Fi 156 "P"? Counter insurgency version of Storch?

[gmorrow]

Hello,

Can anyone perhaps provide any information about the Fi 156P "Polizei". Perhaps a detailed photo or description of this little known Storch version. I ran across the Fi 156P in some publications, and at an internet site (http://www.piteraq.dk/flight/storch.html), but information is very sparse on this particular aircraft. Any information or direction is greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Gary

[TonyC]

Hi Gary,

I remember seeing an article many years ago about Panzerfaust anti-tank weapons (sort of Bazookas) being fitted to some Storchs and other light aircraft in the dying months of the war, but unfortunately I no longer have any details... I am sure someone here will come up with the goods!

Regards,
Tony

[RossGmann]

The following link http://www.historyofwar.org/articles...r_fi_156P.html may be of interest

IMAGES: http://www.flugzeuginfo.net/acdata_p...a_fi156_en.php

The Fieseler Fi 156F or P (for Police) was a version of the Storch designed for internal security and anti-partisan activities. It was similar to the Fi 156C-3, but carried two Rost 24 SD 2/XI bomb racks, one on each wing, mounted just beyond the wing struts. Each of these racks could carry 24 SD 2 fragmentation bombs that could be dropped in batches of four or in a single long salvo. The P may also have carried two MG 15 machine guns mounted on either side of the cabin, as well as a loudspeaker system designed for psychological warfare. The service record of this variant is unclear, although it may have been used by the SS during the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw ghetto in 1944.
Introduction
The Fieseler Fi 156 Storch (Stork) is widely considered to have been the best army cooperation aircraft to see large-scale service during the Second World War, serving with the German Army on just about every front, and possessing a very impressive short take-off and landing capability.
Development
The Storch was developed by a team led by Gerhard Fieseler, a First World War fighter ace and inter-war aerial acrobat, his chief designer Reinhold Mewes and his technical director Erich Bachem. It was originally designed as a private venture, to be produced in possible military and civil versions.
Five prototype Fi 156s were built. The second, V-2 (D-IGLI) was completed first, and sent to Rechlin for tests during 1936. After these successful tests Fieseler were ordered to built more prototypes, but at the same time a specification based on the Fi 156 was issued to the German aircraft industry.
Three companies produced aircraft in response to the new specification, but none were real competitors to the Storch. The Messerschmitt Bf 163 was similar to the Storch, but arrived too late to be considered (not making its maiden flight until early in 1938). The Focke-Wulf Fw 186 autogyro was too radical a design and was not considered to be robust enough for the battlefield. The Siebel Si 201 was an unusual aircraft with a pusher engine that was acceptable in the air, but failed to match the Storch's STOL capabilities.
The first two Fi 156 prototypes were followed by the V-3 and V-5, both with military equipment, and by the ski-equipped V-4 of mid 1937. By this date the 10 pre-production A-0 aircraft were also being completed, and the new aircraft was first seen in public at the Fourth International Flying Meet at Zurich on 1 August 1937, where its short take-off and landing capabilities (STOL) impressed the audience.
The V-2 demonstrated the impressive performance of the entire series. During tests with a loaded weight of 2,740lb it could fly under control at 32mph, while with an 8 mph headwind it could take off in 150ft and land in 54ft - only just more than its own width. A Storch would later be recorded as landing in 15ft with a stronger head wind and a ploughed field to help!
Production
Sources disagree on the total number of Fi 156s accepted by the Luftwaffe, with figures ranging from just under 2,000 up to 2,871. Production began slowly, but 227 were accepted in 1939, 216 in 1940 and 430 in 1941.
By 1942 Fieseler's Kassel Works were heavily committed to the production of the Bf 109 and Fw 190. During 1942 the Kassel Works still completed 484 Fi 156s, but that year also saw the first aircraft come off a new production line at Puteaux in France, originally used to build the Morane Saulnier M.S.406. Morane Saulnier built 121 aircraft in 1942, and continued production of the type after the war with a variety of different engines (most successfully as the M.S.502 Criquet).
The last Fieseler built aircraft was completed in October 1943. Production then shifted to the firm of Leichtbau Budweis in Czechoslovakia, which built one aircraft in 1943 and 72 in 1944. Production then moved again, this time to Mraz in Chozen, where 64 aircraft were built during the war. Mraz also continued construction of the Storch after the end of the war, with the designation K-65 Cap.
Description
The Fi 156 Storch was a surprisingly conventional aircraft. It was a three-seat high-winged monoplane, with two passengers sitting in tandem behind the pilot. The fuselage had a welded steel tube framework and a tight fabric covering. The strongly built cabin had a glazed area wider than the fuselage, giving an excellent view straight down.
The wings had a wooden frame with a fabric cover and were braced to the bottom of the fuselage by steel-tubes. They could be folded backwards. They had fixed aluminium slots along the entire leading edge. The trailing edge had wooden slotted flaps, with the outer sections used as ailerons. Both of these features were designed to increase the lift provided by the wings at low speeds, and helped give the aircraft its impressive low speed and STOL abilities. The fin was made of metal and fabric, while the rest of the tail had a wooden frame and plywood skin.
The Fi 156 was powered by the air cooled Argus As 10 inverted inline engine, a very reliable engine that was able to cope with the extreme cold found on the Eastern Front, and with the difficult conditions in North Africa.
