This is the Messerschmitt Bf-109 E-series. This  is one that was shot down during the Battle of  

Britain in September 1940, and we know a lot  quite a lot about its history, we know two of  

the pilots that flew it during the early stages of  the Battle of Britain and during the later stages  

and it's also in really brilliant condition. It's  almost the same as it was when it was shot down  

apart from some bits that were taken out from the  inside. The Bf 109 is the most produced fighter  

aircraft in history with over 34,000 having been  built over an eight year period. There were many  

variants and it served in a variety of roles from  bomber escort to night fighter to ground attack  

and it was the Luftwaffe's main single seat  fighter for the first few years of the war  

and probably one of the best  fighters during that period.

Fighters above at high  altitudes fighters on both sides  

fighters in the front and in the rear fighters  weaving in and out of the bomber formations.  

By sheer weight of numbers the enemy again  and again broke through the coastal defences.

So this Bf-109 is from the E-series of Bf-109s.  It was very much upgraded from the first Bf-109  

that flew in May 1935. So it had a top speed of  357 miles per hour it could fly up to 36,000 feet  

and it had quite a powerful armament. Two MG17  machine guns above the engine here and then you'd  

also have an MG/F cannon in either wing. Also with  the E3s, there was usually a another cannon in the  

nose but often these were removed because pilots  found that it caused trouble with the engine.

Our recognition was appalling but I think the  Germans realized that even theirs was appalling  

because they painted their 109s with yellow  noses so they could recognize each other. You see  

a 109 and clipped wing Spit looks  fairly much the same actually.  

But the the 109 is for its job, in the hands  of a very experienced pilot such as Galland,  

it's very deadly. Because it's unstable  and fighters should be unstable.

So at the time of the Battle of Britain  the Bf-109 was a better aircraft than the  

RAF's Hawker Hurricane but when it came to the  Supermarine Spitfire it was more of a match.  

So the spitfire was slightly faster and had a  better turn radius but the 109 could climb a  

lot faster and it could be thrown into steep  dives thanks to its fuel-injected engine.  

In terms of armament, the Spitfire  was armed with eight machine guns  

whereas the Bf-109 was armed with two machine  guns and two cannon but cannon were a lot  

more powerful and destructive than machine  guns so also kind of a match there as well.

And it had inverted carburetors  which we didn't have,  

and it was slightly smaller than  the spitfire and the hurricane,  

the 109. It had two cannons. You see with 303s you  can put an awful lot of bullets in before you get  

before you can get something down but  one hit with a cannon and down you go.

You know what [unknown] said to  Goering, he said give me a Spitfire  

and that is what everybody, every German fighter  who had fought against the Spitfire was thinking,  

this is a much better aircraft than our 109.  During the war later on in '44 when I came  

back from Russia to Germany and was a group  commander they brought to us different types  

of enemy aircraft and had refurnished them  and gave the commanders of the groups the  

possibility to fly it and so I flew it during the  war. I flew the spitfire, I flew the Hurricane,  

I threw the thunderbolt and at that time the  Spitfire was absolutely the best aircraft.

This particular Bf-109 here  was built as an E-3 variant.  

It was built in September 1939 by a company  called Erla Maschinewerk in Leipzig.  

It was given the Werk Nummer 1190 and in  mid-1940 it was issued to the German fighter unit  

Jagdgeschwader 26. So the first known pilot of  this Bf-109 was named Karl Ebbighausen. In 1940 he  

was 26 years old he was a very experienced fighter  pilot having flown in the Spanish civil war  

and he also fought in the Battle of France and  during the evacuation of Dunkirk when he shot  

down about five allied aircraft. So we believe  that this aircraft was flown by Ebbighausen  

during the early stages of the Battle of Britain  in July maybe early August 1940 because it has his  

victory markings on it and beneath the layers  of paint also has the insignia of a grouping  

commander. He was as I mentioned commander  of two group during the battle of Britain.

German fighters waited overhead for the  defending planes of the royal air force,  

the RAF, to appear. They didn't have long to wait.

So on the tail fin here we have carl Ebbighausen  victory markings so the first two ones uh those  

are the rondels of the Dutch air force and this  the third one is around the French air force and  

then the the last two are the rondels of the  royal air forc. And also on here are the dates  

that the victories were achieved so all of these  were achieved during the Battle of France so from  

13th of May and then going to the 14th of  June. The last one so the number four here  

is the number of the aircraft and then you  have the Luftwaffe symbol the balkan kreuzer  

and then you have this dash here, with the dash  representing the second group of Jagdgeschwader 26  

with the colour white representing the first  Staffel of the group which is number four.

