Black 6 is up and about again,

[The real Apache]

doing circuits over my house......which is nice

[Eric Mc]

Well, it can't be this one

[speedtwelve]

There are a couple of airworthy Buchons in the UK IIRC, might be one of those. Black 6 is in the RAF museum as far as I know.

EDIT:

Here's a Buchon wiring the schiesse out of Breighton airfield in Yorkshire:

Edited by speedtwelve on Thursday 3rd June 18:00

[The real Apache]

No it can't......it had a yellow band on the tail that's about all I could see.....it cleared off once I'd found my binoculars.

Much smaller than the Spit aren't they and with a much larger engine, 35lts as opposed to the Spits 27lts yet roughly similar performance

[Eric Mc]

The Buchon was also fitted with the Rolls Royce Merlin - so I would assume it would have a similar cylinder capacity (although there were quite a few variants of Merlin engine).

I am pretty sure that what you saw was a Buchon. One has just been restored and painted in a North African colour scheme which would make it look a bit like Black 6.

Black 6 was/is a genuine 109G fitted with the correct Daimler Benz engine.

Over the course of the 20 year production run of the 109, they were fitted with Junkers, Daimler Benz and Rolls Royce engines.

[speedtwelve]

AFAIK there are no Me109s flying in the UK at the moment with the Daimler engine. The Buchons have Hispano engines installed. I'm sure I heard recently about a restoration to flying condition of a UK-based Daimler-engined 109, though.

You're right, Apache, the Daimler-Benz was a 35 litre supercharged inverted V12. Fuel-injected as well, so that the pilot could push negative-g to bunt in combat whilst still having power available. Carb'd Spits and Hurricanes had problems with the float chamber cutting fuel under negative/zero g; the engine would cut temporarily in a bunt, requiring Allied pilots to roll inverted and pull through to maintain fuel flow, taking valuable time if you had been bounced by the Hun and he was on your six o'clock.

ETA: I see Eric got there first with more engine info!

Edited by speedtwelve on Thursday 3rd June 18:16

[Eric Mc]

speedtwelve said:

AFAIK there are no Me109s flying in the UK at the moment with the Daimler engine. The Buchons have Hispano engines installed. I'm sure I heard recently about a restoration to flying condition of a UK-based Daimler-engined 109, though.

You're right, Apache, the Daimler-Benz was a 35 litre supercharged inverted V12. Fuel-injected as well, so that the pilot could push negative-g to bunt in combat whilst still having power available. Carb'd Spits and Hurricanes had problems with the float chamber cutting fuel under negative/zero g; the engine would cut temporarily in a bunt, requiring Allied pilots to roll inverted and pull through to maintain fuel flow, taking valuable time if you had been bounced by the Hun and he was on your six o'clock.

ETA: I see Eric got there first with more engine info!

Edited by speedtwelve on Thursday 3rd June 18:16

Yes - not Hispano engines, Merlins.

The fuel cut-out problem on the Merlin was solved by a device invented by a lady engineer at the RAE here in Farnborough - Mrs Beatrice Shilling. The device was forever known as "Mrs Shilling's Orifice".
She only died a few years ago.

[speedtwelve]

Eric

I'll google 'Mrs Shilling's orifice' with safesearch turned ON.

Didn't realise the Buchons in the UK had Merlins, rather than Hispano-Suiza. Easier to service/rebuild nowadays I suppose!

[The real Apache]

Eric Mc said:

The Buchon was also fitted with the Rolls Royce Merlin - so I would assume it would have a similar cylinder capacity (although there were quite a few variants of Merlin engine).

I am pretty sure that what you saw was a Buchon. One has just been restored and painted in a North African colour scheme which would make it look a bit like Black 6.

Black 6 was/is a genuine 109G fitted with the correct Daimler Benz engine.

Over the course of the 20 year production run of the 109, they were fitted with Junkers, Daimler Benz and Rolls Royce engines.

Yeah, it was a Buchon alright.
As for Black 6, we had just moved down here in 97 and my wife was on the phone to our best man in Scotland, "oh, there's a Messerschmitt just flying over the house" she said.."hope it doesn't crash then" replies Al.....the rest is history

[Tango13]

The Author James Gilbert once estimated that 5% of 109s were lost in taxi-ing or landing accidents

[Eric Mc]

speedtwelve said:

Eric

I'll google 'Mrs Shilling's orifice' with safesearch turned ON.

Didn't realise the Buchons in the UK had Merlins, rather than Hispano-Suiza. Easier to service/rebuild nowadays I suppose!

The last production run of Buchons were fitted with Merlins from new (1954).

