'Low & Slow - Very Slow!' - Fieseler Storch - Shuttleworth Military Pageant 2013

Peter Holloway's Fieseler Fi-156 Storch (German for 'Stork'), G-STCH, showing it's slow flying capabilities at the Shuttleworth Military Pageant 2013.

The Storch was designed in 1936 to meet a Luftwaffe requirement for an Army Co-operation, liaison and Casualty Evacuation aircraft.

Production commenced in 1937 at the Fieseler Works in Kassel. However, as WW2 progressed, production shifted in 1942 to the Morane-Saulnier factory in occupied France, allowing Fieseler to produce the Me109 and FW190 and latterly, V1 flying bombs. The aircraft was also produced in Czechoslovakia from 1944. A combined total of more than 3000 aircraft were produced.

Due to the shortages of strategic materials, the Storch was originally fitted with wooden wings and tailplane.

At the end of the war, Morane-Saulnier continued to produce the aircraft for their own military. When supplies of the French-made Argus Engine dried up, the aircraft was re-engined initially with the French Salmson and finally, with the 300hp American radial. With the supply of aluminium no longer a problem, the fragile and problematic wooden wings were also replaced.

The aircraft we see today has an unknown wartime history. It was recovered from France as a damaged, incomplete donor aircraft in the 1960′s. Evidence recovered from the fuselage frame indicate that it pre-dates 1942.

Peter Holloway bought the aircraft as an advanced project in 2006 from the defunct RLM Aviation in Fairoaks. It was completed within the workshops of the Shuttleworth Collection and flew again for the first time in 2009. It has been a regular airshow performer since.

The Storch has an astonishing STOL performance, largely due to its fixed full-span leading edge slats, large flaps and drooping ailerons.

It does not stall in the conventional sense. In wartime service it was often landed by closing the throttle, lowering the flaps and ailerons, hauling the stick back and arriving on the ground at a rate that the long-stroke undercarriage could generally absorb.

Surviving numbers are thought to be around a dozen worldwide. At the time of filming this was the only airworthy example in the UK.

The Fieseler Storch was the last dogfight victim of the western front. Pilot Duanes Francies and his observer, Lieutenant William Martin, of the 5th US Army Division, spotted a Storch circling below them while looking for ground targets in their L4 Piper Cub. Diving on the Storch, the two men opened fire with their Colt .45s and the plane spiralled to the ground. After a short gun battle, Francies and his observer took the two Germans into custody. Lt. Martin was awarded the Air Medal for his part in the fight, but Francies would have to wait until the story was reported in Cornelius Ryan’s book “The Last Battle,” to finally be awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. The USAF was 22 years late. Apart from being the last Luftwaffe plane lost in the west, the Storch was also the only enemy plane downed by pistol fire during the war.

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