my point is simple.

surely having a plane that fought in much larger numbers (the E1) in the Battle of Britain is more important than other sub types (E4N) which fought in much lesser numbers, if you want an as accurate as possible BoB (although having all the variants would be nice).

yes/no?

There are more than 1 version of the Bf109E? LOL! All look the same to me!

Exactly.

Now of course, they could keep the same cockpit (would be wrong), cut the barrels of the cannons and say those are machineguns (would be wrong too) and then pretend it's a E-1.

I don't think people would like that, even those that want the E-1 in CloD.
Maybe they are concerned that they won't get the more common, historical variant in a realistic flightsim.

Also because the E-3 is so similar to the E-4 and the E-4 was more common, it is a bit surprising, that the developers decided to only model the E-3 instead of the E-4.


But whatever, i'm still hoping for E-1, E-3 and E-4 (and E-7, but then that's a bit too unlikely).

As i said earlier in the thread, an E1 and an E4 makes by far the most sense to me.....

Dang, yes JG26. This is from Stienhilpers book, he was in the BoB under Galland and said that they had few decent types, and those they had 'the Spaniards' got them. Steinhilper had an E-1 I recall.

I have also read Gallands "The First and the Last", but he barely mentions equipment apart from numbers produced, and spends the book complaining about how they lost and what he wanted to do. ;)

Hooton in Eagle in Flames gives the percentage losses of 109s by subtype:

July
E1 - 44%
E3 - 30%
E4 - 20%

August
E1 - 40%
E3 - 8%
E4 - 52%

September
E1 - 38%
E3 - 1%
E4 - 61%

October
E1 - 36%
E3 - 2%
E4 - 62%

and from Kurfust, over at ubi a while ago,

"I have some actual numbers. On 31 August 1940, fighter units (excluding JG 77) reported 375 E-1s, 125 E-3s, 339 E-4s and 32 E-7s on strength, indicating that most of the E-3s had been already converted to E-4 standard. JG 77 had around 100-125 aircraft with it, but for the rest of the units, its 75% cannon E-3/4/7, the rest are all MG E-1s. The E-1 and E-3 were produced parallel and in about equal numbers from the end of 1938, but by mid-1940, the production of the E-1 stopped, replaced by the E-4 and then the E-7."

and

In Ulrich Steinhilper's book 'Spitfire on My Tail', he relates quite clearly that they, JG52 didn't get there first cannon armed 109's until mid september , and then only 2, which were hand me downs from another unit. Rest of the unit bar these 2 planes was still in E1's.

Its pretty clear that the E1 and E4 were the most common variants by far and that around SEPTEMBER sometime, the E4 became more prevalent than the E1, which had been the most common type until then, but even it October a third of the losses were still E1's.

which makes the E3 choice mystifying to me.

The RAF called them "squareheads"

The 'universal wing' was the 'c' wing, ie it was able to fit cannon or mg's or both. The naming convention was probably thought up afterwards as soon as they had 2 wing types and needed to tell the difference.
The different engine types were designated by letter as an indication of the blower fitted, since all of these used the universal wing then it didn't matter, but it was a 'c' wing anyway. I've never heard of 'B' being used, that's very strange, LF and HF were used.

Now I have to look it up in my massive definitive Spitfire book........

Yes, this is the reference I was talking about. He was always complaining that they had old types and the only new ones went to Galland. He did get an upgrade towards the end if I remember.

Yep, plane he was shot down in was a cannon armed emil (he was one of the lucky 2 to get one)

I've been to see it, it's now on display at the museum at Hawkinge, after it was dug up in the 70's about 5 mile from where i live.