Bodenwöhr Waldwerk - Mtt Bf 109 K-4 assembly lines 1944 - 1945

[Charles Bavarois]

Gentlemen,

for this discussion the following infos might be of interest:

Final-acceptance for K-4s was done in Vilseck only for Blocks 330.xxx, 331.xxx and 332.xxx. For certain reasons some a/c of the last block were accepted at Regensburg-Prüfening, which was not a regular location for this.

Blocks 334.xxx and 335.xxx were shared between Vilseck and Cham.

The fuselages at Pauen railroad-station are for Erla-Leipzig. I do not have access to my documents, but I think I remember Plauen as location of fuselage-pre-assembly.


And now for Wertheim:

According to AI-report A-331 US-Forces found not 25 but 34 Bf 109s (and a Me 262) at Wertheim. Looking at the Werknummern of these 16 were newly built K-4s, the rest were older G-6 and G-14s. So what?

Wertheim was not part of the well documented production facilities of one of the three main producers. Wertheim was part of the Bf 109 repair-industries under supervision of Fertigungskreis F2 (which was headed by Messerschmitt AG). Repair was done there by Flumann GmbH („Flugzeugwerke Mannheim“) at least from summer 1944 onwards. Flugkapitän Anton Riedinger did some acceptance-flights there. Flumann had a BAL at Wertheim airfield, which is very near to the Schlossbergtunnel. Output perhaps was around 35 to 50 a/c a month. There was a „Zivillager“ for workers at Wertheim. The German „Zivillager“ points towards a camp for foreign-labour-workers, not for POW or KZ-prisoners.

Why then new K-4s at Wertheim? Due to weather conditions, short daylight periods and soaked airfileds during Dezember 1944 to February 1945 there were piles of finished Bf 109s standing around waiting for acceptance. Marauding allied fighters did not make things easier. To get rid of this problem, „repair-industries“ temporarily was charged with doing some acceptance-flights for Messerschmitt. We have to assume, that small numbers of finished airframes were carried to Wertheim (and elsewhere?) by rail, completed and flown in. So Wertheim for a very shot time did some work for Messerschmitt, but actually never was part of the Messerschmitt infrastructure.


HTH


Carl