Hasegawa again and the best choise when making a Messerschmitt Bf 109 G-2 model in 1:48 scale. Only two little air scopes had to be removed from front of the cocpit and engines air intake had to make thicker. Decals are for Luftwaffe and Finnish Air Force planes. I chose a Finnish airforce plane MT-201 but I didn't use kits decals but InScale72s decals instead.

Willy Messerschmitts Bf 109 was the Luftwaffes benchmark fighter throughout the WW II. It was the mount of the vast majority of the German aces and scored more kills than any other aircraft. Maj. Erich Hartmann was the most sucsesful ace with Bf 109 with 352 kills. The top scorer in the world in all times !

The prototype Bf 109V2 won a fighter desing competition declared by the RLM ( Air Ministry ) in 1936 and was chosen to the premier single-engined fighter for the Luftwaffe. The first production plane Bf 109 B-1 flew in July 1937. In 1938 C and D models were introduced, they had Junkers Jumo 210 engine as the B-model also did, but the latest versions of it. The first plane in E-series with the new Daimler-Benz DB 600-series engine (1100 hp) and with 3-bladed variable-pitch propeller came in production in the end of 1938. It was armed with two fuselage mounted machine guns and two wing mounted cannons and it became the main fighter of the Luftwaffe for the first few years of the war.

The Bf 109 B, C, D and E versions already took part in the Spanish Civil War. By the beginning of the WW2 the Luftwaffe had already equipped all fighter units ( Jagdgeswader ) with the Bf 109 E (Emil) planes. The great test for the Me Bf 109 E and for the Luftwaffe was the Battle of Britain in July-September 1940. The Bf 109 E proved to be better fighter than the Hawker Hurricane and it was approximately as good as the Supermarine Spitfire. The worse agility was compensated by better climbing rate and better reliability of the engine wich had direct injection fuel system and had no problems with negative G-forces. The vast majority of the 1172 planes that RAF's Fighter Command lost during the battle were victims of the Bf 109 E. Luftwaffe lost 1792 planes of which 610 were Bf 109 E-type. After Bf 109 E the next main version during 1941 - 42 was the Bf 109 F (Fredrik). It was totally new plane, only the rear fuselage had kept without chances. In the late summer of 1942 the Bf 109 G was introduced in service. It had many subtypes and it was the most produced version of the Bf 109. It was the backbone of the Luftwaffe to the end of the war.

Finlad got from Germany 30 Bf 109 G-2 and 129 Bf 109 G-6 models during 1943 and 1944. The Bf 109 G was the only modern fighter in Finnish Air Force during Russians big summer attack in June and July of 1944, when Finnish pilots fought against superior numbers of planes and achieved outstanding numbers of kills during a short period. The most sucsesful Finnish ace was ltm. Ilmari Juutilainen, achieving 94 kills, of which 59 were scored in Bf 109 Gustavs. He is the hightest-scoring non-German/Austrian pilot of all time and his aircraft were newer once hit in aerial combat.

MT-201 ("White one") was the mount of majuri Eino Luukkanen in August 1943 at Kymi air base. Luukkanen was the commander of LeLv 34 and 39 out of his 56 kills were achieved with Bf 109 G. During the period from March 1943 to June 1944 when LeLv 34 (exactly the staff and one flight) was at Kymi it shot down 59 enemy bombers and fighters. The main task of the squadron was to protect ports of Kotka and Hamina and to prevent enemy planes to hit the vessels maintaining the long mine-block which crossed the Gulf of Finland. During it's career the MT-201 achieved 32,5 kills in all, the greatest number with the type in Finnish Air Force. It was later the mount of such aces as Hasse Wind and Olli Puro, they both scored many kills with it. You can get a good overview of LeLv 34 's operations at Utti and Kymi bases by reading Tuomo Soiri's excellent books "Iskulaivue" (WSOY) and "Mersut tulevat" (Apali). Both books are in Finnish.

Technical data of Messerschmitt Bf 109 G-2