Messerschmitt Bf 110

The Bf 110 was Messerschmitt’s answer to a 1934 Luftwaffe requirement for a Zerstörer, or “destroyer”: a long-range, twin-engined, heavily armed fighter that could escort bombers deep into enemy territory and clear the way for them. It was a slim, all-metal monoplane with twin fins, a long glazed canopy over the pilot and a rear gunner, and cannon and machine guns grouped in the nose. The first prototype flew at Augsburg on 12 May 1936, and the Bf 110C, with Daimler-Benz DB 601 engines, entered service in numbers in time for the invasion of Poland in 1939.

It did well over Poland, Norway and France, where it rarely met modern single-engined fighters. Over England in the summer of 1940 it was outclassed by the Hurricane and the Spitfire, which could out-turn and out-climb it, and it lost so heavily that Bf 109s were sometimes sent to escort the escorts. It was withdrawn from daylight attacks on Britain and found its true role elsewhere, as a fighter-bomber, a reconnaissance aircraft and above all a night fighter, starting with the first night-fighter group, Nachtjagdgeschwader 1, in the summer of 1940.

The Bf 110G, with DB 605 engines, became the mainstay of the German night-fighter force against RAF Bomber Command. The G-4 carried a crew of three: pilot, radar operator and gunner. From late 1943 it used the FuG 220 Lichtenstein SN-2 radar, with its “antler” aerials on the nose, and often a pair of upward-firing cannon, known as Schräge Musik, to attack bombers from below. The Me 410 had been meant to replace it, but the Bf 110 stayed in production until early 1945, and about 6,000 were built in all.