ME 109 or BF 109? This Is What We Should Be Calling It.

Ever found yourself in a heated debate about whether it's the BF 109 or ME 109, and wished you had some ace up your sleeve? Well, buckle up, because I’m about to be that ace!

In this video, I’m diving headfirst into the whirlpool of confusion surrounding these legendary aircraft names, armed with historical documents and a knack for digging up the juiciest, most overlooked facts.

Expect a fresh, in-depth, and slightly sassy take on a debate that's had aviation buffs scratching their heads for ages. Was it the BF 109 or ME 109?

I’m on a mission to find out, with a few laughs along the way. So, come join me on this historical rollercoaster - it’s going to be one heck of a ride!

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⏱️ Timestamp:
0:00 intro

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[timgosling]

Good summary. As an old Polish Spitfire pilot once said to me as he described his first dogfight: "Zose fokkers were everywhere". You mean FW190s? "No! Zose fokkers were all Messerschmitts!"

[Goit_Goit]

Balls to it. I'm gonna call it a Mf 109 from now on.

[KlipsenTube]

For consistency, you could argue for a little f. In the case of Heinkel and Dornier, the second letter is small whether written in full or abbreviated, but Focke-Wulf and Bayerische Flugzeugwerke use two capital letters in their abbreviations. However, Fw is never written FW (unless all other text is also written in all caps), so we're back to Bf, because it follows the German rules of nomenclature for aircraft types.
Incidentally, the Fw 190 evolved into the Ta 152 for the very same reasons, but you don't hear people calling for the 190 to be renamed Ta 152 in honour of its designer.

[greghardy]

My German teacher in high school (he WAS German from Bavaria) said he hated when he heard it called Bf. “It vas designed by Messerschmitt, so it is ME!” A bit of irony here. His father and mine were both at Normandy…on opposite sides. My dad survived, his didn’t.

[LupoSenpai]

Being from Germany I never heard anyone call it a Me 109 until interacting with the anglosphere on the internet. A few weeks prior to this video i decided to research this myself and as you found that both terms are used interchangably by basically anyone talking about it (except for allied pilots pretty consistently calling it Me 109).

[kentl]

I never admired the BF262 or FW109, but the JU190 was a great machine.

[rencleavus]

Every veteran in every book I've read about the air war in Europe called it an ME. Every veteran I've met at a war bird air show called it an ME. Every documentary on WWII I've seen identified it as an ME. It was only about 20 years ago that I heard it called BF and I thought, 'I don't think so'.

[derkonigk]

Just to weigh in on this from an actual german: We still use both terms Bf and Me, though most people I know use Bf. If we want to specify the builder we usually go with the full name "Messerschmitt BF-109".

[Riceball]

I'm used to the 109 being referred to as the BF109 because I first learned about this plane playing the old LucasArts game Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe where they referred to it as the BF109, but I've probably heard it called the ME109 way more though.

[AndrewGivens]

Nice. Growing up as a Cold War kid, I was immersed in the war stories of the actual wartime era, which were still in the main our received knowledge. So, I and all my mates knew this aeroplane as the Me109. And war movies, veterans' accounts and even Battle comic books mostly used this term.
It's only a little later on, as we grew up and those of us still fascinated by the period started to be a bit pedantic about details, that we started to refer to Bf109s. But we weren't exclusive about it, I'll be honest.
I feel a bit of relief watching this video and knowing that there really was no right or wrong all along. TIL.
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Less interestingly (because this is an aviation channel - although read on), about the time we started using 'Bf', we *also* started calling "E boats" the anglicised "S boats" - because that was derived from the original name for the type(s).
Of course, the hugely inaccurate Allied (read; British) brevity code for them - supposedly 'E' for 'Enemy', but just as likely 'E' for 'I don't really care what they're actually called; I barely even know what one looks like' - is just fine when talking about them from the Allied perspective, after-action reports and so on.
The biggest problem is that, half the time, an "E-boat" wasn't even an S-boat, but something else entirely and "I don't care what it actually was, I just know we shot the hell out of it and left it burning".
At least RAF pilots knew if they fighting an Me109 or Fw190, rather than shooting down a helpless Fiesler Storch.
Hence all the 'E-boats' which were encountered and sunk in the Tyrrhenian and Ligurian Seas after 1944, when there were less than two dozen of the things in that theatre and they were *all* in the Adriatic by then.*
War is a strange place for stories. And terrible for accuracy: pedants beware!
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* And a good number of those mystery boats would have been... *Luftwaffe* boats! The little-discussed 'FlBs' or 'Flugbetriebschnellboote'; anything from a little tender to flying boats and seaplanes, up to big, fast and heavily-armed crash boats and air-sea rescue launches. There - an aviation connection.

[reaverman]

I was born in 1969, and in the 70's and 80's as a young land and model maker, I always called them Me-109. So in the 21st century, I found the Bf-109. At the time, I thought I was picking up on a collective branding through Anglo based information. So seeing this, kind of answered a questions from about a decade ago. Thank you!

Oh, and I am going back to Me-109 :D

[miquelescribanoivars]

The use of "Messer" as a nickname for the 109 *predates* WWII, it was used in the Spanish Civil War and used (IIRC) on the technicall evaluation performed by the Soviets on a captured 109 on that conflict.

[psodhy]

For some reason, even as a young boy, I always referred to all every 109 before the E (Emil) model as the Bf, and from the E onwards as Me. 60 years on, it still makes sense to my engineering brain and it's too late to change gears now.

[dougsundseth]

20-ish years ago, one of the bigger history magazines (Military History?) published a letter from a current Luftwaffe source who said that it should be "Bf-" for the 109A - D and for the 110A - C, then "Me-" for subsequent versions (because of the change in company name). For whatever that's worth.

At any rate, that's been my practice since I read the letter.

[darkadmiral]

German here. We really dont care, but usually it is called the Me 109

[jackray]

This pairs well with Christoph Bergs's (Military Aviation History) video. Thank you for providing further context to this. I say Me 109 for general purpose. I have yet to encounter a person outside of the internet who has a problem with Me 109, so it hasn't made much difference to me for discussion purposes. On the other hand, I do like seeing such videos because I like learning the little details.

[kwakagreg]

I've always thought of it as Bf ever since I bought Greens aircraft books when I was teenager. I'm in my 80s now. He was the authority on all WW2 fighter aircraft as far as I was concerned. I still have them.
Johnny Johnston in his book "wing Leader" just refers to them as 109s and 190s. He fought them so I guess he's as good an authority as anyone.
I don't think anyone referred the A6M as such, they just talked about the "zero".

[ianmcintosh]

That explains so much. I clearly remember in the 70s all the model kits and book references called it the ME 109.

[barrythatcher]

Loved the Dad's Army and O'lle O'lle references. Lt. Gruber would approve.

[Gloriosus]

What an excellent piece of research, thank you.