The Messerschmitt Bf 109

Fighter pure par excellence, shared with the Focke Wulf 190 the first line of the Luftwaffe throughout the second world war. Continuously updated and strengthened, he represented an irreplaceable element in the arsenal of the Luftwaffe, remaining in line from the Battle of Britain until the last day of the war. The Messerschmitt Bf 109 is the best-known German fighter of World War II. He served between 1937 and 1945 and confronted with an incredible series of increasingly fierce opponents, who were faced with continuous changes and improvements to past largely the limits of the original project; eventually he came to double the weight and triple the original power, whose inevitable overcooked autonomy was greatly reduced compared to the first series. It was an extremely versatile aircraft: its latest versions even included a high-altitude fighters with a pressurized cabin. It was produced after the war in Czechoslovakia and Spain, and a total of about 35,000 specimens they were built: one of the biggest productions of all time.