Messerschmitt Bf 108 Special UPDATE

[John Dupre]

I remember reading years ago in one of Martin Caidin's books about a Me. Bf 108 project in Florida that involved putting a 12 cylinder inverted V type Ranger engine into the airframe with other mods. Never heard of it again and never saw any photos. Does anyone know anything about it?

I see in the latest issue of Flight Journal that this aircraft does exist in Florida owned by a founder of the Valiant Air Command. He does have the Ranger (V 770?) inverted V-12 engine installed and has made many other mods as well. Another mystery solved.

Last edited by John Dupre on Mon Dec 08, 2008 10:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

[gregv]

I thought I saw a thread on that (with a photo) either here or on the Flypast forum in the last month or two, but I don't have the time to search for it myself right now. IIRC, it had oversized quasi-Luftwaffe style insignia (in white) on it.

cheers

greg v.

[marine air]

Ah, Martin Caidin! I have a couple of pins he gave me when I was a kid. One is a hat oin of a JU-52 and the other is what looks to be Air Force Command wings, except that in the middle is has a Ju-52 with "Iron Annie"
labeled obove it. He was the best. He was giving free rides and hat pins away at the Homestead, 1979 Air Races in the JU-52.
I don't know if he ever really had a V-12 powered Me-108 or just was tossing the idea around. At the time my dad had an Me-108 (Nord 1002) and a guy in Fort Lauderdale had an Me-208 (Nord1101). His name is Ray Martin.
The original Bf-108 with an Argus 240hp. engine has about 30 lbs of ballast in the tail for C.G. and the Nord version with the Renault 240 hp. inline six engine and Ratier steel prop has about 50 lbs of lead in the tail. So it would not have been an easy project.
There have been a couple of Bf-108's re-engined with Lycoming O-540's of 260hp. which is a very good replacement except for it takes away a little bit of the fighter look.
Ray re-engined his Me-208 with an 0-6 that had around 345 hp. It had a turbocharger and our A&P didn't like it because he said the turbocharger was right against the firewall with no heat protection. True enough, about 20 years later someone died in an in flight fire in that airraft.
The Ranger V-12's weren't around back then . Only one or two were known at the time to be in existence. Someone later found a cache of a couple dozen in a foreign country. Also, they were prone to overheating. He talked about maybe a Jaguar V-12 from an E-type car and of course that would have made the airplane really nose heavy.

[hurk130]

About 1998 I was flying a V-tail to Coleman (about an hour or so from Abilene Texas) and checking out the Laws collection. I saw a guy who had about 10 or 12 Me-208 frames, wings and other parts. Nothing flying but it was all there lined up. Any connection?