to frontline squadrons caught fire when the nosemounted oil tank began to leak over the hot engine.

The quality of engines and oils was also degrading as Germany’s industrial situation worsened.

Haltman Hans Yuahim Marles, the Luftwaffer’s highest scoring ace against Western Allied Air Forces with 158 confirmed victories, actually died because of his 109G.

He had even refused to transition from his older model until he was directly ordered exactly because of this engine flaw.

And what happened with his brand new 109 after he scored seven victories with it was that all of a sudden his cockpit began filling with thick black smoke.

He was trying to fly back to base with the help of his wingmen.

And after reaching friendly lines, he had to get out.

And here is another problem with the 109, the bailout procedure.

Unlike most fighters of the time that had sliding canopies, the 109’s was hinged on the right side and swung open.

So at any significant speed, the airflow made opening impossible.

Pilots first needed to jettison the entire canopy using the emergency release, then roll inverted and drop out like that.

But in that thick black smoke, Marilles didn’t notice that his fighter went into a steep dive traveling at over 600 km per hour.

As he exited the cockpit, the slipstream pushed him backward and he hit the vertical stabilizer with his chest.

Either killed immediately or knocked out, he fell to the ground with his parachute never opening as observed by his wingmen.

Then there was a dark reason why German pilots achieved such enormous scores.

Unlike Allied airmen, Luftwaffer pilots had no rotation system.

From the very beginning, Germany faced a constant shortage of trained fighter pilots.

Every available man had to be sent into combat.

They flew until they died, were captured, or were too badly wounded to continue.

Even being wounded didn’t necessarily mean release from duty.

As soon as a pilot was deemed recovered, he was sent back up.

One German squadron lost more than 100% of its pilots, meaning the entire roster was killed, replaced, and the replacements were also killed.

But then the job of BF 109 pilots and their fighters changed completely in 1943 when American and British air forces together launched a bombing campaign to knock out German infrastructure and factories with the biggest focus on everything that helped with the production of aircraft.

The Luftvafa itself was the main target.

Now, if you watched our previous videos, you’d know how in the early phase of this campaign, the Allies sustained just horrible losses of their long range bombers.

This was because they had to attack targets deep in enemy territory, and bombers had much longer range than any fighter of the time.

So, they had to rely on their defensive machine guns and flying in combat box formation for mutual protection against German fighters.

Well, that turned out not to work quite great for them.

Allied fighters would escort bombers as long as their range allowed, then had to turn back to their bases in England.

This is the moment German fighters waited for and then scramble to intercept and shoot down as many bombers as they could before they could hit their targets on the ground.

And shooting down a bomber was much different than shooting down an enemy fighter.

First, it was a much more dangerous target with all those machine gun positions and formation flying.

Bombers like the B17 Flying Fortress, despite heavy losses, had actually downed a significant number of German fighters.

And German pilots knew how dangerous and difficult it was to shoot down a 4engine heavy bomber.

However, their tactics would evolve into something similar to what Japanese pilots did in the Pacific, as you’re now about to hear.

Besides purpose-built bomber interceptor fighters, Germans had to rely on their most numerous fighter, which was their BF109 workhorse.

But its standard armament wasn’t enough to reliably shoot down such a big target like a bomber.

So they needed to upging it far beyond what any fighter ever needed for dog fights with enemy fighters.

At first they added two 20 mm and later even 30 mm cannons in underwing gondilas with 135 rounds per gun, but this created significant additional drag and made the aircraft out of balance with a tendency to swing like a pendulum during flight.

There were also experiments with 112 kg air-to-air rockets designed to be fired into bomber formations from a safe distance.

This made them much better bomber killers.

But then something happened that would mark the end of the BF 109’s glory days.

The Allies solved the problem of their fighters short range by developing reliable drop tank technology, which existed earlier in the war, but they hadn’t yet found a way to use it effectively.

However, it was then refined.

And when it was paired with the P-51 Mustang fitted with the British Merlin engine that the Spitfires had, it was an instant match.

The Allies now had fighters that could escort bombers all the way to Berlin and back with plenty of fuel for dog fights and to roam around German territory and harass any target of opportunity.

This way, a huge number of Luftvafa aircraft were destroyed while parked on the ground.

And once the new fighters appeared in the airspace, which was considered by the Germans safe from enemy fighters, and overloaded 109s got swarmed by Mustangs that could jettison their tanks and restore full mobility for dog fights.

The results were just catastrophic.

To make matters only worse, besides flying in aging, poorly maintained aircraft due to shortages of everything from material to fuel and then being overloaded with heavier weapons that destroyed their most important factor for dog fighting.

German pilots, as we said, weren’t rotated until killed or wounded.

And now fighting in desperate attempts to stop the bombers were young, barely trained pilots that got nowhere near the training or the flight time of early elite German pilots that dominated Europe early in the war.

While on the other side were seasoned allied pilots in the most modern fighters.

Skies over Germany turned into a slaughter house.

And even if all that wasn’t enough, there was sabotage coming from their own factories.

Forced labor working in German prisons/factories fought their battle as much as they could, trying to covertly sabotage whatever they were producing for the Germans.

Loosened screws, nails dropped in fuel tanks, or clogged oil lines were some of the methods those workers who were literally overworked to death used to try to fight back.

However, the darkest aspect of all this were the final desperate attempts to slow down the inevitable defeat.

Sonda Commando Ela.

Just months before the wars end in Europe, a new special volunteer unit was formed of about 300 selected pilots.

They got BF 109s stripped of armor and armament to a minimum.

Their task was to do the same thing the Japanese had done with Allied ships in the Pacific, to use their aircraft and themselves with it as a last means to down bombers.

They could withdraw from their mission an hour before takeoff if they changed their mind, but there’s no record of anyone doing so.

They would meet the bomber formations and ram themselves into cockpits or tails.

In just one bombing mission, eight bombers were downed by ramming.

There is a recorded case of Hinrich Rosner who rammed a B24 of the 389th bomb group in the bomber’s nose.

The bomber lost control and hit another nearby bomber and both crashed.

Rosnner meanwhile bailed out and survived with a broken collarbone.

However, as the Allied pressure continued and they eventually achieved complete air superiority, the resistance of the Luftwafer came to an end.

There was a saying among soldiers, if you see a silver plane, it’s American.

If you see a green plane, it’s British.

If you see no plane at all, it’s the Luftvafer.

They were correct.

As for the BF109, it was manufactured in greater numbers than any other fighter aircraft in history.

Total production exceeded 33,000 units with over 13,000 built in 1944 alone at the peak of wartime production.

Over a 10-year period, nine main variants and nearly 80 subvariants were produced.

Around 30,000 enemy aircraft were destroyed by the BF109 during its service, making it the deadliest fighter in history in terms of aerial kills.

It created the highest scoring aces the world has ever seen.

But the human cost was enormous.

As we said at the beginning, 90% of all fighter pilots the Germans sent into the war wouldn’t live to see the end of it.

Eric Hartman had 352 victories.

Ghard Barhorn 301 and Gunther Roll 275 while 105 BF 109 pilots achieved over a 100 kills.

The BF109 also carries the title of the longest operational combat service for a fighter serving with some nations until 1965.

No other fighter aircraft in history has matched that and it doesn’t look like any will.