Author Topic: Stealing the Stuka  (Read 82847 times)

Offline upnorth

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Stealing the Stuka
« on: June 11, 2012, 04:56:00 PM »
Hello all:

Some of you will be familiar with my "Stuka Musings" thread:
http://beyondthesprues.com/Forum/index.php?topic=1202.0

One of my long term build plans is to build an alternate Stuka that keeps the look of the original but includes all the refinements that the real machine didn't have.

As my building speed is quite slow, I've decided to put together a back story for it to keep myself interested in the idea.

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Stealing the Stuka

Prologue: 1925-1935

By the mid 1920s, Hugo Junkers had lost substantial control of many of his businesses as a result of being unable to pay back government loans on failed attempts to build aircraft for the Soviet Union.

Political views in interwar Germany were quite varied and diverse. That Hugo Junkers himself was notably Socialist and Pacifist in his leanings created some tension with regards to the internal politics of his own company. Junkers was no stranger to confronting and locking horns with government powers; he only reluctantly built combat aircraft for imperial Germany in WWI and was forced into working with Antony Fokker to meet production quotas.

With Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, the Nazi party moved quickly to take over Junkers’ remaining business intrests as well as the pattents that he held. He was placed under house arrest and died in 1935. The remainder of his interests and pattends were ceded to the state in 1936. Despite state takeover, Junkers’ name was retained on aircraft and engines originating from those factories he had once owned.

The Stuka in Secrecy

In 1933, almost as soon as the Nazis had seized control of Junkers’ holdings, a requisition for a dive bomber was issued. Hermann Pohlmann set to work on what would become that dive bomber.

The design was simple to the point of being crude, but that was in fitting with Pohlmann’s own design philosophy of what a dive bomber should be.

Construction of components for the new aircraft prototype was carried out in secrecy by AB Flygindustri in Sweden, a company formerly held by Junkers, with the intent to ship the completed components to Germany for assembly and maiden flight there.

The Stuka Stammers

The Stuka did not immediately impress the powers that be. The primary problem was noted before the machine ever took to the air; a British engine, the Rolls Royce Kestrel had been chosen for it. Surely, such a clearly military design should not be allowed to rely on a foreign engine if suitable domestic alternatives exist.

That in early 1936 a Kestrel powered Stuka prototype crashed, killing both crew members, did little to bolster support for continuing development of the aircraft.
Following the crash, several changes were made to the design including the DB600 engine as an interim powerplant while waiting for the Jumo 210, which would eventually be fitted to the second prototype.

Laying Low

A few workers who had been loyal to Hugo Junkers and his personal politics had managed to convincingly hide their true leanings under a veneer of false loyalty to Nazism. They went through the motions, but knew they were always at risk of being found out.

Knowing full well what the new aircraft was intended for and that Hugo Junkers would turn in his grave at the thoguht of having anything of the sort bear his name, they decided to make their move in late April.

They had managed to secure a set of older blueprints for the aircraft with the DB600 installed and passage for themselves to France, with the intent of arranging transport to South America from there.

The priority was to get the blueprints out of Germany as quickly as they could. Though slightly outdated, those blueprints would be noticed if they went missing and a very unwelcome investigation would most certainly ensue.

In early May, two of the workers quietly made their way to France with the blueprints. The plan was for the remaining members of the group to join them there after the rest of the plan had been carried out.

Approximately a week after the blueprints were safely in France, a hangar near Dresden where the Stuka prototype with the Jumo engine installed was being kept erupted in flames in the middle of the night. The flames were of such an intensity that firefighters could only stand by helplessly and let the fire burn itself out.

The next morning, there was nothing left to salvage. The Stuka prototype was a ruin. Shortly after the fire, the Stuka was formally cancelled and resources put towards Heinkel designs to fulfil the dive bomber requirement.

Convergence

The Junkers workers had agreed to meet in the port city of Lorient; the two that travelled ahead had arrived there without incident. 

The remaining members of the group chose to travel separtately to increase their chances of survival. The investigation had begun nearly as soon as the flames of the fire that had killed the Stuka had burned themselves out.  Accusations and insinuations were flying everywhere; names were mentioned and photographs were posted at all police offices, train stations and border crossings.

Of the four who had remained in Germany, only two made it to France. The other two were captured and executed.

By late may, the four former Junkers workers and Stuka blueprints were on board a French ship destined to Buenos Aires, Argentina.


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Offline GTX_Admin

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Re: Stealing the Stuka
« Reply #1 on: June 12, 2012, 02:05:27 AM »
Ok, you have piqued my interest...
All hail the God of Frustration!!!

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Offline apophenia

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Re: Stealing the Stuka
« Reply #2 on: June 13, 2012, 06:55:20 AM »
I like where this is going 'north  ;)
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Offline upnorth

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Re: Stealing the Stuka
« Reply #3 on: June 13, 2012, 01:07:54 PM »
Thanks guys. Hopefully I'll have time for at least one more installment before I go on holidays next week.
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Offline upnorth

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Re: Stealing the Stuka
« Reply #4 on: June 14, 2012, 03:50:36 PM »
Preparing the Presentation

Argentina, like so many other countries, had been hit hard by the Great Depression of the 1930s. Foreign investment was down as was productivity in most inustrial sectors. This in turn created high unemployment, general unrest among the populace and a migration of people from the countryside to the cities in search of work.