The undercarriage played an important part in the success of the aircraft. The two main wheels were mounted on strong, very long, energy absorbing oleos which were attached to the wing roots, and were braced to the lower fuselage. This meant that the undercarriage was able to cope with the shock of the very steep landings performed by the aircraft. The only flaw with the undercarriage was that the small wheels were often damaged by ruts or large stones.
The standard fuel load on the Storch was 150 litres, carried in two 75 litre/ 16.28 imperial gallon fuel tanks, one in each wing. A 45 gallon/ 205 litre tank could be installed in place of the two passenger seats for longer journeys.
Comparisons
The Storch is often said to have had no Allied equivalent, but this is not the case. Its most direct British equivalent was the Westland Lysander, another high-wing monoplane, and designed to carry out many of the same roles. The Lysander could carry a small bomb load and came with fixed forward firing guns, but it was much heavier than the Storch, used an engine that was nearly four times as powerful as the Argus engines used by Fieseler, and needed more space to take-off or land.
The Allied aircraft with the best claim to be the equal of the Storch was probably the American Piper L-4 Grasshopper. This was yet another high-wing monoplane, and performed most of the same roles as the Storch, but was much lighter and smaller than the German aircraft, and was powered by a 65hp engine. It had a stall speed of 39mph, so couldn't fly quite as slow as the Storch, and nor could it quite match its STOL capabilities, but it came close. At least twice as many L-4s were produced as Storchs, with production reaching over 5,500 aircraft.
Service Record
The Fi 156A-1 began to enter Luftwaffe service in 1937, and almost immediately a number were sent to Spain to serve with the Condor Legion. As production began to speed up one or two Fi 156C-1s were issued to every Gruppe in the Luftwaffe, and to most units in the Army and frontline elements of the SS. The Storch was also used as transport aircraft by senior members of the General Staff and by commanders in the field, most famously Kesselring and Rommel (and eventually by Montgomery on the Allied side!).
The Storch saw service on every front where the German Army fought, from the Arctic and Norway, through the Russian Front and down into the Western Desert, as well as in Western Europe, both in 1940 and in 1944-45. It was a very survivable aircraft - when flying at 34mph it was very difficult for modern fighter aircraft to actually catch it, and each Storch was said to have had a combat life ten times longer than the average Bf 109!
The Storch was used for a very wide range of functions, amongst them artillery spotting, reconnaissance, staff liaison, as an air ambulance, to rescue downed airmen from behind enemy lines (especially valuable in North Africa, where it was operated by two rescue squadrons or Wüstennotstaffeln, and in Russia), as a cable laying aircraft, and on a number of special missions.
The Storch was used for two of the most famous single flights of the Second World War. The first came on 12 September 1943 when a company of paratroopers rescued Mussolini from the Campo Imperatore Hotel on the pinnacle of Gran Sasso in the Abruzzi Mountains. The Storch made a daring landing on top of the mountain, before managing to take off despite being rather overloaded with passengers, amongst them Otto Skorzeny, whose role in the raid is somewhat controversial, and whose insistence on being flown off in the Storch nearly caused the failure of the entire mission.
The second came in the last days of the war, during the battle for Berlin. Goering attempted to seize power on the grounds that Hitler was now trapped in the city, but he had misjudged the situation and was removed from all of his posts. At Hitler's order the famous test pilot Hanna Reitsch flew Generaloberst Ritter von Greim into the besieged city, where he was given command of what was left of the Luftwaffe, before flying him back out again - an impressive but entirely pointless flight.
Allied service
[IMG]file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/console/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/msoclip1/01/clip_image001.jpg[/IMG]
Fieseler Storch in British colours
Captured Fi 156s were used in surprisingly large numbers by the RAF. At least 47 were used by front-line squadrons in the Mediterranean theatre, and more than sixty were taken onto RAF charge. Amongst them was VM472, which became the personal aircraft of Field Marshal Montgomery.
Variants
Fi 156A
A small number of Fi 156As were built in the A-0 pre-production and A-1 production series. They were similar to the V-3 prototype.
Fi 156B
The Fi 156B was to have used moveable slots on the front of the wings, and would have been faster than the standard Fi 156. One B-0 was probably built, but the type never entered production.
Fi 156C
The Fi 156C was the main production version of the aircraft. It had a modified rear canopy capable of carrying a 7.92mm machine gun, which was installed on all but the C-1 version.
Fi 156D
The Fi 156D was a dedicated ambulance aircraft with improved access for stretchers.
Fi 156E
The Fi 156E used a modified undercarriage with tandem wheels and a short track. Only ten were built.
Fi 156F or P
The Fi 156F or P was a Police or anti-Partisan version of the aircraft, armed with small bombs and forward firing machine guns.
Fi 156U
The Fi 156U was the designation given to an experimental version of the aircraft used to test out bomb racks.
Post-War Production
After the war the Storch was produced in Czechoslovakia as the Mraz K.65 Cap, and by Morane Saulnier in France as the M.S. 500, M.S. 501 and M.S. 502, with the designation indicating the type of engine in use.
Fi 156C-2
Engine: Argus As 10C-3 eight cylinder air-cooled
Power: 240hp
Crew: 3
Wing span: 46ft 9in
Length: 32ft 6in
Height: 10ft
Empty Weight: 2,050lb
Loaded Weight: 2,920lb
Max Speed: 109mph at sea level
Cruising Speed: 81mph or 93mph at 3,280ft
Climb rate: 905ft/ minute
Service Ceiling: 15,090ft
Range: 248 miles at 93 mph at 3,280ft
Armament: One flexibly mounted 7.9mm MG 15 in rear of cabin

