1:72 Messerschmitt Bf 109F-4

The Friedrich, the cleanest of the family

The Messerschmitt Bf 109F was given the nickname Friedrich by its crews and to this day counts as the aerodynamically best tuned member of the whole line. The wingtips were rounded, the struts under the horizontal tail disappeared, the radiators were sunk deeper into the wing and under the cowling a Daimler-Benz 601 series engine was at work. The F-4 subversion added to that a 20 mm cannon firing through the hollow propeller shaft and heavier armor behind the pilot's back. It was precisely on these machines that the highest personal scores of the German fighter pilots in the east came about in the course of 1942.

Five machines, five fates

The schemes selected belong to particular aircraft and particular names, not to general camouflage patterns.

• the aircraft of Hermann Graf of the 9th Staffel of JG 52, May 1942
• the machine of Rudolf Müller of the 6th Staffel of JG 5, the Russian front in the summer of 1942
• the fighter-bomber of Frank Liesendahl of the Jabo unit attached to JG 2
• a pair of aircraft of Heinz Bär of JG 77, first Kerch and later Sicily

The set of names is no accident. Graf served at a time when his unit was operating over the south of Russia, and his machines tended to be carefully photographed. Bär belonged to the few pilots who made their mark over the Eastern Front as well as over the Mediterranean, which explains why there are two of his aircraft on the sheet, each in a different setting. Liesendahl's group, on the other hand, attacked vessels in the Channel with bombs, so the finish of its lower surfaces looks quite different from that of purely fighter machines.

The film is thin and transparent, so no visible step forms around the marking once dry. Cut the marking out close to the outline, let it loosen in lukewarm water and move it onto an area treated with a gloss coat. The package holds neither a model of the aircraft nor paints.