Been asking about 109G-10 production all over the web Email etc. Some newer info has come to light about this craft.
Charles Bavaroise
Bf 109 G-10 new or rebuilt?
Tue Nov 16 06:30:27 1999
There was a lengthy discussion in LUFTWAFFE-VERBAND journal in 1998/99 with a lot of new information and ideas. To sum up in brief:
The 109 G-10 was a newly built a/c only. This is very clear from German files. Not only from C-Amts-summary report (Artie Bob November 15) but also from diffent files of the Quatermaster-General and the General-Luftzeugmeister (Freiburg Military Archives) as much as fragmentary information from the main producers Erla, Wiener-Neustädter Flugzeugwerke and Messerschmitt-Regensburg. None of the main producers had repair-facilities of their own but a chain of sub-contractors manufacturing subassemblies and parts. This is why a G-10 from Erla looks different to a WNF G-10. As Arite Bob already said, there was no way to feed repaired a/c into the production cycle. At least for fighter a/c Germany had a highly efficient and sophisticated industries running up to the very last days of the war in spite of bombing and dispersal and with a rigid quality controll. Some people think, that there was utter chaos, but this is simply not true. What the industries had to cope with was some temporary bottlenecks with parts and therefore you can find Bf 109 K-4s with shot tail wheels and AS-engines in G-10s from Erla (not G-10/AS!!), but generally production remained straightforward.
There is not a single original German document indicating a single G-10 from rebuilt oldes airframes. Jochen Priens statement about recycled a/c is from 1982 (!) and therefore depends on fairly outdated information. Jean Claude Mermet had his emphasis on DB 605 engines and how to fit them to the airframe (has done a very good job!) but he had no access to production data or loss-reports. A/c-repair and rebuilding in 1944/45 was done at special repair-shops not linked to the main-manufacturers (also in some cases very nearly located). They turned out thousands of repaired 109s and 190s, but all of them had their original Werknummer! In 1943-45 the old a/c-designaton was not altered even if components from a newer series were used. So a 109 G-6 fitted with a MW-50 device during repair was left to be a G-6, not a G-14. There are only two known exceptions:
- Bf 109 G-5, G-6 and G-14 fitted with DB 605 AS-engines became G-5/AS, G-6/AS or G-14/AS and
- rebuilt trainers were called a Bf 109 G-12 or Fw 190 S-5 (S-8).
As for the G-10 with two plates on their fuselage. You can see this only on very few fotos of G-10s only (why not on other a/c if it was common practice on recycled a/c??) and all of them from Wiener-Neustädter Flugzeugwerke. I don't know the reason for this, but perhaps one idea: WNF dispersed its production in summer 1944 and fuselages were built in a railroad-tunnel near Tischnowitz in Slovakia and wings and other parts in other places. For final-assembly this parts were transported to one of five ex-Luftwaffe-hangars on airfields in Austria. Perhaps one of the plates was for the subassembly of the fuselage and the other plate was added after final-assembly and was for the complete airframe (and therefore the RLM-Werknummer).
Check the whole thread at 12'Oclock high LW discussion forum
http://disc.server.com/Indices/3051.html 109G10 thread:
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=3051&article=15193&date_query=94265 ------------------
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