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Skorzeny appeared before Adolf Hitler on July 26, 1943.
The Fuhrer had a special mission for the scar-faced commando: a day
earlier, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini had been forced to resign and
was
arrested by his own people. Mussolini was being held prisoner in a
resort hotel sitting some 9000 feet atop the Gran Sasso, the highest
peak of the Appenine mountain range some eighty miles northeast of
Rome. Skorzeny's new mission would be to find Mussolini and rescue him
before the new Italian government surrendered and offered up Mussolini
to the Allies. Skorzeny was warned that an airplane rescue was "technically impossible", due
to the high altitude and bad landing conditions, but Skorzeny ignored
their advice. Twelve DFS
230 assault gliders were landed on the peak to clear the way and
Skorzeny followed in his personal Fieseler Storch aircraft.....landing on a spot
that even helicopters could not reach.
“Duce, the Fuhrer has sent me to set you free”, he said. "I knew my
friend Adolf Hitler would not abandon me," replied Mussolini, embracing
Skorzeny. The two climbed into the Storch and it leaped over the cliff
edge and dived airborne down the slope. Skorzeny had pulled off the impossible-without firing a shot.
For his rescue of Mussolini, Skorzeny was awarded the prestigious
Knight's Cross.
Winston Churchill himself
described the mission as "one of great daring." |
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What
makes this project different is that the Storch is
an excellent example of a truly single purpose
aircraft. Everything was compromised to gain the
maximum short landing and take-off performance. As
a result this airplane looks and performs like
none other....Its character and looks are such
that you can't help but love it. Many aircraft historians would agree
that the only pre-war German aircraft type not
matched by the Allies throughout the entire
conflict was the lightweight Fieseler |
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This 1/5 scale model will be built from Ed Newman's plans.....After considerable research I find that this model needs to be built very light in order to perform the maneuvers that made the full size Storch so famous. it is my plan to save as much weight as possible while maintaining as much strength where it is critical. In this build log I don't plan to describe every step of the building.....Instead I will show where I deviated from normal building techniques and try to explain why I did it. It wont be a "museum scale" project but I will try to put together the documentation and the model that could win at a major scale contest
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July 2008..... |
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| At this time the basic fuselage is completed in rough form. The center metal welded "birdcage" is installed, the engine mounting framework is in and the tailfeathers are installed. I have skeletoned out certain areas to save weight (1.) All of the rearward bulkheads have been thinned, I eliminated a lot of needless cross-bracing and used bamboo shish-ka-bob skewers for some cross bracing where I thought it was needed. Longerons are hand ripped from edge grain western red cedar. | |||||||
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A lot of lightening has taken
place on the tail too.....I drilled like crazy with a forstner bit and
used a lot of contest balsa. I used 1/16 sheet balsa wherever it
called for solid blocks. The horizontal stab will be ground adjustable and
the two halves will be removable as well...... |
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The tubes joining and aligning the
two stab halves (2.)
are carbon.....a lot lighter than brass. The adjustable stab components
can be seen here.....(3.)
are slotted nylon blocks which can be tighteded at a variety of locations
by the screw (4.)
The second photo shows the two stab
halves together. |
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The external adjustment nscrew (4.) as seen from the outside. The two nylon blocks can be seen at (5.) The fuselage is still in the building jig so that perfect alignment is preserved. | ||||||
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It appears that the supplier of
this plan is no longer in business....I cannot purchase the fiberglass
cowl and other pre-formed components....I am therefore forced to make my
own.....Here are the plaster castings into which I will lay up the
fiberglass cloth and resin. The other parts will be used to vacum-form the
ABS parts and "glaasswork". |
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The little louvers that go on the cowl were press-formed from sheet plastic | ||||||
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The cowl is basically completed
with the addition of flush rivets, panel lines, opening hatches and the
little air scoops. The cowl was laid up into the plaster mould with a
high-solids primer
already sprayed into the mould before the polyester resin and cloth. Two
layers of thin, high-density glasscloth was used for strength and the finished
weight is therefore considerably less than the Newman cowl. |
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September 2008..... |
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(1.)
Glasscloth was used around the engine mounting joints for extra strength.
Special attention to lightweight building is visible at
(2.)
and (3.).....the
plan called for much heavier materials at these points. I used the
edgegrain cedar for stringers and will not have any soldered brass at
these points. Lightweight steel supporting pins are silver soldered to the
metal frame to support the stringers
(4.).
Here are the aileron mass balance weights.....I turned the master from aluminum on my lathe and used the latex mould process to pour the weights of resin. The support arms are carbon laminate.
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The wing saddles are
completed here.....laminated of plywood and balsa blocks.....a lot of
careful cutting and aligning here. They have to fit the welded steel
framework perfectly. Plywood pockets in the wing root accept the plywood
toungs that stick out from the wing saddle. I would like to take a mould
off these and lay them up in carbon fibre and epoxy.....they would be
hollow, much lighter and I could use carbon tubes instead of the plywood
toungs. They are removable so I can still do that later if I like. |
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I was not able to buy the
factory landing gear kit so had to build my own.....After wheel alignment
the oleo framework was soldered in place to assure that nothing will move
out of place once finally assembled. The landing gear is very rigid and
cannot fall out of adjustment. All of the metalwork is primed with
Duplicolor self-etching primer. |
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Here is the tailwheel complete with the leather boot.....A 163 oz. in. servo drives both rudder and tailwheel by a combination of pull-pull and pushrod. The same size servo drives a carbon pushrod for both elevators.....very simple. | |||||
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Some of the Storch surfaces are
metal covered while others are fabric.....I like to finish the balsa
sheeted surfaces such as the horizontal stab with a smooth, hard finish to
replicate the riveted metal sheeting on the fullsize airplane. I do this
by laying on a single layer of 3/4 oz. glasscloth over the balsa with
water-based urethane, sand the finish and apply a thick coat of
heavy-solids primer. The primer is then sanded off until the weave of the
cloth is filled leaving a very hard and smooth finish. The best part of
this system is that it is very light!! The lightest way that I know to
paint over raw balsa. The rivets are glue-drops. The panel lines are made
by first laying on a strip of 1/64" tape. Spray over the tape a couple of
coats of the high-solids primer and sand off when dry until the tape
becomes visible. Peel off the tape and you have a recessed line 1/64"wide
and the depth of the tape. |
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Yep !! definitely beginning to look like one!! "For me, the Storch has appeal because it doesn't try to be pretty. It's a good honest ugly bird and doesn't seem to care." B.D.
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