Rare Messerschmitt flies with Spitfire for first time this century
Legendary Battle of Britain adversaries are reunited at air show
A rare German Messerschmitt fighter has flown alongside a Spitfire for the first time this century.
The Bf109, a rare E model identical to those flown in the Battle of Britain, took to the skies in company with a Spitfire at the Shuttleworth Festival of Flight air show in Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, at the weekend.
Known as Red 12, the vintage aircraft was recovered in 1993 from the site in northern Russia where it crashed more than 50 years earlier. Enthusiasts in the UK and Germany painstakingly restored it to flying condition.
Air-to-air photographs show the Messerschmitt flying in formation with the Shuttleworth Collection’s Spitfire, as well as an American P-51 Mustang and an equally rare P-47 Thunderbolt.
Although Red 12 did not fly in the Battle of Britain, as a Bf109E-4 model, it is identical to those flown by Luftwaffe aces such as Adolf Galland.
The fighter is fitted with an original Daimler-Benz DB601 engine and its appearance this weekend was its British airshow debut.
Shuttleworth’s Spitfire is a mid-war Mark V model, which was not flown during the Battle of Britain. The Mark V, however, is similar to the Mark I and Mark II variants that the RAF flew during the struggle for Britain’s survival.
The main visual differences are the fitment of 20mm cannon protruding from the wings and a grey-and-green paint scheme, rather than the brown-and-green camouflage used in 1940, which was designed to blend in with the fields of Kent.
The E model of the Bf109 was the front-line fighter flown by the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain. After the RAF’s squadrons of Supermarine Spitfires and Hawker Hurricanes won the battle, Nazi Germany turned its attention to invading the Soviet Union in 1941.
Hundreds of Bf109s similar to Red 12 were redeployed from France to the Eastern Front. In a twist of historical fate, their Russian adversaries were flying ex-RAF Hurricanes given to the Soviets by Great Britain.
Red 12 itself was shot down by Hurricanes on Jan 24 1942, above the northern Russian hamlet of Titovka, inside the Arctic Circle and next to the Norwegian border.
Other Messerschmitt 109s have flown in the UK, but none from the Battle of Britain era since the 1940s.
The Imperial War Museum’s “Black 6”, a Me109G variant, was captured in North Africa in 1942. It was flown at British airshows in the 1990s until a crash at the end of its last scheduled flying display in 1997. Today, it resides in the RAF Museum Midlands.
[Source: Daily Telegraph]
