Bf 110 W.Nr.

[Mark Proulx]

As of late I have been researching Bf 110 G W.Nr's. My primary reference for these numbers is Messerschmitt Bf 110/Me 210/Me 410 by Mankau and Petrick. The book provides a complete listing of W.Nr's for the late war Bf 110 G, my primary interest.

Recently I added Kagero's Vol III on the Bf 110 to my reference library. Not a bad book filled with many unpublished photos. One of the photos is causing me some grief.

The tail of a Bf 110 G-4 displays the W.Nr. 180409. The visible codes are ##+FR and the caption states the aircraft in this Jim Crow photo is from 7./NJG 1. The caption states G9+FR, though I don't see the G9 in this photo.

Mankau and Petrick provide a listing near to this production block. On page 326 we have 180366-180408. The series then picks up at 180526-180594. Clearly this Bf 110, W.Nr. 180409 doesn't fall into the known production blocks identified by Mankau and Petrick.

Is Mankau/Petrick accurate with their listing of production blocks? Is this Bf 110 providing any insight into an unknown production block?

Mark Proulx

[ArtieBob]

It appears one of the primary documentation sources for Me W.Nr. assignment is the Baulosaufteilung, which is a table of Auftrag (order numbers) versus W.Nr. (among other data). Looking at the bibliography of Mankau and Petrick's book, this does not seem to be listed. As a result of the W.Nr. "skipping" during late war, it is very difficult to identify were particular blocks end and begin unless one has this level of primary documentation. I have been trying to "reverse engineer" this data for the Ju 88 and it requires a tremondous amount of data and work. An apparent method to cross check the W.Nr. is to compare Stammkennzeichen as they apparently do not "skip" or at least with a different pattern. If the authors are monitoring this board, it would be helpful to know what documentation they used. In general, everything I have checked from this book so far was accurate. That being said, one number outside of a known block could be a typographical error on the original document. Trust me, there are many, many on copies of the original material I see every day. Finally are you certain that the W.nr. was read correctly from Jim Crow's photo? I have seen a lot of Jim's collection and puzzled over individual digits with a magnifying glass. Also many of Jim's photos are sequences of images with only one in the sequence being published.
My final conclusion, unless you have access to all the original source material used by authors, it is difficult to confirm the data.

Best regards,

Artie Bob