'The Last Dogfight' - Slepcev Storch & Piper L4 Grasshopper - IWM Duxford 'Best of 2021' Flying Day скачать в хорошем качестве

'The Last Dogfight' - Slepcev Storch & Piper L4 Grasshopper - IWM Duxford 'Best of 2021' Flying Day

Anthony Bendkowski's Slepcev Storch, G-BZOB and 1944 Piper L-4H Grasshopper, 479897, G-BOXJ flying together during the IWM Duxford Best of 2021 Flying Day, in a sequence called 'The Last Dogfight' very loosely re-enacting a combat on 11th April 1945 in the European Theatre during World War 2. On 11th April 1945, Pilot 1st Lieutenant Merritt Duane Francies, Field Artillery, USA, and forward observer Lieutenant William S. Martin, 71st Armoured Field Artillery Battalion, 5th Armoured Division, were crewing a Piper L-4H Grasshopper called 'Miss Me!?' on a reconnaissance mission near Dannenberg, Germany. This was Francies’ 142nd combat mission. He had named the plane 'Miss Me!?' because he wanted the Germans to do that - the reason for the exclamation point - and he also wanted someone back home to miss him, so there was also a question mark. The 71st Battalion was now the closest American force to Berlin. Out on an observation mission some 100 miles west of the capital city, Francies saw a German motorcycle and sidecar below, speeding along a road near some of the 5th Armoured tanks. He and Martin went in to take a closer look at the motorcycle and saw a German Fieseler Fi-156 Storch aircraft below and about 700 feet above the trees. Francies later wrote: "The German Storch, with an inverted 8 Argus engine, also a fabric job and faster and larger than the 'Miss Me!?', spotted us and we radioed, "We are about to give combat". But we had the advantage of altitude and dove, blasting away with our Colt .45s, trying to force the German plane into the fire of waiting tanks of the 5th. Instead, the German began circling." Firing out of the side doors with their Colts, the American crewmen emptied their guns into the Storch's windshield, fuel tanks and right wing. Francies had to hold the stick between his knees while reloading. He later recalled, "The two planes were so close I could see the Germans' eyeballs, as big as eggs, as we peppered them." After the Storch pilot made a low turn, the plane's right wing hit the ground, and the plane cartwheeled and came to rest in a pasture. Setting down nearby, the Americans ran to the downed plane. The German pilot dived behind a huge pile of sugar beets to hide from them, but the observer, who had been hit in the foot, fell to the ground. When Francies removed the observer's boot, a .45 slug fell out. Then Martin fired warning shots that brought the pilot to his feet, hands raised. Francies confiscated the pilot's wings and Luftwaffe shoulder insignia, as well as a Nazi battle flag. "I never found out their names," Francies later recalled. "They could have been important, for all I know. We turned them over to our tankers about 15 minutes later after the injured man thanked me many times for bandaging his foot. I think they thought we would shoot them." The Slepcev Storchis a Serbian type-certified, kit and ultralight STOL aircraft, designed by Yugoslavian-Australian Nestor Slepcev and currently produced by Storch Aircraft Serbia in several different versions. The ultralight version is a 3/4 scale replica of the Second World War Fieseler Fi 156 and is supplied as a kit for amateur construction or as a complete ready-to-fly-aircraft. The aircraft was first flown in 1994. It was originally manufactured by Slepcev’s company, Slepcev Aircraft Industry of Beechwood, New South Wales, Australia. The company was later renamed Storch Aviation Australia. Production then moved to Serbia where a Fédération Aéronautique Internationale microlight category model was developed. Like the original Fi 156, the Slepcev Storch features a strut-braced high-wing, a two-seats-in-tandem enclosed cockpit, with extensive glazing, fixed conventional landing gear and a single engine in tractor configuration. It is made from welded steel tubing with its flying surfaces fashioned from sheet aluminium and covered in doped aircraft fabric. The ultralight version has a 10 m (32.8 ft) span wing with an area of 15 m2 (160 sq ft), large flaps and leading edge slots. The wings are supported by V-struts and jury struts. Engines fitted vary by model. This aircraft is a homebuilt kit version built by John Ashby in 2004 and powered by a 100 hp Rotax 912ULS, with a gross weight of 550 kg. The Piper Grasshopper was built in 1944 and assigned USAAF serial 44-79897. The L-4 was the military version of the J-3 Cub. Used for artillery fire direction, front line liaison, glider pilot instruction and as a courier plane. Video and Audio content is Copyright © High Flight This video and audio material may not be reproduced in any form (except as the videos Youtube embedded video option on any other website), without written permission.