Today's contribution comes from a temporary duty assignment (TDY) I had at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. My apologies for the lighting but the National Air and Space Museum is quite dark. The P-40 in the picture carries the famed "shark nose" made famous by the Flying Tigers. There were three squadrons of the American Volunteer Group, the Hells Angels, the Panda Bears and the Adam and Eves. They were eventually absorbed back into the U.S. Army Air Corps 23rd Fighter Group. The 23rd is currently stationed at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia and is the only group in the Air Force authorized to retain the shark nose on their A-10s. Previously, the 23rd Fighter Squadron at Spangdahlem sported the sharks nose on their F-16s and F-4 Wild Weasels.

Wright-Patterson is really a historical yet working Air Force Base. The field where the Wright Brothers flew, Huffman Prairie is part of the base. The first flight test center was at what became Wright-Patterson before it was moved to Edwards. It is fitting that the Air Force Museum is located there. If you're in the Dayton area and have some time available to invest, it is a well worth while stop. Admission is free.........sean

 

Me at a very young 25 at the Imperial War Museum in London. At the time, there were very few Messerschmidt Me109s in the world. 9 to be exact, that were in museums outside of the old Communist Bloc countries. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, there have been a number of others that were found in random places in Eastern Europe. There were a large number of Spanish built HA variants still in existence, however surviving proper German built ones still number just 20 with approximately 4 in flying condition. The one in the picture is from the Battle of Britain, or so said the sign in front of it. The UK also has at least one flying survivor at RAF Biggin Hill, or at least they did at one time. I know a number of the flyable aircraft were moved from there to the Imperial War Museum at RAF Duxford as it has a functioning runway.....sean

 

Host nation Mirage awaiting take-off as we taxiied to position.

 

Been to Duxford this past January, it's an excellent museum. I think it's on par with Dayton AF museum. (It's got the only SR71 displayed outside USA)

Duxford has a Bf-109 displayed in a setting just as it crashed in UK. Gear-up landing, bent prop, otherwise looks complete. They've also got a Spanish HS version. I don't remember seeing any flyable ones. I HAVE seen a flying Bf-109 (but Merlin-powered) at Oshkosh many years ago but I heard that one crashed a few years later.

They never called it a Me-109 - many people incorrectly call it that. Produced before ***** bought the company, the Luftwaffe never changed the designation of the existing design even though it was still in production when he took over.

 

Not trying to argue the point, as you are technically correct, however, ace pilot dot com has probably the best explanation there is for the Me109 designation:
The later 262 "Schwalbe" jet is designated Me rather than Bf as is the Me 163 Komet. If Allied fighter pilots of the day referred to it as an Me, who am I to argue...sean

 

I did a significant amount of additional research on this and found that Wikipedia has a pretty complete list of Bf 109s around the world. My previous research was done many years ago, and the information available then was far less encompassing than what is available now on the internet.

What I found is, there are approximately 64 or so Bf 109s in existence around the world, or around triple what my previous research indicated. As I wrote previously, a great many came from former Eastern Bloc countries including the former Soviet Union. Of the existing 64, 33 are in private collections or undergoing restoration. There are 3 Bf 109s in airworthy condition. Two in the US, and one in Canada. The airworthy ones in the UK are both HAs built in Spain after the war. One is at Duxford.

Of the 33 listed at Wikipedia as being under restoration or in private collections, the US and UK have about 20 of them. Obviously, having been built after the war, the Spanish Hisapano Aviacion 1109/1112s are more numerous. Spain sold them off in the late 1960s and early 1970s and they were snapped up by collectors and museums around the world. Many were flown in filming for the movie "The Battle of Britain" and others filmed around that same time. There are many more of them in airworthy condition also. Canada has at least one, as does Belgium. The UK and Australia each have two and there is one in the US at Castle Air Force Base in Merced, CA.

There was one other manufacturer in Czechoslovakia. Germany had some built there during the war, but after the war the Czech's reopened the factory under the Czech company Avia. They built some 550 S-99s and S-199s which differed in power plant only. Wikipedia only lists 3 surviving airframes, 2 in Czechoslovakia and ironically, one in Israel. Apparently 23 were sold to Israel in the 1950s.

As with any other rare and iconic aircraft there are some fakes about. One known one is an HA-1109 that was refitted with a Daimler Benz engine from a Bf 109 and then labeled as such. The first 25 airframes were actually built in Germany so it is possible that this was one which sort of makes it authentic. Maybe not historically so, but who cares. The HA-1112M1Ls were built with Rolls Royce Merlin engines from 1954 until the late 1950s. About 170 or so were documented to have been built that way. The original HA-1109s were built with Hispano-Suiza engines on the original 25 airframes shipped from Germany. None ever became operational. The HA-1112 was built with the same Hispano-Suiza engine in an airframe designed on the original German one, but specifically for the Hispano-Suiza engine. 54 of those were built as HA-112K1Ls.

 

The Wikipedia list has an HA-1112M1L on display at Oshkosh. It would have been equipped from the HA factory with a Merlin engine. The one listed as being at Castle AFB was at Oshkosh in 2004:

 

 

The 109 I saw at Oshkosh would've been in 1978 or 79 -ish. Someday I'll have to dig thru my old photos. (Back in the days of film & wet-darkroom.)

 

Likely that it was an HA-1112M1L rather than an authentic Bf 109. The one in the picture above looks like the real article until you notice the humps on either side of the fuselage to accomodate the upright V12 versus the upside down Junkers Jumo or Daimler-Benz V-12 engines as originally fit. Way back in the late 70s there were far fewer Bf 109s around. There were dozens and dozens of the HA-1112s though. The M1Ls that came with the Merlin engine could be found in many more places. During my research, I found there is one that has been identified right down to the tail number it carried in the Spanish Air Force as an HA-1112M1L.Yet, the private owner here in the US registered it with the FAA as a Bf 109.

Truly, unless one were well versed in what they were looking at; it is an easy mistake to make, and even easier fraud to pull off. The image in my above post looks like the genuine article. Enough so that it could fool almost anyone into thinking it is a real Bf 109. I'm reasonably sure that if you saw a flying Bf 109 equipped with a Merlin engine, that it is actually an HA-1112M1L painted in the squadron colors of a photo documented Bf 109. Particularly in the 1970s when as I wrote before, there were but 9 known genuine Bf 109s West of the Iron Curtain on display.....sean