This skin is an adoption and replacement for II/Jg 54 by Krusty. The same scheme was also skinned by Larry. Since Larry's skin is the better of the two, I have elected to replace Krusty's skin with a different aircraft from the same Gruppe.
This Bf 109E-4 was flown by Josef "Joschi" Pöhs of 5./Jg 54 in March 1941. Pöhs was born in Austria was already serving as a pilot when Austria was annexed into Nazi Germany and the Austrian Air Force absorbed into the Luftwaffe in 1938. The Austrian fighter group remained intact and began combat in 1939 as Jg 76, and retained their "Lion of Aspern" emblem. In July 1940, Jg 76 was merged into the newly formed Jg 54 as it's II Gruppe. Pöhs had 7 victories by the end of 1940. While he would not score another victory on the Channel Front, he saw much success in the Balkan and Russian campaigns, passing 40 victories in September, 1941. He was then sent to various training squadrons before joining Erprobungskommando 16 in 1943 to develop the combat version of the Me 163 Comet. Josef Pöhs was killed on a test flight after the undercarriage dolly bounced back up into his Comet on takeoff, knocking out the rocket motor. A hasty attempt to turn and land back at the field resulted in him clipping a wing on a radio tower and crashing in a violent explosion.
Pöhs's Emil features field applied camouflage in a pattern unique to II/Jg 54. I elected to use the RLM 74 and 75 grays for this skin as Larry's skin is in 71 and 02. Either could be correct. Yellow cowl and rudder are the usual Channel Front IFF marking for late 1940 through mid 1941. A black and white spinner is tipped in red.