The former Junkers employees sat in their Buenos Aries hotel room, looking at the blueprints again and again, knowing full well that an economically suffering nation that wasn’t really at war with anyone was not the nation to be trying to sell a dive bomber design to. This, however, they did not see as a tremendous obstacle. They already had in mind a plan to refine the design to give it smoother lines, retractable landing gear and so forth; they simply needed to give it a new application from the original dive bomber specification.

Ideas flowed between the men for several days about not only how to refine the design itself, but also what other applications it could be tailored to. True to Hugo Junkers’ ideals of pacifism and socialism; ideas of how to make the design attractive to the civil sector were persued most strongly.

The Results

After several weeks  and many sleepless nights, the men had a series of sketches and myriad notes outlining refinements and alterations to the design.

The most basic of the concepts was of an agricultural aircraft with the forward cockpit given to a hopper for the spray gear with the rear cockpit section fitted out for a single pilot. Fixed landing gear was retained, but much lightened in design and without spats.

The second concept was for a two place sport aircraft with a revised canopy of much reduced framing and a much more refined wing that made the control surfaces integral with the trailing edge of the wing rather than crudely bolted onto it. The wings were also somewhat shortened and given wider chord towards the tips on the premise that it would give the aircraft greater manuverability and a possible aerobatic aspect.  The new wing retained the gull planform, but had a much smoother bend in it than the original. Retractable main landing gear was also part of the design.

Not to completely ignore the military option, the sport variant was slightly reworked to be presented as a military trainer. The primary external difference was a slightly raised rear cockpit section to give the instructor a better view of what the student was doing.

All three concepts saw all the armor and combat gear stripped from the design and a tremendous weight savings as a result.

With the French Hispano-Suiza 12Y engine proposed as the powerplant for all three variants; the men prepared to present it to various Argentine government deparments in the hopes that it would garner enough interest to at least get a prototype of one of the proposals approved, not to mention access to the FMA facilities in Cordoba where a proper set of blueprints could be drawn up from the sketches and a protoype could be built.

A Hard Sell

The former Junkers men approached the government formally with their proposals a few months after arriving in Argentina. The response was rather lukewarm to begin with.

The agriculture ministry was completely uninterested in the cropduster proposal. With as many people moving from the countryside to the cities as there were, there were a lot of abandoned farms that didn’t require spraying anymore.

The military was also not immediately interested as a domestically produced trainer had been introduced to service only two years prior and was meeting the training needs of the military quite well.

The ministry of transport was somewhat more supportive of the sport aircraft concept. They agreed to give the project a grant for a protoytpe on the condition that it could also be used successfully as a tug for sailplanes.

Unexpectedly, the natural resources ministry expressed interest in the aircraft and questioned the men extensively on the potential of the aircraft as a survey and photographic platform primarily for monitoring the forestry and fishing industries.

The men, rather taken by surprise by the unexpected interest in the aircraft in such an application, said they didn’t see how it wouldn’t work and that they would prepare a reworked concept to present.

After three sleepless nights, the men had come up with a concept of an aircraft that had a wingspan a bit longer than the original Stuka design, but incorporated all the wing refinements they had since made. The reduced frame two place canopy was retained and the rear cockpit could be adapted for aerial photography missions that needed only the pilot or more advanced survey missons that required an extra crew member to monitor equipment.

The Big Pitch

Approximately a week after their initial presentations to the government, the men returned with their revised concept for the aerial survey platform.

After another week of nervous waiting while the government made a decision on it, the men were informed that the concept was successful in getting a grant for a single prototype and permission was granted to use FMA’s facilities to blueprint and build it.

The grant, however, left little room for any extras in the prototype and little room for any errors in it. It granted them exactly six months of access to FMA’s facilities to get the design finalised and a flyable prototype built and prepared for official presentation.

The men were on their way to Cordoba and to a very mixed welcome when they arrived.
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Offline upnorth

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Re: Stealing the Stuka
« Reply #5 on: June 16, 2012, 03:43:06 PM »
Setting Up

The initial welcome of the former Junkers men to FMA was a genuinely warm one. The executive levels of the company were happy at the prospect of a potentially new aircraft to keep the factory going and people employed.

They were given generous access to drafting facilities and all other personel and machinery required to produce the prototype.

They were, however, also given a supervisor. The supervisor was a fellow German and a former engineer of Dornier; He was also very cold to the idea of having anything to do with the aircraft as soon as he was presented with the old Stuka blueprints and the sketches for refinements the other men had made.

The man was philosophically in complete disagreement with Hitler but still loved his homeland; he chose to leave Germany rather than be associated with the one Hitler was creating.

He had been emensely happy at the news of the Stuka prototype being destroyed and the whole program cancelled. One less tool for Hitler to use to bring others to their knees could only be a good thing. Seeing evidence that the aircraft had survived in any form made his heart sink.

