Fighter pure for excellence, shared with the Focke Wulf 190 the first line of the Luftwaffe throughout WWII. Continuously updated and upgraded, represented an irreplaceable element in the arsenal of the Luftwaffe, keeping in line from the Battle of Britain until the last day of the war.
The Messerschmitt Bf 109 is the most famous German fighter of World War II.
He served between 1937 and 1945 and confronted with an incredible series of increasingly fierce opponents, who were faced with constant changes and improvements going beyond the limits of a large extent of the original project; eventually came to double the weight and triple the original power, whose autonomy was inevitable tribute significantly reduced compared to the first series. It was an extremely versatile aircraft: its latest versions even included a high-altitude fighter with a pressurized cabin.
Was produced after the war in Czechoslovakia and Spain, and overall they were built about 35, 000 units: one of the biggest productions of all time.
In books and magazines is also sometimes called Me 109, the contraction of the name of the manufacturer.
The abbreviation Bf indicates the name of the factory production (Bayerische Flugzeugwerke AG) that in July 1938 changed its name to Messerschmitt AG.
The planes progettatati thereafter took the name Me, while those designed previously (including variants) continued to be called Bf.