69 year old pilot was unhurt. Unsuprisingly the accident occured during landing...

Pics here

The pilot being unhurt is the main thing, but what a very sad loss of a very rare aircraft. I do wish we still had a 109 flying in the UK. Hope someone decides it is worth the expence of a rebuild (Steven Grey, get your cheque book out )

Well, I've seen a lot worse than that rebuilt.  It's a shame though.  I wish I read German...

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I can confirm that. However, the main problem seems to be funding as the aircraft was not insured. This together with the desire to rebuild plus any damage to the rare genuine DB 605 which was torn out of the airframe during the crash. This is the main attraction of a proper Bf 109 compared with the Merlin-engined Buchon (Red 7 is/was actually a converted Buchon). I believe that Sigi Knoll, responsible for rebuilding the engine, was flying the aircraft at the time of the accident. He is reported to be willing to start again but the rest of the team are not so enthusiastic.
http://www.suedwest-aktiv.de/region/zak/freizeit/1701715/artikel.php?SWAID=4f554...

This is nothing unusual. Have you any idea of how much a rare aircraft like that is worth? Priceless. The insurance premiums would make most warbirds impossible to operate. They obviously carry 3rd party insurance which is becoming more expensive on this side of the Pond due to the EU insurance regulations that grounded B-17 Sally B & other warbirds at the beginning of the current display season. I heard that similar regulations are planned for the US.

Significant also that the UK based 109 "Black 6" was also damaged beyond flying repair whilst landing.

Admittedly this was after an engine malfunction forced an attempted landing at too high a speed, a subsequent take off and a final attempted landing  in a partially plowed field on the far side of the motorway.

Not your average 109 landing mishap. I think I am correct in thinking that Black 6 has been restored to display condition at Hendon?

Pity, I too would like to hear the Daimler Benz 605 motor in full roar someday.

Yes The Black 6 incident was by no means a normal landing accident.

The high speed landing and the subequent tipl over whilst attempting a second touchdown in the partially ploughed field was forced upon the pilot by an  engine failure.

However from your translation it appears that this German crash was as a result of pilot error ( banked touchdown). The narrow track of the Bf 109 would not tolerate this kind of lapse.

Still in both cases the most serious human consequences were avoided.

Interesting, so we wouldn't have seen Black 6 fly again anyway. I assume that it has just been restored to display condition at the moment?

From the investigation report it seems that this high ranking RAF officer whilst lying trapped in a fuel filled cockpit instructed the rescue crew not to cut him out so as not to further damage the valuable aircraft. He had to wait for a crane to arrive to free him.
http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources/dft_avsafety_pdf_501760.pdf

It took courage. We must thank him for that at least.

Are there any DB engined 109s flying anywhere else?

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No offence but the report suggests the cooling flaps rotary selector valve could have been in the wrong position. Quote:

This is apparently a known issue with this particular type of valve & I've always felt the pilot should have been aware of it. The photos seem to have been removed but I saw a copy of the original report showing the position of the selector as it was after the incident.

PS. You know far more about this than me & I could have been wrong all this time. If so, my apologies to the pilot concerned. Engineers tend to be a tad suspicious of pilots at the best of times.

I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. The main thing is that he was unhurt & this was to have been its last flight anyway.

I found this very interesting article by the late lamented Mark Hanna on flying the Bf 109J Buchon. About half-way down the page. http://www.bf109.com/flying.html
Ironically Mark was tragically killed in a landing accident in the same aircraft (Sabadell, near Barcelona, Sept. 26 1999).
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Every article I've read on landing the Me 109 recommends a 3-point touchdown. Unlike the Spitfire & similar fighters, all versions of the Me 109 are tail-heavy & once the tailwheel is on the ground the brakes can be safely applied without fear of nosing over. A 'wheeled' landing on that narrow-track undercarriage makes it very easy to bounce & touch a wing with the inevitable ground-loop. I suspect this is exactly what happened in the case of Red 7.

Hi Springer. It depends what you call an experienced  pilot. The Me 109 has the reputation of being tricky to handle, especially during take-off & landing. A great many Luftwaffe pilots were lost in accidents with the 109 during WWII. If it turned over they were invariably killed or seriously injured. Mark Hanna was one of the most experienced & repected warbird display pilots in the world & it caught him out. I don't remember seeing the accident investigation report but I assume there was no fault with the aircraft.

I've also seen some criticism of the way Red 7 has been flown recently (although this was by a different pilot & not Sigi Knoll who was flying it when it crashed). I don't know how many hours he has on type. He might well be a highly experienced pilot - but not on the 109.

The Me 109 undercarriage is further forward of the CoG compared with similar fighters. This is possible as it's attached to the fuselage instead of the wings as on the Spitfire. This simplified production as the whole fuselage could be moved around on its U/C without the wings being attached. It's also the reason for one of its biggest drawbacks, the narrow tracked stalky undercarriage that caused all those accidents & is apparently still causing them. The Spitfire can be tricky to handle on the ground for the same reason but seems to be more forgiving as the track is a little wider. It's more likely to nose over than touch a wing on the ground.

