18. 9.2011 Engine from Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter

Almost half a meter on the ground there was a preserved engine of a Messerschmitt Bf fighter which was shot down in 1945 during the liberation of Brno. The parts were found only ten years ago and went to the Moravian Museum.

The remains of the aircraft were found in a field near the village of Telnice. The Messerschmitt was shot down just before the liberation of Brno. The engine was discovered by the staff of the Moravian Museum in Brno together with amateur aviation researchers from Moravia and Slovakia. The wreckage was about forty centimetres underground.

The historian Vlastimil Schildberger was surprised that the engine was just below the surface. "It is surprising that it was not found in the past during ploughing. It is in good condition. It has preserved the exhaust pipes," he said at the time.

According to a contemporary gendarmerie report, the fighter was probably shot down on April 11, 1945, near Telnica in the Brno region. The pilot saved himself thanks to a parachute. Historians from the museum were informed about this by Ladislav Kořalník, a chronicler and memorialist from Telnica, who at the age of 18 was an eyewitness of the crash of the German fighter.

"There were wings, a tail and an awful lot of scrap metal lying around the field. The whole village gathered around it, but after a while the Germans closed it down," the chronicler recalled ten years ago.

In addition to the engine itself, the museum workers discovered cockpit alarm clocks, a speedometer and even a radiator in the field. As for the engine, it was a 12-cylinder Daimler Benz 9-605 DB (serial number 17/01493). It was pulled out of the ground with the help of heavy equipment from the Telnik agricultural cooperative.

"According to the ammunition belts found, the aircraft was armed with two MG 131 machine guns, 13mm calibre, and an MK 108 cannon, 30mm calibre - these, however, were not found on thethe site of the discovery, as they were probably removed after the plane crashed in 1945," said the staff of the Moravian Museum in Brno.

After the plane crashed, everything that could be dismantled was taken away. "The engine was too heavy, so it was left in place and buried," Schildberger noted.

The Messerschmitt Bf 109 was a German fighter aircraft that was one of the Luftwaffe's standard fighter aircraft just before World War II and formed the backbone of the Luftwaffe's fighter force during World War II, along with the Focke-Wulf Fw 190.

Sources: www.mzm.cz, www.lidovky.cz, www.leteckabadatelna.cz