商品簡介
Using first-hand accounts and brand-new artwork, this book brings to life the realities of flying the BF 109 in combat during the very first battles of World War II.
The Bf 109 was one of the principal types in the Luftwaffe’s inventory during the opening months of World War II and it was central to many of Germany’s early victories, before coming up against the unbeatable RAF during the Battle of Britain. The Bf 109E, in particular, was a match for anything that it encountered in the skies over Poland, the Low Countries and France, being flown by a number of pilots already experienced in combat in the type following service with the Legion Condor during the Spanish Civil War, which had been the perfect field trial to iron out many of the inevitable ‘bugs’. It was predominantly the Bf 109E, which first featured a Daimler-Benz DB 601 powerplant, that was in the frontline when the war began, although some examples of the older Bf 109D were still in use during the Polish campaign. Starting with the Bf 109E-1 and then to the Bf 109E-3, the Messerschmitt fighter literally swept all before it during the opening wartime campaigns, with its successes only fading at the Battle of France, when the Bf 109 seasoned pilots encountered modern and well-flown fighters for the first time in the form of RAF and French Armée de l’Air aircraft.
In this rigorous new analysis accompanied by specially commissioned artwork and ribbon diagrams, Luftwaffe aviation expert Malcolm Lowe examines the BF 109 as a fighting machine from the perspective of the Luftwaffe at the forefront of the German blitzkrieg.
