European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - May 11, 1947, Darmstadt, Hesse                                At Willy Messerschmidt experimented with gliders he built air planes at today he is inventing fearless autos and three wheeled watches Nurnberg it must be rather difficult to be precocious at the age of forty but Willy Messerschmidt Man Ages to carry it Hes managed to carry Oft almost everything Hes put his hand to since he was a Small boy in leather pants Back in As and manufacturer of some of hitlers most lethal Messerschmidt was probably loathed by soldiers Only slightly less than the legendary inventor of the 88mm today he sits in Bis comfortable room at 24 Noval Strasse in charming visitors with anecdotes of Bigshot nazis he has and occasionally serving As a witness for his the Allied War crimes bring one of his former colleagues to his spare moments Are devoted to designing Little Odds like a extremely powerful to an automobile without mass prefabricated housing units that can be stacked one on another As High As the Empire state building or a pocket watch with Only three moving but seeing Little or no possibility of translating the designs into actuality in Germany within the predictable Messerschmidt is keeping details to he is reputedly Able to invent almost anything at the slightest prov according to an while spending a week end with some friends in the country Messerschmidt was required to help bring an extra bed Down from the his engineers sensibilities were shocked by the waste of material and the unnecessary and be his Back he sat Down with Pencil and paper and within a Short while presented Bis startled hostess with a set of plans for a bed he she could Cany around the House a few of the Beds have been manufactured at his Broth ers shop at Messe Schmitts relatively enviable position As a War crimes trial witness places him beyond the reach of Denali fiction boards for the then Allied governments Are apparently falling Over each other in an Effort to sign him up for various highly paid technical advisory without too much prodding he will admit that officials offered him super secret but highly paid Job in the he says to Tell ing of the i want to know under which kind of contract 1 should i dont buy the cat in a he also admits to turning Down rus Sian among and at the moment is reputed to be bickering with the americans insisting on knowing the color and antecedents of the cat in the bag before he signs on the dotted such an exhibition of Independence might be a Little surprising coming from anyone but Willy Messerschmidt but Man and has possessed a somewhat uncanny ability to land on his feet from whatever height he has been the cat he wont buy to a the Story of his life is not to the Hollywood tradition of an Edison or nor does it Bear any resemblance to the career of Ford or born to the old bavarian town of the son of a very Well Todo wine Willy was denied practically Condi Tion he has managed to maintain almost Ever his obsession As a boy when he was fourteen he began to Experiment with the precocious Willy was soon constructing his own machines and to at the Ripe old age of he opened a glider factory to with the Aid of some friends within the year he had built his first Power and before Long the factory was a prof Itable All Willy did was design Good planes and be and the Money rolled Messerschmidt continued to design racing and commercial increasing his reputation and Bank account All the he developed what he called a sport when the time came to drop the was transformed As if by magic into the lethal me by that a High powered in Messerschmidt joined the nazi party to 1933 and before Long the Luftwaffe orders were so Large he had to build another at which later became a prime target for american bombing concerning his affiliations with the Messerschmidt displays none of the originality one might expect i had joined the nazi party to he like one joins a i never bothered about but in those times i sincerely believed to hitlers peaceful when asked about the top secret work supposedly being done in War time to a Plant to the Remote tyrolean town of where he had built a Messerschmidt we were working on propeller but that was really during the War it was hard for a civilian to go so we had an Sematen is Ideal for skiing and my staff and i loved so we installed a crack skier As manager and did very Little work on the in spite Messe Schmitts recreational Side his plants1 managed to produce great numbers of Hitler and Goering often visited his Messerschmidt understood a lot of technical things and he was much interested and he never tried that dictator stuff with but Only listened and had intelligent to whose Luftwaffe Schmitt was delivering thousands of impressed the designer considerably he was a big Messerschmidt who did not understand a thing about he used to Knock with his Reichs marshals Baton on parts of