Kind regards

Ross

[Seaplanes]

By far the most important unit to operate the police conversions of the Fi 156, was the Waffen SS controlled Fligergruppe (later Fliegergeschwader) z.b.V.7. This unit operated Staffeln mainly in Eastern Europe and the Balkans but also including Norway.

[Edward L. Hsiao]

Gentlemen,

For a long time I was wondering if the Waffen-SS and the Heer were operating Fi-156s especially if they were armed with bombs,machine guns,and anti-rockets. Looks like my thought is right all along. I had a hard time convincing some members of "Axis History Forum" that the Waffen-SS and the Heer had pilots that flew small armed planes including Fi-156s (Fi-156Ps)into action during WWII. Sometimes the Fi-156s would drop off German sabotage men behind enemy lines late during WWII. Yes,the Fi-156P needs to be researched more on its activities on all European fronts during WWII.

Edward L. Hsiao

[Nick Beale]

Attached is a decode of German police and security traffic from 21 June 1944. I don't know which locations etc. the various callsigns denote but Paragraph 3 seems to be a list of aircraft Stammkennzeichen.

This is only the by-product of a quick look into TNA HW 16/41 (and I've no epxertise with Stkz. anyhow) so I can't help with follow-up questions.

[Adriano Baumgartner]

NICK you are really an ace!

[INM@RLM]

Whilst it is definitely true that there was a Fi 156 F sub-type there were only ever a handful of these conversions. (My estimate is less than 20 examples.)

There was clearly no production series for this sub-type, so we can conclude that all were individual conversions performed in Lw workshops on an as-required basis. We can also conclude that the great majority of the Fi 156s used in anti-partisan operations were standard C-3 & C-3/trop examples.

Good evidence on both points was provided in the fascinating and superb article on Fliegergeschwader z.b.V. 7 that Seaplanes contributed to the Luftwaffe Verband Journal, Issue No. 39 of July 2004. In this there were mentions of a couple of F-0s (W.Nrn. 738 & 5280) along with just a handful of F-1s (W.Nrn. 1417, 5033, 5082, 5168, 5276, 5443, & 5742). (There are also a few other Fs where the Stammkz. is known but not the W.Nr., some of which could of course also be one of those with a known W.Nr.) Most of the Fi 156s listed with the unit though are of the C-3, C-3/trop variants plus the odd C-2 & C-7.

