Special thanks to Lyric for helping to acquire reference material on several Slovak Emils. There may be others to come.
Bf 109E-3 operated by
Letka 13 of the Slovak Air Arm
Slovenske Vzdušné zbrane (SVZ) in the winter of 1942-43. Slovakia purchased hand-me-down 109E's of various sub types from Germany in early 1942 to equip a training unit and a single fighter squadron.
Letka 13 deployed to the Eastern Front in October 1942 and began combat operations in the Kuban and Caucasus regions from their base at Maykop. The squadron was officially attached to Luftwaffe unit Jg 52 and appears in German records as 13.(Slovak)/Jg 52. The Slovak pilots recorded their first victories in the area of Tuapse in late November and early December. White 2 was flown by future Slovak aces Jan Reznak and Pavel Zelenak, although no known victories are attributed to any pilot with it. The war weary Emils would be replaced over the winter by used 109F's loaned to them by Germany and the Emils were sent back to Slovakia where they outfitted the training wing.
Letka 13's success with these older 109's prompted Germany to outfit the squadron with factory fresh 109G-2's and G-4's in the spring of 1943. 154 confirmed victories and 16 unconfirmed were claimed through July 1943, when the pilots rotated home and a new batch of Slovak pilots took their place. The Emils stayed in service in Slovakia into the summer of 1944 when they were confiscated by German authorities in the wake of the Slovak National Uprising in August.
White 2 was an E-3 model 109 and retained it's original 1940 paint scheme of RLM 71 olive green and RLM 02 gray over RLM 65 light blue. Dark squiggles of RLM 70 black green are applied over the fuselage, probably by the Slovaks. The original German markings were painted over with Slovak markings on the wings and fuselage and the swastika on the tail was covered with camouflage colors. A stylized version of the Slovak national coat of arms was painted on both sides of the nose. Eastern Front IFF markings of yellow lower wing tips and tail band are used. The yellow and black prop spinner is possibly a carry-over from the plane's original squadron as spinner colors and patterns on
Letka 13's Emils show several variations.
