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Plane View
WWII News
By Elizabeth Mullener
5 September 2008
WWII buffs can get a good look at notorious German Messerschmidtt
Me 109 Anyone who has ever wanted to get up close and personal
with a Me
109 will have a chance soon at the National World War II
Museum. The notorious fighter plane, backbone of the Luftwaffe,
Germany's air force, has been high on the museum's wish list
for years. There were 33,000 Messerschmidtts
produced in Nazi Germany during the war years -- more than any
other fighter plane in history.
Recently acquired, the plane will sit on the floor of the museum's
cavernous entry pavilion for five days before being hoisted
into the air to take its place with the other aircraft in the
collection. Alongside it on the floor will be the museum's Spitfire,
the Me 109
opposite number as the pre-eminent fighter plane of England's
Royal Air Force.
The exhibit commemorates the Battle of Britain, which frequently
pitted the two planes against each other. The battle began in
September 1940, when Adolf
Hitler launched the Blitzkrieg against London, bombing it
mercilessly for months on end in preparation for his planned
invasion. The battle, in which the English prevailed, was one
of the turning points of the war, the one that Winston Churchill
famously called "Britain's finest hour." "The
Me 109
ranks right up there in the top 10 of historically significant
aircraft of World War II," said Tom Czekanski, director
of collections and exhibits at the museum. "It ranks with
the Sherman tank, the Japanese Zero, the Higgins landing craft,
the Flak
37."
Every American soldier in Europe knew what a Me
109 looked like.
"If a veteran of the 8th Air Force comes in here and sees
this plane, he's going to remember he had a lot of trouble with
it," Czekanski said. "He would have both feared and
respected it."
Like all fighter planes, the Me
109 is small and light, approximately 30 by 30 feet; two
of them could fit easily in a classic New Orleans shotgun.
The plane was introduced in 1935 as the BF109
but it soon became known by the name of its designer, Willy
Messerschmidtt. It was prized for its firepower, with a
20 mm cannon
that shot out of its nose, for its maneuverability, its speed
and its ease in handling. But most of all, it was prized for
its power-to-weight ratio, which means it packed a lot of muscle
inside its light frame.
The Me 109
did have its shortcomings. For one thing, it didn't have a very
long range, unlike its American counterpart, the P51, so it
wasn't able to perform escort functions for the Luftwaffe's
bombers. For another, it had problems with the grass fields
that served as impromptu airstrips during World War II.
It wasn't very good at landing," Czekanski said. "If
the field were wet, the tires could dig in and you stop a little
too fast and the tail comes up because it's light and the nose
goes down because it's heavy and then the propeller ends up
stuck in the grass." This Me
109, purchased from a seller in Austria, is an assemblage
of parts, some recovered from crash sites, some found unused
in former factories and some carefully replicated. The Spitfire,
which has been in the museum's collection since 2000, was retrieved
from a marshy site in England, where it went down when its pilot
got lost in the fog and bailed out in 1944. It has never before
been available for viewing at close range, which affords an
appreciation of the airplane's diminutive size.
"You can relate to it when it's on the ground," Czekanski
said. "The size of it is amazing. It's tiny.
The cockpits are very cramped and very sparse. The dashboard
is the busiest part. The seats are minimal, no upholstery. You've
got a little bit of a frame and then the outside skin of the
plane. "Lots of engine, lots of armament. And off you go."
. . . . . . .
Elizabeth Mullener can be reached at emullener@timespicayune.com
or 504.826.3393.
_________________________
WORLD WAR II PLANE DISPLAY
What: A German Me
109 and a British Spitfire are on display.
When: Scheduled Tuesday through Sept. 14, but the display might
be delayed due to Hurricane Gustav. Regular museum hours are
Tuesdays through Sundays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Where: National World War II Museum, 945 Magazine St.; main
entrance on Andrew Higgins Drive.
Cost: Free with admission: $14, $8 students and seniors, $6
children and retired military with ID; military in uniform get
in free.
Information: Call 504.527.6012 or go online to www.nationalworldwar2museum.org.
Other: WWII News
Articles:
Copyright © Elizabeth Mullener.
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