Aviation History - USA (2019-09)

september 2019 AH 35

was an unsuccessful design. This was in fact far

from the case.” Brown pointed out that the 110 was

never intended to be used “other than in condi-

tions of local Luftwaffe superiority if not suprem-

acy.” The 110 could effectively use its enormous

firepower against another aircraft “only if it could

employ the element of surprise or if it encountered

an unwary novice.”

A German Me-110 pilot commented: “The

110 was a safe, easy airplane to fly, but it was slow

like molasses. And it could not stay in the air more

than an hour and a half before we had to get back.

What if we encountered Spitfires? In a 110? Get

the hell out of there. Get away.”

N

o account of the Me-110 is complete

without a mention of its intended suc-

cessor, the Me-210. Unfortunately for

the Luftwaffe, the 210 was one of the

worst designs to ever be committed to combat by

any air force.

The Luftwaffe had asked Willy Messerschmitt

to come up with an upgraded 110, but as with

the original Bf-110, Messerschmitt ignored the

Ministry of Aviation’s specific request for proposal

and designed an entirely new airplane. He and

his engineers got the wing profile totally wrong,

made several critical production errors that cre-

ated a weak after-fuselage and empennage, and

came up with a short-coupled planform that put

the props well ahead of the nose of the airplane,

which apparently contributed to its extreme longi-

tudinal instability.

The Me-210 and the concurrent Heinkel

He-177 were such disasters and the wartime pres-

sures so great that in November 1941 Luftwaffe

Director-General of Equipment Udet put a pistol

to his head. He was succeeded by Messerschmitt’s

archenemy Erhard Milch, who certainly did the

210 no favors. Udet had written a famous memo

to Willy Messerschmitt that he might as well have

titled, “Hey, pal, it’s not rocket science.” In his

constant pursuit of lightness, Messerschmitt had

so weakened the 210’s landing gear that Udet

wrote: “One thing, dear Messerschmitt, must be

made clear between us, there must be no more

losses of machines in normal ground landings as

a result of faulty undercarriage. [Landing gear]

can hardly be described as a technical novelty in

aircraft construction.”

It took nearly two years for Messerschmitt to

accede to test pilot Hermann Wurster’s insistence

that the 210 needed a longer fuselage for better

stability and takeoff/landing handling. By then it

was too late. The 210 loved to snap and spin in a

traffic pattern while turning with gear and flaps

down. When Me-110 pilot Johannes Kaufmann

was sent to a training airfield in Germany to tran-

sition to the 210, he arrived overhead to find the

base littered with “crashed airplanes scattered

around the airfield,” obviously new and recogniz-

able as Me-210s.

In March 1942 Willy Messerschmitt was ordered

to kill the Me-210 and return to building Me-110s.

His company had lost the equivalent of $1.85 bil-

lion in today’s dollars on the 210 program and had

almost gone out of business. (Milch must have been

delighted.) But Willy immediately began develop-

ment of the Me-110G, the final mark of the air-

plane (an Me-110H was planned but never built).

The Me-110G-4 was the definitive version and

the ultimate 110 night fighter. It had 1,475-hp DB

605B engines, but the stag’s-antlers radar antenna

made it barely 30 mph faster than a Lancaster—

just enough speed to slowly overhaul a bomber but

with little grunt to spare.

Most Me-110 night fighters were lost to mid-

air collisions and German flak. Few were downed

by RAF gunners. Eighty percent of Lancaster tail

gunners didn’t even return fire when attacked,

since they never saw their adversaries. (The night

fighters didn’t use tracer rounds.) At one point, the

victory-to-loss ratio was 30 RAF bombers downed

for every Me-110 lost.

The Me-110G-2 that Winkle Brown flew is

today one of the only two intact and original 110s

in existence. It is on display at the RAF Museum

at Hendon, in North London. The other example,

an Me-110F-2, is in Berlin’s German Museum of

Technology. A third, displayed as an Me-110G-4,

is owned by a Danish group in Gilleleje, about 40

miles north of Copenhagen. It is actually a restored

assemblage of parts from a variety of 110s.

The Me-110, a workmanlike killing machine,

was not particularly attractive, glamorous or tech-

nologically advanced. By the end of the war, it

was an archaic mid-1930s design—along with the

Heinkel He-111, Junkers Ju-88 and Boeing B-17,

one of the oldest multiengine airplanes still in com-

bat. And as is so often the case, one of the more

consequential World War II combat aircraft has

barely survived.

Contributing editor Stephan Wilkinson suggests for

further reading: Willy Messerschmitt: Pioneer of

Aviation Design, by Hans J. Ebert, Johann B. Kaiser

and Klaus Peters; Messerschmitt Bf 110 at War, by

Armand Van Ishoven; Bf 110 vs Lancaster: 1942–

1945 , by Robert Forczyk; and Duel Under the Stars,

by Wilhelm Johnen.

FAILED SUCCESSOR

Built to replace the

Me-110, the Me-210

had, in the words of

Messerschmitt’s chief

test pilot, “all the

least desirable

attributes an airplane

could possess.”

AT ONE POINT,

THE VICTORY-

TO-LOSS RATIO

WAS 30 RAF

BOMBERS

DOWNED

FOR EVERY

ME-110 LOST.

OP

PO

SIT

E:^
CO

UR
TES

Y^ O

F^ W

OL

FG

AN

G^ M

UE
HL
BA

UE
R;^

RIG

HT:

AV

IAT

ION

HI

STO

RY

CO

LLE

CT

IO

N/A

LA

MY