ME 109 or BF 109? The Answer You Didn't Expect

call this legendary aircraft an me19 anywhere on the internet and you're really taking your life into your own hands Corrections will be Swift and delivered to the hilt so should this aircraft only ever be referred to as a BF 109 and is it a capital f or a little F Well I put the question to you guys and this was the result I actually know my answer which is a little different to what you guys said but it's important to go through all the evidence that is floating around the internet and finally come up with a definitive answer particularly one that doesn't depend on the ego of this BL so why all this BF and me confusion anyway it all goes back to who designed and built the fighter to begin with Q the excellent German pronunciation villy meses Smith's career is both inspiring as well as truly despicable at times he was an ambitious man but ultimately a pragmatist a lot has been written about the man but the most important question here is why did the 109 when almost all sources mention vill's surname name in association with it not automatically gain the designation me such as with the 210 410 323 and 262 well here it is in a nutshell despite having started his own company as a very young man State economics forced him to give up his preference for self-determination in the late 1920s the German aviation industry became less constrained under the conditions set out in 1919 at versai at any rate the former foe was even less Cent In FAL load demands as a result each German State looked to invest in their local aircraft companies for Bavaria there was the state grown Vish fluka this company was created in 1926 as was Philly's own mes Smith flug b g and BHA Bamberg due to the lack of funds the Bavarian state was unable to subsidize every aircraft designer or manufacturer it had to be BFW seeing that the major stake in the organization was owned by the rvm in Berlin therefore in 1927 mesmi was placed at Crossroads continue alone with no hope of additional funding or be merged with BFW despite preferring his freedom practicality meant that mesmi flugo Bal ceased to exist and vly mesmi became chief designer for BFW the arrangement was not entirely one-sided and mesma even negotiated the rights to his patents and designs as well as a personal cash percentage for nearly all future aircraft sold in essence mes Smith flugo Bal became a company within a company all but in name however this is where the twist comes in 1928 the rvm came under extreme criticism for its investment of public funds in the aircraft industry and decided to offload its shares in BFW seeing an opportunity mes Smith bought up 12.5% of these shares was was able to convince some rich friends to pick up the other 87.5% these weren't just any friends the Strow rol's family's purchase of these shares is notable especially when you discover the husband Otto Stromer became the new chairman and his wife baroness Lily Von Michelle Rino later married mes Smith himself in 1952 Lily and villy were extremely close and she remained an important guiding figure in his career almost from day one while St was head of the board as chairman it was meses Smith and Fritz Hiller who actually ran the company dayto day so within a year of merging with BFW mmith was pretty much in charge of the company in its future so to his mind it must have felt very much like his own company this is worth remembering as it's important for later why all this industrial Intrigue well it's relevant to our question because when the rlm changed its identification system for aircraft around mid 1930 34 meas SMI was still working for a company called BFW even though he was essentially running it at this time each Aircraft company was given a batch of numbers for its aircraft and future designs preceded by the first two letters of its name or anaran therefore mes Smith's prototype that had just taken to the air that June the M37 M being the personal designation chosen internally by vill himself suddenly became the BF 108 and as Ahad M was in charge of the RM and had something of a vendetta against meses could this act have been malicious in any way whatever the reasoning when his revolutionary new fighter design took to the air the following may it was designated the BF 109 so there you have it to be over no question about it this aircraft is a BF and not an me but it's not that simple on the 11th of July 1938 vly mmith became the chairman of BFW and immediately changed the company's name to mes Smith aray your name will also go on the list following the change the rlm now gave all aircraft from the meshes SM works the designation me so obviously being a German story every aircraft coming out to the company prior to this date must be a BF and anything after me right dig a little deeper and you discover that the Germans especially during the conflict didn't seem to care official documentation books and aerodynamic reports can carry the designation bf19 or M 109 as well as inexplicably both terms in the same document did the manufacturer or the government Champion one over the other most researchers would say not the terms were used interchangeably and people seem to just understand what you were talking about however when you look at that pretty popular document that seems to pop up in any answer to this debate and of course I'm going to use it too you might have to stop and pay attention in a report on the 109 written up by one Kinowski in 1943 the term BF 109 appears on one page while em 109 appears nearly everywhere else the tests were carried out by Mesa Smith AR gay so the company like to use the term me one interesting point which I don't think has been highlighted before is what the German public called these aircraft there seems to be a complete absence of BF in the state controlled German press of the time these aircraft the 108 109 and 1100 are either referred to by the designer's name and their number or me 108 109 or 1100 I can only conclude that this is a case of collective unconscious adoption of the me designation by journalists across the country or some excellent marketing on the part of meses AR gay I mean why would Joseph care what it was called this being said Philly did have some excellent links with high ranking Nazis Hess and guring to name two and joined the party early on could this have helped push the Emy designation onto all his previous designs again this point makes a lot more sense a little later in our story when we hear from this man himself right so does that mean that both terms should be given the same level of legitimacy well let's throw a spanner in the works here and consider another point of view the enemies if you're weird like me and enjoy reading combat reports from this period I challenge you to find one reference to the BF 109 in Russian accounts the Argo seems to be messes among Pilots or em 109 on documents in the english- speaking World almost without exception it's Emy 109 or simply 109 the same go go for the 11 this is no doubt due to the fact that when war broke out these aircraft were being knocked out by a company called meses Smith and not BFW indeed even German Airmen didn't seem to use BF as a name for their 10 o or as they often called them Manor mesm so does this mean that we should go with the crowd if most sources and contemporary reports call this aircraft and me 109 shouldn't that be the de facto reference well this probably would be the case if a of purists didn't start digging around through German documents around the 1960s this is ultimately when the BF 10 ners started to write outraged letters to papers and magazines quoting the parament used by Allied veterans remember in Germany they didn't really care one interesting opinion is from the man who actually designed the thing Wing leader YouTube channel which is excellent by the way brought up a very interesting point in their video about this very topic there there mark uncovered a letter that villy had written much later in life when posed this very question by an aviation Journal he was adamant that his 109 was an me through and through you can sort of see his point given his position in the company at the time of his design but isn't that just ego speaking M SM AR May well have been the driving force behind the development of the 109 but the first prototype did take flight while villy was still under contract with BF W sure most of the things were built after the company's rebranding but the rlm didn't rename existing measurement designs pre 1938 as vly was to find out personally it's not so easy to gloss over events and facts from your past so what's the answer should we all be pedantic and follow the initial designation even though the German establishment use both terms interchangeably often favoring me should we continue to denounce the me 10 ners as Dunces wherever we encounter them I have a better suggestion initially I had a different conclusion for this video but that's the wonderful thing about research you can uncover new ideas being a very heavily Anglo allies based researcher I always said go with what the men who fought these machines said but instead I'd like to go back further to 1066 English is a weird language mainly because of 1066 and the Battle of Hastings just hear me out I'm going somewhere with this depending on who was speaking the same thing could have a different word for the peasant toiling in the field Old English was used to describe the animals found there when the Normans arrived they used Norman French to describe the same beasts which they normally met at the dinner table that's why we have French sounding words for our meat and less French sounding words for the animals that meat comes from so when we're being Technical and describing the design it probably should be BF 109 it's the term that best fits the environment but when we're describing the action and events the men faced especially the Allies I'm all for saying me 109 just as they did I'm also a strong advocate for telling anyone who corrects you about this that even mes are gay use both terms so there what do you think and in case you're still wondering it should probably be a little f [Music]