I have been a fan of WWII aviation, and aviation in general, for most of my life. Those of us here on this BBS can trace our tracks here due to some infatuation with a warbird of any given era. Narrower still, some of us can be grouped in to classes of what we like most; the rough and tumble FW-190, the graceful and deadly Spitfire, the all-too American character of the P-47, the nimble and manueverable Japanese fighters. For me it was, and always will be, about radial engined fighters, namely the FW-190.
As a kid I built many model airplanes that were available in the local five and dime store. The ONLY place you would find me in the school library was in the WWII section. Of the books I have read in my lifetime roughly 70% are about WWII aircraft. I feel that I am confident about basic facts of most fighters from the era and I know some of you are complete experts in the field. One thing that has struck me is I have never been a huge fan of the Bf-109. The more I have read or continue to read about it, the more this machine baffles me.
Here we have a fighter that, by rights, was not a long term answer to Germany's need for a pursuit aircraft, yet there it was at every front, on every continent they fought at. I was an odd design, not given to too much improvement yet by 1945 the K's were still highly lethal. It was cramped and only marginally comfortable. It had bad ground characteristics. It had a heavy port wing dip on take off that didn't help matters. It didn't carry enough fire power to be respected, for the most part, unless it had pods attached. And yet, it was still feared. It was the mount of the experten, the only mount for them. It was a fighter to be not solely loved, but to be equally respected. It was, as I would say, a fighter pilot's fighter plane. And yet it was still considered obsolete even up to its last days.
What I am getting at is how did a plane with seemingly so little to offer in it's initial production become such a well respected and highly coveted fighter through it's career in WWII? Even with all of it's short comings?
It truly is the most enigmatic WWII frontline fighter of them all.