European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - July 17, 1968, Darmstadt, Hesse Stars wic daily Agazine Willy me ser Shmitt at 15 in glider he helped build. Messerschmidt i me109 was mainstay of Luftwaffe. 200 additional Messerschmidt jets. By Werner Zwick Dpi staff writer t Rof. Willy Messerschmidt inhaled i deeply on his filter cigarette stubbed it out in a Large Glass ashtray and leaned toward his listener As if to add weight to his Hundred additional Messer Schmitt jets would have stopped the Allied invasion of Normandy in world War a he said softly. Of course Iam just quoting some american friends. That s what they told me after the Willy As the germans Call him lit another cigarette and reminisced in a 70th birthday interview at Augsburg could have been another example of Fortune s kindness to Messerschmidt whose warplanes spearheaded the Holo Caust unleashed by Adolph Hitler i Europe. The son of a wealthy Frank Furt wine merchant he has always shown a natural ability to evade unpleasantness whether bothersome Sun Shine or the adversities of a lost War. He was imprisoned 13 months by the allies after the War and when he was freed put his workers to making pots out of hand grenades and the like be cause germans were forbidden to de sign and produce aircraft Messerschmidt re entered the air Craft business in 1955, operating under the restriction that he manufacture Only under foreign License. Recently his firm merged with the Boelkow co. To for Germany s biggest aircraft concern with 12,000 employees lie owns a third in Terest in the new concern. He moved to Spain in 1951 and still lives there most of the year. Messer Schultt acquired an interest in the his Pano aviation co. In Spain and designed the ha200 twin Jet advanced Trainer for born june 26, 1898, Messerschmit says he s not certain How his interest in aviation was first aroused. It May have been in 1908 when he saw ones of Graf Ferdinand von Zeppelin s giant dirigible soar across Lake was an avid Model air plane builder in his childhood Days and at the age of 15 piloted the first glider he helped to construct. He graduated in Engineer ing from Munich University in 1922 and founded the Messerschmidt aircraft construction company with 10 employees. The firm built gliders in those ver Sailles treaty Days. Messerschmidt fit Ted a glider Model with a 30-Horsepowermotor and entered the powered aircraft business building 25 six seater All Metal planes for German airlines. He acquired the bavarian air plane com Pany in 1927 and set his 300 workers to building a new design the me108. Twas the forerunner to the plane that proved the worst Scourge to world War ii Allied bombers. Messer Schimitt had sold 2,000 of the sports planes when Adolph Hitler came to Power in 1933. He entered a government sponsored contest for a modern fighter plane an built the me109. A fighter bomber which proved its superiority in the Spanish civil War and then continued As Ger Many s front line fighter plane until the end of the world War ii. The me109 was followed by the twin engined me110 but Messerschmidt s most famous aircraft was the me262,the world s first operational Jet fighter. Government decisions held Back use of the plane until late in the War when it established a 40-1 kill ratio in about 1,000 of the revolutionary aircraft were produced before the War s end in claims planes such As Boeing s jetliners Are merely improve ments on the aerodynamic principles a Ninne ered with the me262. And you can Tell them that old Messerschmidt still insists he can build plane As Good As the american or soviet aircraft manufacturers Given the Chance he said. A
