[Charles Bavarois]

Hello Mike,

let me join in and add a few remarks:

Quote:
"G-10 were NOT a brand-new aircraft of brand new construction.
G-10 production began in Oct 1944 to August 1945, with approx. 6000 airframes built at factory, but again, these were airframes already built as G airframes, and then converted".

This statement is somewhat puzzling. All three manufacturers of late war Messerschmitt Bf 109s were the subject of a thoroughly research: Peter Schmolls works on Messerschmitt-Regensburg and Klaus Haberfellners' on Wiener-Neustädter-Werke are already published. Jörg Meinckes (aka Rasmussen) comprehensively research on Erla-Leipzig hopefully will emerge at the (near?) future. I myself did a little research on my own and with the kind support of Jörg and Peter am quite familiar with Messerschmitt-production in late-war Germany.

To my knowledge none of the mentioned producers of Bf 109s was involved in recycling older airframes in late 1944/45 (no "Umbau", "Umrüstung" or "Reparatur"). The production facilities and the work-flow of MTT-Regensburg, WNF and Erla-Leipzig are known in detail and there is no indication for any kind of recycling. On the other hand, all known Werknummern for G-10 a/c can easily be connected to these three producers.

This leads me to the conclusion, that the G-10 was a batch of regular newly-built aircraft, no room for recycling. I vaguely remember, that a very few G-10s from Erla-Leipzig were originally G-14s brought to G-10 standard before they left the factory (so no recycling!). Perhaps Rasmussen can help us.

This is the recent state of my knowledge. If you have information on a recycling process in 1944/45, I would be delighted, if you share your sources with us. This would alter the picture of Luftwaffe late war supply considerably.

Carl