22/3!

"Cé hé sin" (michael-m-mouse) 03/22/2016 at 19:31 • Filed to: Fa 223

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Time to go into the air today with a Hubschrauber.

You what?

A helicopter, specifically the Focke-Achgelis Fa 223 Drache, designed by a company owned by Herr Focke of Focke Wulf fame and Gerd Achgelis. It was ordered by the Luftwaffe and several prototypes made but as the other side had a distressing tendency to bomb anywhere the Fa 223 was being built only a handful were ever completed.

At war’s end the US military captured two of the three that had been assigned to the Luftwaffe’s first and only helicopter squadron and were persuaded to give one to the RAF who employed the services of Helmut Gerstenhauer, a Luftwaffe pilot with considerable experience of the Fa 223, to deliver it to them at Beaulieu. Having got it they decided to ignore his maintenance advice which resulted in it crashing after just two flights.

We see from the picture that it was very much a conventional fixed wing type fuselage with a pair of rotors attached alongside, something which obviated the need to develop a tail rotor. A single BMW engine mounted in the middle provided power.

Here’s what appears to be one of the captured ones accompanied by three chaps who evidently consider themselves very dashing:

After the war a couple of copies were made in France and Czechoslovakia and the Russians went on to make the rather similar (except for size) Mil V-12 which remains the largest helicopter ever built.

PanchoVilleneuve ST > Cé hé sin 03/22/2016 at 19:41

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My favorite thing about pioneering aircraft like this is how they tend to look like I made it.

Also, Hubschrauber sounds like an insult. “Jesus, Frank, you’re such a hubschrauber sometimes, you know that?”

Cé hé sin > PanchoVilleneuve ST 03/22/2016 at 19:52

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It literally means Screwlifter (no, no, as in airscrew)

PanchoVilleneuve ST > Cé hé sin 03/22/2016 at 20:01

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Frank is a screwlifter.