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Originally Posted by Tymi
Dunno if this helps but i had that problem when i made a mission in the FMB and tried to take off from a field. When i moved the plane to an airfield the engine started normally.
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This might actually be a feature and not a bug. I'm very surprised they went to the trouble of modeling this if it's done on purpose.
To clarify, our start-up procedures are a bit simplified even though the rest of the engine model seems very accurate and true to life. The biggest difference between CoD and a real aircraft is the starter.
While we seem to have a universal starter, the "I" key (and i say we seem to have because maybe it goes a bit deeper), these planes had different types. Some aircraft required power from the on-board battery to turn the engine for starting. Some used an inertia starter that spins up a flywheel to high RPM (as an example, about 20.000 RPM for the P-47 if i'm not mistaken), which is then linked to the engine via a clutch and transfers all that rotational energy to start the engine.
Others like the B-17 used a combination that had both an inertial flywheel and if that didn't do the trick, it kept turning the engine via a battery powered direct-drive system.
It gets even crazier, the Spitfire used pressurized air in the early models but later switched to blank shotgun cartridges to provide the energy for starting.
The principle is simple, you need something with enough energy that is either able to transfer a big "jolt" to the engine in a small time frame or provide a smaller rotational force over a longer amount of time.
The thing to remember here is that this power source wasn't always found on the aircraft. For example, in WWI and even in some general aviation aircraft up until the early 50s (like the original Piper Cub) it was possible to start the engine by turning the propeller by hand.
The 109 is one of those aircraft that relied on manual labor. I bet you've all seen wartime videos in black and white, where the mechanics insert a hand-crank into the side of the cowling and start turning it furiously. This is usually accompanied by a sound that intensifies in pitch, like something is spinning up inside the cowling. My guess is that the mechanics manually spin up a flywheel for an inertial starter and when it reaches full RPM, the pilot engages the starter to turn the engine. Long story short, you can't start it if you don't have a ground crewman nearby and they are hard to come by in the countryside
I think something to this effect is also stated in the PDF manual, namely that certain aircraft rely on external equipment to start their engines and mid-air or field restarts are not possible because the sim takes that into account.