Messerschmitt Bf109
The Latter Years

by Chris Goss

Air War Archive

Frontline Books

Reviewed by Graham Carter

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This is a 200-page photo album printed on good quality semi-matte paper case-bound with a card cover depicting four Bf 109s from the E to the G models.  It is sub-titled “War in the East to the Fall of Germany - Rare Luftwaffe Photographs from Wartime Collections”. It is portrait format and measures 25x20cm.

Chris Goss has produced two earlier similar books on the FW190 (2019) and the early Bf109s (2018). He obviously is a serious researcher and collector of WWII Luftwaffe photos and has drawn on his own collection as well as the collections of the late experts Dr Alfred Price and Brian Philpott who had gifted their collections to him. He recognises this in his Preface, and acknowledges the contributions of about another dozen photo or information contributors in the Acknowledgements. The fact that the first album was called  ‘Bf109 The Early Years’ makes me think this one should have been called ‘The later years’ rather that ‘Latter Years’.

The title is a bit misleading as the first few sections cover the use of ‘F’ model aircraft in France, starting with an extended, 17 page coverage of the capture of the first Bf109F belonging to Rolf Pingel in July 1941, accompanied by numerous contemporary photos. This section introduces us to one of the great features of this volume, the precise and well-written captions for all photos.

There then follows a Glossary and Abbreviations, and then nine chapters/sections that cover:

• 1941
• 1942
• 1943
• 1944
• 1944-45
• Jabo
• the Mediterranean and North Africa
• The Eastern Front
• Foreign, and
• Captured

Each part is made up of a large number of well-reproduced photos of aircraft, personnel, scenes, operation activities and some destroyed/damaged aeroplanes. each photo has an informative caption that adds enormously to the value of the image, and some are a group of related activities.

There are a vast number of modelling ideas encompassed in the photos and I can imagine both the aviation historian and the modeller spending hours with a glass of red, a warm fire, a cat curled up nearby, just examining this mine of information. It is wonderful that someone has found the time to organise this valuable collection.

An excellent resource for both the modeller and aviation historian with an interest in the Bf109 and great follow-up to the earlier album. Most of us will find much to enjoy in this book. Highly recommended if this is your area of interest.

Thanks toFrontline Books for the sample.

Review Copyright © 2020 by Graham Carter
This Page Created on 12 March, 2020
Last updated 12 March, 2020

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