new air while remarking in a stentorian what extraordinary innovations i used to try to get my Junior engineers out of the for goers tog almost unfailingly pointed out parts which were Long used to plane i rocked with suppressed but i was afraid some of the Young engineers might laugh in addition to the planes for the the Messerschmidt plants were exporting More than a half Bil lion Marks Worth to other besides the Axis planes were going to Yugo during the time of the soviet German to after this pact was Messerschmidt i got orders to show top secret the the russians Good they paid High prices and at the Plant we used to Ribbentrop is our sales they got our latest fighter models As i the last shipment took place to May the one thing we never showed them was the Jet the Jet was Messe Schmitts pet project and he didst even show it to the German air ministry until three years after he had made the first it could have been to mass production by Messer Schmitt if bad judgment on the part of Luftwaffe general Erhard Milch had not Milch and Messerschmidt were not on particularly Friendly terms and when Milch looked at the blueprints he forbade Messer Schmitt to waste his time on calling them jokes and Messerschmidt went ahead secretly and the series of me 262 appeared to the skies against Allied bombers in Only a thou Sand left the factories and Messer Schmitt feels that but for they might have delayed Germany defeat Messerschmidt passes these judgments with an authoritative in his plants he was accustomed to order his subordinates about rather dismissing employees with a Curt remark or Mak ing decisions with a wave of his Long he has still a Good Deal of that Quality about him traditionally the scientist cannot Cope with the More mundane problems of finance and Public and for that Rea son Messerschmidt keeps a Combina Tion business manager and press agent to direct his most valuable commodity the most remunerative usually Calm and Messerschmidt sometimes played the bad boy of certain of the More ostentatious manifestations of the hysterical mass for bored he did not like uniforms and under no conditions could he be persuaded to put one germans generally referred to him As Der pure fool Der re Inetor was the hero of German who Al ways managed to go astray to spite of the Best of Messerschmidt was roughly classified by his fellow germans As a the one notable instance to which he went even then he came through the affair of Rudolf Messerschmidt helped Hess considerably in his escape to great gave him the air he fooled me Messerschmidt swears when he first came to see me to Augsburg he looked like a Small Schoolboy to shy and he wanted to test some of my new but i if something happened to him i would get into a lot of Dif Hess argued that As Leader of the German youth it was his duty to join the fighting forces As a he had me Messerschmidt and i let him have the Hess finally got a plane that would take him to Britain by the simple expedient of challenging the designers the me Hess was no Good for Long flights and want it too bad that it would its  if extra Wing tanks were to prove a added the tanks and extra radio equipment and gave detailed instructions of what to do if the ship fell into enemy on May Hess climbed into the converted me and flew to from there he got on the beam leading a British bomber formation Back Home and ended almost literally on the end of a scots haying Messerschmidt heard the news while drinking wine at an inns Bruck within two hours Goering had phoned ordering a con Ference the next morning on his per Sonal but who was by that time quite told Goering he was too nervous to discuss the affair to the he continued drinking and the next Day he had a but it had Dis appeared in time for conference at in one of his fancy uni f met Messerschmidt and sticking his marshals Baton on my stomach he roared apparently with Herr every body can the rest of the conversation went like this Messerschmidt what do you mean Goering this Hess Herr Hess is not you should have made inquiries before you gave a plane to that if you came to my would you have to ask the Fuhrer first that a different i the air and Hess is the Deputy of you should have seen this Man was How was i supposed to a nut would have such a High you should have let him Herr Goering was convinced and assured Messerschmidt that he would help him out of the mess if Himmler wanted Willy squeezed through the affair whether he will also beat the rap on the charge of being a member at the nazi party remains to be re has been in five internment Camps since the wars being released from the last one to june has had plenty of time to Ponder ways of like most inventors he has an opinion on the atomic its the problem of he the same problem you have against radio piloted he believes also thatt is possible to Fly to the in an through rocket being the Man he May quite possibly do it himself one a v f 10