Friday Update, April 13, 2012

[zapatista]

Originally Posted by Al Schlageter

As long as the wheels weren't on the ground the 109 was very docile when taking off and landing.

lol, your going to try and argue that landing and taking-off doesnt involve the landing gear touching the ground ?

You might want to look at other a/c and the losses they incurred.

As for the 50%, not even close to the actual number.

affected by a bad case of forum'itis, are ya ?

you might want to compare instead the relation between losses through enemy action and other operational losses for the Me 109 for all units of the Luftwaffe for the time period in question. using a reliable data source, for ex " Flugzeugbestand und Bewegungsmeldungen, 3.42 - 12.44" states as results:

Me 109: 9681 losses to enemy action, 8791 other losses - 47.6% of the losses are without enemy action

for the losses without enemy action, by far the majority of 'other causes' was directly losses in take off and landing mishaps. in addition to direct incidents at takeoff and landing (which is responsible for about 1/3 of ALL lost 109's, and 2/3 of all non-combat losses, the losses due to engine or other mechanical failure following take off is not included in the landing/takeoff incidents, and with the aircraft notoriously hard to land at the best of times this adds another significant %. also note that this states LOST aircraft, not minor damage that could be easily repaired, and which would then simply be defined as an incident rather then loss. for ex, on gear up belly landings with a 109 the wing or fuselage structure was often bent out of alignment (much more so then the fw-190), and this has lead to higher aircraft losses of the Bf 109.

you cant claim one isolated group record like you are doing ( and even then i dont trust your numbers, have you been reading kurfurst's site maybe ?) and then extrapolate to large generalities and try and draw conclusion. % wise compared to combat losses, the german units saw much more intense action and combat losses were much higher, even then for them as a total of aircraft losses, directly related landing and takeoff accidents are still responsible for 1/3 of all 109's lost (and this is with trained pilots, not pc armchair wannabe's with a bad attitude and a short attention span who have never even flown ANY aircraft). if most of us were plonked down in the seat of a 109 and told to takeoff, most of us would simply not make it in a cesna, sure. but not a hot rod war machine like the 109 with all its quirks and dangers.

for ex, in the Finnish Air Force 69% of the accidents being take-off/landing related (does not specify if aircraft lost or damaged), while in JG 26, the share is just 22% (a likely reason being maybe more highly trained pilots at the start of the war ? since stats are counted over the 5 war years, and german 109 pilots had time on these aircraft since 1938 approx ?).

another reference text (Suomen Historia) provides the following information on all of the finnish 109 losses during their part in the war:
Total war-time losses: 61 aircraft
Losses at landing: 9 aircraft
Losses at take-off: 10 aircraft

that is 31% loss of their total number of available aircraft directly documented, counted aircraft per aircraft on incidents directly at takeoff or landing. there were 29 "accidents" total, 19 or 20 losses being directly in take-off/landing, the others to mechanical and fuel related faults (not combat related).

another poster summarizes the context and difficulties rather well for the german 109 pilots

With the narrow landing gear slightly splayed outwards making the aircraft potentially unstable at the best of times, this aggravated not only the tendency to ground loop, but excessive tire wear, and tire bursts. In 1939 the landing gear problem was already noticed, with 255 Me-109s damaged. A tailwheel lock fixed part of the problem, but the swing to the left on takeoff, became greater as the engines fitted were increased in horsepower. Additionally by 1944 Luftwaffe fighter pilots were being sent into combat with only 160 hours flight time whereas their British and American counterparts had 360 and 400 hours. A total of 11,000 Me-109s were lost in takeoff and landing accidents. The later heavy cumbersome canopy was almost impossible for the pilot to open, with the result that many pilots were badly injured or died. The last plane that trainee Luftwaffe pilots trained on, was the Arado 96 with wide inward folding landing gear (like the FW-190), then when they switched to 109's it must have been a nasty shock.

another part of the puzzle is how easy/hard it was to emergency land a combat damaged or mechanically faulty 109. for allied pilots for ex many battle damaged P-47s and Mustangs that actually made it back to England, many were repairable and returned to service. Ditto for landings on Continent within Allied lines. aditionally, more german 109 pilots were seriously wounded or killed in these landing/takeoff incidents compared to allied pilots, because the canopy was hard to open and could not be kept open during landing/takeoff to provide easy escape.

conclusion, direct aircraft loses in takeoff and landing could be argued down to being just over 30% if you want to be very strict on the definition of terms, but when you look at that in context of the total non-combat losses being 50% of all 109's lost, you will find that even if the residual 20% is not quoted as direct landing/takeoff, it would still be a related to malfunctioning 109 having to try and make it back safely onto the ground for emergency landings or the pilot having to bail out and abandon his machine, and for the 109 this was much more hazardous than most other single seat fighters of the same period.

so yes, it is very close to the number i quoted, and for the 109 specifically this was a major problem. and this historical behavior and hard to land/take-off is NOT represented in CoD right now