Strana 34
#2155BOXART STORY
Eduard’s March release introduces a 1/72 scale
new tool kit of the Bf 109 K-4. This particular
variant holds a special fascination for enthusiasts
of aviation history. It is probably because of close
ties to grim final months of the Second World War
in Europe and to the complex subject of late-war
Luftwaffe camouflage.
Discussions within the German high command
as early as 1942–1943 acknowledged that
production of the Bf 109 would one day have to
end. However, proposed successors emerging from
Messerschmitt’s design office failed to develop as
planned.
As the war progressed and pressure on the
German industry intensified, production plans were
revised with increasing frequency, sometimes as
often as every two weeks during the final months.
This situation is difficult for aviation historians to
untangle today, but it was hardly clearer to those
directly responsible for organizing production at
the time.
For example, in September 1944 there was
a plan for the Erla plant to begin producing the Bf 109
K-6/R6 from January 1945, while the WNF factory in
Austria was to launch K-6 production in February
1945. Erla was scheduled to deliver 2,070 aircraft
by September 1945, and WNF was tasked with
producing 2,585 examples by March 1946. The K-6
was to be armed with a 30 mm MK 108 cannon firing
through the engine, two 13 mm MG 131 machine
guns mounted above the engine, and two additional
30 mm MK 108 cannon installed in the wings.
The K-6 variant was expected, thanks to
improved high-altitude performance, to replace the
Fw 190 fighters of the Sturmgruppen specialized
in attacking four-engined bombers. In the end,
however, this version never entered production.
The WNF plant was overrun by the Red Army in the
spring of 1945, and Erla managed to complete only
a small number of Bf 109 K-4 aircraft.
The majority of Bf 109 K-4s were produced
at facilities operating under Messerschmitt’s
Regensburg organization. The parent factory
itself was no longer capable of manufacturing
aircraft due to the consequences of Allied bombing.
Production was therefore dispersed among
a large number of independent workshops and
subcontractors. The process was fragmented into
so many intermediate steps that, for example,
certain firms produced fuselage shells, while other
facilities were responsible for outfitting them.
Logistics within this highly atomized industrial
structure were hampered by transport shortages
and by the need to relocate facilities in response to
advancing front lines or Allied bombing. Shortages
of basic raw materials also intensified. As a result,
for instance, two official versions of the RLM 81
color were introduced: in one case a dark brown,
in the other a dark green. Each formula relied on
different raw materials, and the leadership was
indifferent to the fact that two distinct colors were
being produced under the same RLM code, even if
their differing shades were verbally distinguished.
When this is combined with the large number of
paint manufacturers, fluctuating material quality,
and the multitude of dispersed production sites,
the camouflage of Luftwaffe aircraft built in the
final months of the war becomes an endless
subject of research, discovery, interpretation, and
debate. The current state of knowledge, consulted
with colleagues from JaPo, is reflected in the color
instructions accompanying the kit.
German wartime production used slave labor from
concentration camps and the forced deployment of
young people from selected age groups in occupied
territories. Of the many hundreds of thousands of
concentration camp prisoners involved in aircraft
production, up to 75 percent perished under the
brutal program known as “Vernichtung durch Arbeit”
(“extermination through labor”). Among forced
civilian laborers, mortality reached as high as
25 percent.
Final assembly also took place at camouflaged
forest sites known as Waldwerke, where aircraft
were completed, test-flown, and then immediately
transferred to another location or delivered directly
to operational units. All of this production was
carried out under the constant threat of bomber
raids and fighter attacks.
In 1945, German leadership repeatedly revised
its priorities. Before the end of hostilities, emphasis
shifted to jet aircraft such as the Me 262 and
He 162, the four-engined Ar 234 C, the rocket-powered
Me 163 and its projected successors, as well as the
piston-engined Focke-Wulf Ta 152. Heavy fighter
production of the Dornier Do 335 was to continue
on a smaller scale. In April 1945, one Staffel of
JG 400 was withdrawn from the front to prepare for
experimental operations with the Horten brothers’
twin-engine jet flying wing. The Messerschmitt
Bf 109 was no longer included in future plans, thus
the K-4 remained the final production variant of
this legendary aircraft.
The Last Bf 109
Text: Jan Bobek
Illustration: Piotr Forkasiewicz
INFO Eduard34
March 2026