The plane in the forefront of the 1st picture is the one I’m curious about. The site says it may be a sub hunter… What I’d like to know is what model of BF 110 it is, it’s camo scheme (I’m a noob, so bare with me), and if it’s a sub hunter. If anyone has a decent website on ZG26 in english, that would be cool too.
Any help here would be appreciated as I have an Italeri 1/72 BF110 kit I would like to turn into that plane.
inhaledfumes;
the Bf110’s look like either C’s or D’s for the time frame, also if you look at the engines they have the distictiveness of the early Bf109E’s, so this also gives one the verifcation that it’s an early version of the Destroyer (either C or D version or earlier), the paint scheme looks like it a RLM 79 upper and RLM 76 lower and maybe mottled with RLM 75 or RLM 74 on the sides and also on top,
The Bf 110s are either C’s or D’s. Early Bf 110s often hunted ship, but when protection in the form of better AA guns and nearby carrier launched aircraft, the Bf 110s didn’t stand a chance. I don’t believe Bf 110s were used against subs since they never carried torpedos which were the main weapon used against subs.
You would have to have custom decals made if you wanted to do one of those planes.
Germany didn’t really have a need for a sub hunter, did they? There was no real competition, as far as I know, especially not in Africa. Maybe I’m wrong. Anyone else know?
These aircraft were most likely involved in convoy escort duites. I believe I have some more info regarding this picture at home but I’m out of town right now.
I would point out that aerial torpedos were rarely if ever used as an anti-sub weapon during WW II. The depth charges, rockets, bombs, cannon and machine gun fire were the most commonly used aerial weapons used against submarines by all parties involved.
My Dutch is rusty, but the captions seem to me to say that the pic is of aircraft on watch for submarines in the Med off Crete. Aside from the nose guns there isn’t any other obvious armament, though the cannon would mess up a sub!
After the huge German effort to take Crete it would be in their best interest to protect their ships bringing in supplies, which would be needed in huge quantities.
The main threat in the Med at that time would be from a few Royal Navy submarines operating out of North Africa (Egypyt?) hence the roving patrols I imagine.
Pete