Greece and Crete are conspicuously not parts of the areas covered by Fliegergeschwader z.b.V. 7 but the Fi 156 was definitely also used for anti-partisan operations in the former and probably also the latter. There is an excellent account of the shoot-down of a Fi 156 operating against Greek partisans in Chapter 13 of 'Rogue Male' by Roger Field. [Rogue Male: Sabotage and seduction behind German lines with Geoffrey Gordon-Creed, DSO, MC - it a far better book than the title makes out.] This took place in the autumn of 1943 and the 100% loss of W.Nr. 8083 with two crew from Flugbereitschaft/FK X on 21-Oct-43 looks to be a good candidate. I believe the loss was reported as a Fi 156 trop and the reconstructed build list for the Fi 156 shows this W.Nr. to be part of a batch of C-3/Trops. So the probablity is this was not an F, just a local improvisation.

If Seaplanes will confirm he is happy for me to post a scan of this Lw Verb Jnl article - or he will do that himself - it would be a very useful addition to this thread.

Also, somewhat earlier, Barry Rosch had devoted the whole of the October 1999 (Issue 20) of the Luftwaffe Verband Journal to a reconstructed build list for the Fi 156. In his introduction Barry wrote "I have personally put well over 150 hours of work into developing this Fi 156 presentation and would like to thank Dénes Bernád, Don Caldwell, Steve Coates, Peter Evans, Jim Jean-Claude Mermet, Perry, Peter Petrick, Hans Heiri Stapfer, Tom Willis, and especially Karl Kössler for the information they have sent in." Searching this listing there are just ten mentions of Fi 156 F examples.

I'm not sure how best to handle this one. Possibly Barry and Karl would be the most appropriate individuals to approach for permission to post this build list here or somewhere else accessible to readers of this thread. Or to agree for me to do this. (Since I purchased an electronic subscription along with the print version, including all back issues, I received a copy of this issue in Word and could post it on their behalf.)

To explain: the arrangements around reproducing material appearing in the Lw Verband Jnl were "This journal is published by the Luftwaffe Verband for use by its members. The material in the journal does not have a copyright and members are free to use the information. However, we do ask that you request permission from the author to reprint any article, and credit both the author and the LV Journal for any material so used." Whilst the Journal is now defunct it contained much excellent content of permanent worth.

Plus, since at least the first of these files will exceed the 195.3 KB limit for PDFs we'd have to find a way of sharing it that was effective for readers of this discussion group.

[Tom Willis]

Post 6 - Thanks Nick for sharing the attachment on Fl.GzbV.7 aircraft.
There was only a few Fi156s the rest were of different Types - See List.
CB+VJ - Fi156C-3 - W/Nrs.5084
CS+CP - Fi156 - W/Nr.?
DJ+?H - This is most likely to be DJ+UH with Fl.GzbV.7 Dec 1944
KP+KU - Fi156C-7 - W/Nr.1670
PV+ZG - Fi156C-3 - W/Nr.5304
TE+JK & JS - Fi156C-3 - W/Nr.1111 & 1119
Fw189A-2 - BH+TS - Dec 1944
Fw189A-2 - DG+QE
Fw189A-2 - GE+BJ - Dec 1944
Fw58 - GR+GK
Fw58 - KH+AT - Dec 1944
Ju87D - BG+MH
Ju87D - CP+EQ - Dec 1944
Ju87D - GE+PQ
Ju87D - NS+CH
Ju87D - PG+ZJ - Dec 1944
Ju87D - PH+DF - Dec 1944
Ju87D - CP+EQ
Bf110 - KC+UG
Fw190 - SW+ID
Si202 - NA+MB - Dec 1044
Si202 - NA+MN - Dec 1944 - This is marked as NB+MN - so most likely a typo
Unknown - SW+RD - But again this is probably also a typo for SW+ID
Unknown - BL+DH
Note - All Types mentioned with date Dec 1944 are known with Fl.

[vathra]

I have read about usage of Storch, modified with radio rangefinding equipment, used for trying to locate illegal radio transmitters.

Was there a version designation for such model?