When Yellow 13 of 9./JG51 belly landed on a beach near Calais it was photographed A LOT! It's an interesting aircraft with the III./JG51 axe emblem and the yellow markings used by the fighter units of the Luftwaffe during the second half of August 1940. A replacement panel that is obviously taken from another aircraft due to the mis matched colour can be seen in the first photos of the crash. Most photos shows the aircraft with those panels removed though so many older profiles lacks that detail. 

Some sources say that this was the aircraft of Karl Heinz Schnell while other sources say pilot unknown.  

Edit: After my initial post I found a picture of Yellow 13 before the belly landing and it does seem to show Karl-Heinz Schnell in the cockpit. The profile has also been updatedt to reflect details I found in other pictures.  

Werner Mölders Bf109E-4/N W.Nr 3737

 

Depicted in this profile is Bf109E-4/N W.Nr 3737 flown by Mölders in October 1940. There's 43 victory markings on the rudder, Mölders claiming his 43rd victory on October 11 1940. As Mölders Flugbuch from 1940 doesn't show W.Nr entries it's not possible to know when he started flying this aircraft, but the lowest score photographed on this rudder is 40, the tally that Mölders achieved on September 20. 

Interestingly, in the photos showing 43 victories there's also visible damage to the tailplane and then there's photos of the tailplane disassembled. 

Further photos shows the same rudder back on a seemingly new tailplane, now with 48 victories and traces of yellow paint on the tips of the stabilizers. There's no such traces in earlier photos so the tail was possibly scavenged from another aircraft. 

On October 25 1940, this aircraft was brought down in England while flown by Hans Asmus and according to the intelligence report from the crash, the rudder now had 49 victories on it. 49 victories does not make sense though since Mölders scored victories 49 to 51 on October 22. Logic says that the rudder ought to have shown either 48 victories, the score reached on October 17, or 51 victores, the score reached on October 22. 

Werner Mölders Bf109E W.Nr 2804

 A while ago I started looking at doing some JG51 aircraft and got stuck on the aircraft flown by Werner Mölders when he was Geschwaderkommodore of JG51. Compared to both Galland and Wick there's not nearly as many photos of Mölders aircraft from the autumn of 1940. 

His Mtt Regensburg built E-4, W.Nr 2804, has been caught on film in the white I.D. markings used during the first week of September 1940, but I can't recall ever seeing an accurate interpretation of that scheme before. The number of victories on the tail confirms that the photo was taken some time during the first week of September so there's no doubt in my mind that white rather than yellow is correct. 

Based on photos and some STKZ "theory" from Lynn Ritger it seems that 2804 probably was marked GA + IL on delivery and then had the letters painted over in RLM 65. The result: 

 

A later photo of 2804 shows that yellow colour has been applied on the nose of the aircraft up to the windscreen, while traces of the white paint can be seen on the undersurfaces of the wings. That photo doesn't show the rudder so it's not possible to know whether the yellow was applied around the victory markings as on later aircraft, or if the entire rudder was painted yellow. The number of victories can not be ascertained either but the yellow nose means we're in the second week of September or later so 38 or 40 victories is a plausible combination with the yellow nose or rudder on 2804. 

 

Mölders flew at least one other aircraft marked with full Geschwaderkommodore markings and yellow nose in the same period, but I haven't been able to find enough photos to be able to recreate that aircraft. Later in the autumn of 1940 he also flew two unmarked Bf109E-4/N, one of which was the infamous W.Nr 3737 that I will cover in future post. 

Bf109G-6 of 9./JG51

 

 

This Bf109G-6 from 9./JG51 is well documented thanks to a series of photos taken in the spring of 1944 at Brasnowitschi airfield. This includes a photo that shows the wing pattern to be a non standard one. This is actually an Erla built aircraft that would have left the factory in the saw tooth camouflage but evidently it was repaired and/or repainted at some stage. The fuselage looks as if it too has been modified although not as heavily as the wings.  

JG51 Bf109G-10 at Fels am Wagram

Recently found photos from Fels Am Wagram in May 1945 shows a number of Bf109G-10's carrying fuselage bands with a white centre flanked by bands in a medium colour. These aircraft also carried the horizontal band of a II Gruppe unit applied on top of the fuselage bands. These markings are close in style to those of Jagdgruppe 300, but aircraft of that unit seems to have carried a small black horizontal band regardless of staffel colour. 

As II./JG51 was disbanded at Fels am Wagram in april, these aircraft may well be the first known examples of the use of the green - white - green fuselage band assigned to JG 51.

An Erla built Bf109G-10 with the shorter tail wheel is also rare. The short wheel seems to have been used on some aircraft late in the production though. A notable example being the only known photographed Erla built Bf109K-4.