The story of the Ukrainian Messerschmitt bf-109

In early 1944, one of the strangest stories in Bf 109 history allegedly took place in the Ukrainian Carpathians. According to historian Andriy Kozytskyi, fighters of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) captured a German Bf 109, stripped its Luftwaffe markings, and painted on a Ukrainian trident (tryzub). The aircraft was reportedly flown by a pilot known only as “Letun” (“The Flyer”) — said to be a former German pilot who’d joined the insurgency — on a single propaganda sortie from Kalush toward Dolyna, dropping leaflets along the way. Its fate afterward is disputed even in the original account: destroyed after landing, or abandoned in a field and recovered by the Germans.

Source: A. Kozytskyi, “Авіаційні епізоди з історії УПА” [“Aviation Episodes from the History of the UPA”], Військово-історичний альманах, no. 1(14) (Kyiv, 2007), pp. 73–88.

Note: this traces back to a single 2007 academic article, with no surviving photograph, wreck, or independent record I could find. I can find the official paper document if I wanted to but it’ll take a while