Pilots of taildraggers seem to have a preference for 3-pointers or wheelies. I suspect this is mainly due to their experiences while training & what they're used to flying. I've noticed many modern display pilots seem to prefer wheelies. Most pilots these days learn to fly on aircraft with a nosewheel & many of them fly modern types more than taildraggers. This also depends on the type & size of aircraft & where it's operated from. Fighters like the Me 109 & Spitfire were designed to operate from grass fields which makes it easier to take off & land directly into wind. It doesn't matter much whether you keep it straight after touching down as you can't see where you're going anyway. The benefit of a 3-pointer is the short landing run. The 109 apparently doesn't like crosswinds at all which isn't surprising.

Larger multi-engined taildraggers like the Lancaster are usually operated from a hard runway. This & the height of the cockpit above the ground makes it impractical to do 3-point landings. A wheelie with the tail up makes it much easier to see where you're going on the approach & also keep it straight once the wheels touch the runway.

I spend a lot of time watching landings. Been doing it since I worked at the Southern Aero Club in the early 60s. All training was done on taildraggers in those days & the chief flying instructor insisted on 3-point landings. I still remember his remarks on first seeing one of them new-fangled Cessnas with tricycle gear.

You can usually tell how good a pilot is by their landings. I often wonder how taildragger training/conversion is done these days as I see even Tiger Moths doing wheelie landings now. This would have been frowned on in my day. I always thought of a wheelie as an arrival & a 3-pointer an art form. A thing of beauty. I found these shots I took at Flying Legends a few weeks ago. Now look at that. Beautiful.




This is the BBMF Lanc at the same show. Not a very good shot but you can see the tail is almost down after a very short run, even though it's on the hard runway. Very nicely done indeed.


PS. Shame there's none of a Bf 109. My chances of that seem almost non-existent now. I heard a rumour that Red 7 was originally booked for Legends.

Silly me, I just realised the problem with the 109 undercarriage. I've often wondered why the Spitfire didn't suffer in the same way as the track can't be that much wider, if at all. Just look at the angle of those main legs & wheels. It's all wrong & the slightest bounce on one wheel will throw it sideways. Landing crosswind would have the same effect.



PS. This is the rebuilt Black 6 now on static display at Hendon.

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Not only the narrow tyres but the alignment of the wheels themselves. It's so blindingly obvious I can't think why I haven't noticed this before. The main wheels on most aircraft have a positive camber, that is the top of the wheels angled out from the centre as viewed from the front. This illustration is of a car front suspension but the principle is exactly the same.


Any experienced aeromodeller will tell you that positive camber plus a few degrees of toe-in on the main wheels will make a taildragger run true during take-off/landing & easier to steer on the ground. It might have been easier for mass production but the Bf 109 undercarriage seems to defy all the basic principles. Considering the problems it caused, especially on later versions when more powerful engines were fitted, I'm surprised it wasn't redesigned at some point.

I'm sure that you are absolutely correct about the negative camber of the wheels giving rise to the ground stability problems.It seems obvious now that you have pointed it out.

The reason the designers gave it this camber was obviously to keep the vertical chord of these large diameter wheels in line with the undercarriage legs,so that when the gear was retracted into the wing it would present the smallest possible depth within the wing.
( I am not clever enough to attach an illustration, but I'm sure you know what I mean).

This would also account for the wheels/tyres  having to be so narrow.

If you look at a cutaway drawing of the 109 wing, the gear is towards the front edge, forward of the main spar and when retracted the tyres are sitting not too far from the leading edge at a shallow part of the already thin wing. Trouble is there isn't anywhere else in a 109 wing for the undercarriage to go.

I think that to change the basic undercarriage design would probably have required a complete re-design of the wing, something that could not be contemplated in German wartime industry.

By contrast in the Spitfire (also with a shallow wing, but of greater area than the 109 ) the chassis ,whilst still hinged at the fuselage end ,retracts into the thickest part of the wing , behind the main spar. This allowed Supermarine designers to give  the wheels a positive camber and fatter tyres albeit on smaller wheels.

Willie Messerschmitt must have been aware of the problem from an early stage, because in the bf 108 Taifun with a similar basic chassis to the 109 (but  hinged at the wing root rather than the fuselage) he was able to give the wheels a slight positive camber because of the thicker profile wing.
The proposed 109 replacement the 209II had a wide track  inwardly folding chassis with positve camber wheels ( like the FW190 and the Hurricane)

I'm sure you're correct Springer. It also occurred to me that it would have a marked toe-out angle with the tail down. This would make it difficult to steer & explain Mark Hanna's comments on unpredictable behaviour after landing.
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Also interesting to note that the 109 had no adjustable rudder trim. They seem to have relied on the brakes for steering & to get the tail up on take-off. Do that in a similar fighter & you would stand it on its nose.

Hagar ,

One possible solution for the 109 might have been to reduce wheel diameter ( possibly lengthening u/c legs slightly to maintain prop ground clearance) and to apply a positive wheel camber. Wing bulges could then accomodate the tips of the wheels in much the same manner as the earlier Spits. I don't think that the aerodynamic penalties of such a mod would have been too great.

We forget though that this was war and so what if you lost a few pilots and machines in landing accidents, the disruption to production of major u/c mods would have been worse.

The Brits for example continued to use the Seafire for carrier work for lack of anything better even though the Supermarine fighter was not  really strong enough for the job. They nosed in so many aircraft on carriers at Salerno due to a lack of headwinds that they had to resort to sawing 6 inches off the prop tips to keep aircraft in service.