Ebbighausen was actually shot  down on the 16th of august  

off the southern coast of England. He was  killed but he was not flying this aircraft  

probably having upgraded to the latest variant  which was an E-4 at some point after that this  

was partially upgraded to an E-4 so it was  given a more powerful DB601 engine and then  

sometime in September it was issued  to a relatively inexperienced  

pilot named Horst Perez who was 22 years old. So  Perez was flying this bf-109 on 30th September  

1940 he was involved in sort of an escort mission  escorting bombers over the channel and towards  

London and this was actually one of the last major  daylight raids uh during the battle of Britain  

and at some point Perez was flying over Eastbourne  with his wingmen and he was bounced by Spitfires  

of 92 squadron. One of the pilots that is believed  to have shot him down was named Don Kingaby. He  

was known as the 109 specialist because he had  a penchant for shooting down Bf-109s and at  

some point Perez's engine failed we're not sure if  Kingaby had actually hit him because bullet holes  

were not found in the aircraft afterwards but  Perez basically decided to force land in a field  

and he landed it wheels up in a  field near East Dean in Sussex.

So this is how the 109 would have looked when  it crashed it has the bent propellers it has the  

landing gear up and it's sort of been restored  to look as it would have on the day it crashed.  

So this bf-109, after it was  acquired by the imperial war museum,  

having languished in a scrapyard for several  decades, it wasn't in a great state. So  

it's been restored to look as it was when  it was shot down on the 30th of September,  

so a lot of that is having been repainted. And if  we go over here we can look inside the cockpit...

You can kind of get an idea for what it was  like for Ebbighausen and Perez to sit in there  

so the inside of the cockpit. In those  decades that it was sitting in a scrap  

yard a lot of the stuff was taken out so the sort  of dials and a lot of the stuff in here is not  

original to this aircraft but they are original  parts so it's part of the restoration process.

Yes the 109 had some problems you know the  109 was a hit for instance undercarriage  

they had very high struts very narrow this means  if you accelerate your throttle push your father  

forward and the aircraft starts rolling and you  give forward pressure to get a tail up as soon  

as the tail gets up you you feel the torque effect  and you have to give immediately opposite rather  

so there are some uh problematic features  but as a whole i flew all the different marks  

under 109 just given my judgment uh i liked it  another 109 i was very familiar on that plane  

and looking at the 109 today i never can figure  out how i could survive or fly that for five  

and a half years because it was a very narrow  cockpit very tiny and the view to the back was  

very very limited you know we didn't have these  cockpits as we have today but if you get used to  

it you know we flew it in Russia out of snow  and mud and everything and I felt familiar.

Perez landed the aircraft in this field  and he was pretty relatively uninjured  

and he was pretty much immediately arrested by  the local home guard unit as well as the police  

and he was sent to a prisoner of war camp in  Canada where he spent the remainder of the war.  

Damage to this aircraft was very light a testament  to how Perez landed it in the field so it was sent  

to the royal aircraft establishment in Farnborough  for research and testing and then in October 1940  

Lord Beaverbrook agreed to send it to Canada  to the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the  

Empire and from there it was it went on a tour  of Canada to raise money for Britain's war effort  

and then in 1941 it was sent to the united  states to do another coast-to-coast tour,  

this time raising money for bundles for Britain.  And it was very popular because it was the first  

captured enemy aircraft to tour the United  States who had not yet entered the war.

and you can see sort of what's left of the  original paintwork but another interesting  

thing that you can really see on this wing are  all the names that are sort of scratched into it  

and this was part of the Bundles for Britain  campaign, the tour that it did through north  

America. So in addition to buying an entry ticket  to see the aircraft you could also scratch your  

name on it as well if you paid a little bit extra  and there were a lot of celebrities that signed  

their names onto it as well including the boxer  Jack Dempsey and the singer Lawrence Tibbett, and  

it's just another sort of interesting historical  insight that you can see on the aircraft itself.

So the 109's fundraising tour ended  in may 1942 and then it remained in  

north America until the 1960s when  it was rescued from a scrap yard  

in 1998 it was acquired by the Imperial War Museum with support of the National  

Heritage Memorial Fund and it was  restored to what it looks like now.

So the Bf 109 is a really interesting  aircraft in particular because  

it was the most produced fighter aircraft  in history it was one of the best aircraft  

of its type at the time and it was  continually upgraded throughout the war.  

And this particular Bf-109 is quite interesting  because it's one of the few surviving samples  

that was actually flown during the Battle of  Britain and it's also in excellent condition  

and allows us to tell the story of the  RAF's nemesis during the Battle of Britain.

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