32 AH September 2019
as tight a turn as the single-seater and refused to
stall even during the steepest turns. Bf-109/110
dogfights were also staged for important foreign
visitors and potential export buyers, with German
national aerobatic champion Willi Stör flying the
unbeatable 110, which he proclaimed was the best
twin-engine aerobat on the planet. Apparently,
somebody had a thumb on the scale.W
illy Messerschmitt was never a pop-
ular designer among his peers, and
Erhard Milch, who was in charge of
aircraft production for the Luftwaffe,
outright hated him. Messerschmitt was only
allowed into the competition for the proposed
mid-1930s heavy fighter contract because of
his influential friend Udet, the World War I ace
and aerobatic champion, who at the time was in
charge of Luftwaffe R&D. Some historians even
believe the 110 was intended to fail from the out-
set, and that when Milch approved the unpromis-
ing project in 1934, he meant for the 110 to sink
Messerschmitt once and for all.Messerschmitt’s brief initial Bf-110 design con-
cept was an F-82-style twin 109 with two enlarged
fuselages. He soon switched to an all-new de-
sign—only the second military airplane he had
created—with a slender, tapering fuselage, twin
tails and a long, protruding canopy. The substan-
tial greenhouse and cockpit would become an
asset when the initial two-man crew—pilot and
rear gunner/radio operator—grew to three as the
110 found its niche as a night fighter and needed
space for a radar operator.
The actual functional designers of the 110 were
project chief Robert Lusser and engineer Walter
Rethel; Messerschmitt himself was still busy with
the Bf-109. His company was also going through
a management reorganization, which led to a lack
of critical oversight during the design’s early stages.
First flight took place in May 1936, with
Bayerische Flugzeugwerke chief pilot Wurster in
the cockpit. Many sources claim that Rudolf Opitz
was the pilot, but Opitz’s logbooks, today in the
possession of his son Michael, show that he was
not at Augsberg on that day, nor did he have a
multiengine rating at the time. Opitz would go on
to make the first powered flight of the horrifically
dangerous Me-163 rocket plane.
As was his wont, Messerschmitt had ignored
the Reich Ministry of Aviation’s request-for-pro-
posal provisos and followed his own path in engi-
neering the Bf-110. Two of his guiding principles
were lightness in aid of the highest possible per-
formance, and simplicity to support ease of con-
struction. It remained a concern throughout the
production life of the airplane, though, that two
109s could be built for the cost of a single 110.
Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, ever the
romantic, loved the idea of swarms of gaudily
painted Zerstörers carving their way through the
skies. He considered the Me-110 more import-
ant than the 109 and bled off some of the best
single-seater pilots to man his questionable fleet,
which distressed the Luftwaffe. The paint lived
on, though. The shark’s-teeth motif of II Gruppe,
Zerstörergeschwader (destroyer wing) 76, first seen
over France in 1940, was copied by the Royal
Air Force’s No. 112 Squadron for its Curtiss
Tomahawks and quickly adopted by the Ameri-
can Volunteer Group “Flying Tigers” as well. The
design passed into history as Flying Tiger leader
Claire Chennault’s invention.
In an odd precursor to the stolen-MiGs epi-
sodes of the Cold War, in May 1939 an ex-Luft-
waffe pilot, Franz Öttil, stole an Me-110 from
Augsberg and tried to fly it to France. Öttil
had been cashiered from the air force for flying
a biplane trainer into the roof of his family’s
farm during a buzz job. He successfully flew the
Messerschmitt to a nearby soccer field, where his
brother Johann was waiting with gas cans. With
the airplane refueled, the pair took off, bumbledMULTIROLE TWIN
Top: Personnel at a
North African airfield
in 1942 remove the
camera from an
Me-110E modified
for reconnaissance.
Above: The sharks-
teeth motif of II
Gruppe, Zerstörer-
geschwader (ZG) 76,
was copied by No.
112 Squadron, RAF,
and subsequently
adopted by the
American Volunteer
Group “Flying Tigers.”