old chuck wrote:At what point did Bf109 become Me109 and was there a space between the Me and the 109.Just need the info for our newsletter.Same applies to the Fw aircraft.If it was the name of the factory why is one letter in lower case. thanks ,,chuck
This might grow into a multi page posting. Technically Bf 109 never became Me 109. I have read that when Bavarian Flying Works became Messerschmitt AG around 1941 the new designator for Messerschmitt designs became Me, one of the first new designs was the Me 210. However all of the older designs retained the Bf designator 108, 109, 110. Purists wil insist that this was a hard and fast rule in all Luftwaffe publications, paperwork etc. right to the end of the war. The problem is that there is photographic evidence that in the field the Bf and Me designations were often used interchangeably. There is a photo today on a Finnish website of original maintenance manuals marked Bf 109F and Me 109G.
As for Focke Wulf it was only thier later designs that had a different designator Ta (152, 154) for the designer Kurt Tank. This was done by the Nazi government as a way of honoring Dr. Tank for his contribution to Germany's aviation industry. This was in some ways similar to the Soviet practice of using a designers initials in the designator of the aircraft.