I don't think any Hispano powered Buchons remain in flying condition.

Most of the survivors are from the batch that was bought in 1968 from the Spanish Air Force for use in the film "Battle of Britain".
Another UK based Buchon has recently been repainted in the colours it wore for that film.

A still from the film -

Edited by Eric Mc on Thursday 3rd June 18:55

[The real Apache]

The Merlin was a cracker of an engine and produced far more hp per litre than the mighty D Benz, I wonder if the Merlin engined Buchons were a much better aircraft?

[Eric Mc]

I don't think so.

The G airframe was looked on as inferior to the F. The Buchon was based on the G.

By 1943, the 109 was really obsolescent and Germany would have done better to throw its production effort into the newer Fw190 and its derivatives.

[CobolMan]

Is it me or does the front-end of the Buchon look fairly similar to the P40? It certainly looks more aggressive than the Luftwaffe 109s.

[Eric Mc]

It looks like the early P40s (P-40B and C). Ironically, most P-40s were Allison engined (although the P-40F and L had a Merlin).

Some early P-40s



A later Allison variant



A Merlin powered P-40



The Merlin variants can be identified by the lack of carburettor intake on the top of the engine cowling.

[Eric Mc]

The various 109s had quite a variety in nose shapes, depending on the engine fitted.

The prototype was fitted with (ironically) a Rolls Royce Kestrel



The early variants had a Junkers Jumo 210 (109A, 109B, 109C and 109D)



The 109E (as used in the Battle of Britain) had a Daimler Benz 601



The 1069F also had a DB601 but the profile of the nose cowlings was improved to give a more streamlined shape. The tail struts were omitted and the wing tips were extended and rounded off.



The 109G had a similar shape to the F but was fitted with the more powerful DB605. Later G versions had taller tailfins and clear vision "Galland" or Erla canopies.



The Czech built Avia S199 was a G airframe fitted with a Junkers Jumo



Early Buchons had a Hispano engine. The final production variants had the Merlin

[eharding]

Re: the Buchon beating up Breighton - I remember a competition on a murky day there years ago where I missed an end figure (in the Known!) and flew half the sequence the wrong way down the box, emerged going the wrong way, thoroughly confused, and then had a closer look than was entirely comfortable at the large electricity infrastructure in the background of that photo. Happy days.

Eric will hopefully supply chapter and verse, but I remember a conversation about the Buchon which revolved around the fact that a number of them were (re)engined with units which rotated in the opposite direction to that for which the airframe was designed (any SEP type will have the tail surfaces tweaked for the designed direction of propellor rotation, and the more over-powered the type is the greater the degree of tweaking)....and precisely how much of a bd that would be to cope with in circumstances in close proximity to the ground.

[Dr Jekyll]

The real Apache said:

The Merlin was a cracker of an engine and produced far more hp per litre than the mighty D Benz, I wonder if the Merlin engined Buchons were a much better aircraft?

There was one Spitfire with a Daimler Benz engine, apparently it was a good combination.

[Eric Mc]

eharding said:

Eric will hopefully supply chapter and verse, but I remember a conversation about the Buchon which revolved around the fact that a number of them were (re)engined with units which rotated in the opposite direction to that for which the airframe was designed (any SEP type will have the tail surfaces tweaked for the designed direction of propellor rotation, and the more over-powered the type is the greater the degree of tweaking)....and precisely how much of a bd that would be to cope with in circumstances in close proximity to the ground.

From what I know, the Buchon did not exhibit significant wayawrd tendencies, whhether equipped with the original Hispano or with the Merlin. The real problem 109 derivative was the Avia S199.
The original plan was that Avia would build DB605 engined 109Gs. When WW2 ended, Avia fully intended to continue with that plan as they had a store of DB605 engines ready for installation. However, the storehouse containing the DB605s was destroyed in an arson attack and the only other engines available were Junkers Jumo 211D which were not really suitable for fighters and which rotated in the opposite direction to the DB605. This made the 199's handling characteristics even trickier than those of the standard 109G.
Israeli pilots who flew the 199 called it the Mezek, which means "Mule" in Hebrew.

There was a two seat variant too

[aeropilot]

There's two Buchon's at Duxford now, and one of them (a relatively recent import from the USA) is painted in a similar North African scheme as Black 6 was, so it's very likely this one you saw.

Here it is a month or so back undertaking engine test's prior to it's return to flight.



The other one at DX is the ex-Breighton machine shown in an earlier post, but this one has now been painted back into the markings it carried during the filming of Battle of Britain, as seen here recently...