Knowing full well what the original design was for, he was not in any way comforted by civilian adaptations to the design; it would always be the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing in his eyes. “It’s killer, plain and simple! You can’t civilize a killer!” was his frequent refrain.

Initially refusing to supervise the project, the man relucatntly accepted when faced with being terminated from FMA entirely. He was no Nazi, but he was also no Socialist; in the bigger picture he knew the company needed to keep producing, people needed to be kept working and profits had to be made.

At a more personal level, he knew that he was as much a disident as the Stuka was a killer. He was in Argentina as a guest and couldn’t risk doing anything to wear out his welcome. While his engineering expertise was quite valuable, it in no way made him indispensible. He’d be a dead man if he was ever deported to Hitler’s Germany; of that he was all too aware.
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Re: Stealing the Stuka
« Reply #6 on: June 17, 2012, 04:47:42 AM »
Keep it coming...I hope there are also some pictures soon to illustrate this story!!!
All hail the God of Frustration!!!

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Offline upnorth

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Re: Stealing the Stuka
« Reply #7 on: June 17, 2012, 03:00:24 PM »
After my holidays I might sit down with my sketchbook and draw a few out and post them here. My computer can't handle the drawing gear that Apophenia and some of the other profilers have .
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Offline upnorth

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Re: Stealing the Stuka
« Reply #8 on: June 17, 2012, 08:01:34 PM »
Stuka Solution

As July 1936 drew to a close and the five men began their work on the refined civilian Stuka, which had tentatively been given the project name “Garza”; the Spanish term for heron; Germany was busy continuing it’s pursuit of a dive bomber.

What funding had been earmarked for the Junkers machine had been reassigned to the Heinkel He-118 dive bomber project. The Heinkel machine was left wanting in various aspects, not the least of which was its relatively shallow maximum dive angle for the dive bombing mission.

While the RLM were nonplussed by the He-118 in test flights, a japanese trade envoy who was on hand to witness them did see a great deal of potential in the aircraft as a means to build the strength of the imperial Japanese army and naval air arms. After brief negotiations the purchase of two He-118 airframes for further evaluation in Japan was completed.

With respect to the company’s existing cooperation with Heinkel, responsibility for the assembly and flying of the He-118 in Japan was placed in the hands of Aichi.

Yes and No

Aichi test pilots were generaly pleased with the He-118’s handling; army and naval pilots felt much the same way. The Admiralty and high brass of the army were more or less impressed with all but one thing, the inline engine. Japanese maintenance crews were much better versed on radial engines than inline and the Japanese maintenance infrastructure network for aero engines was build with radial engines primarily in mind.

Aichi was ordered to modify the He-118 to fly with an existing Japanese radial engine and prepare to display the type again. In October 1936, Aichi unveiled a modified He-118 married to a Mitsubishi Kinsei 44 radial engine. The display went well until the aircraft bounched on landing and went off the side of the runway and was heavily damaged.

While the aircraft was being modified to take the radial engne, German military attaches had told the higher echelons of the Japanese military of the aircraft’s intended purpose as a dive bomber. The Admiralty were not the least bit impressed that Aichi had not mentioned that aspect of the aircraft to them. That, combined with the landing incident, was enough for Aichi to be relieved of the project. Before October was over, anything to do with the aircraft was the responsibility of Yoksuka.

Yokosuka was ordered to keep the Mitsubishi engine, but modify the rest of the aircraft as required to make it fit the dive bomber mission. They were given until January of 1937 to produce a flyable prototype.

The list of alterations Yokosuka had planned for the He-118 design rivaled, and in ways exceded, the refinements planned for the Stuka’s Argentine progeny.

A Cut of the Pie

Germany and Heinkel were taken aback by what had transpired with the He-118 in Japan. It was still a Heinkel aircraft and they did not wish to lose complete control over it.

Germany was impressed at the marriage of the aircraft to a radial engine and Heinkel engineers found several of Yokosuka’s ideas for modifications to the design intriguing and worthy of merit.

With nothing better on the near horizon for a dive bomber in Germany; the RLM and Heinkel proposed a full joint project with Yokosuka which would give Japanese engineers full access to Heinkel advisors and design specifications. In turn, the cooperation would give Germany it’s much wanted dive bomber.

The German/Japanese team began working furiously on the project. January 1937 was not far off.
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Offline apophenia

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Re: Stealing the Stuka
« Reply #9 on: June 18, 2012, 11:49:25 AM »
Great stuff 'north. Keep 'er coming!

I've spun off from your description of the early work - I love unbuilt projects  ;)
http://beyondthesprues.com/Forum/index.php?topic=351.msg20279#msg20279
« Last Edit: June 18, 2012, 11:53:15 AM by apophenia »
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Offline upnorth

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Re: Stealing the Stuka
« Reply #10 on: June 18, 2012, 12:12:35 PM »
Those are fantastic as always, Apohpenia! :)
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Offline upnorth

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Re: Stealing the Stuka
« Reply #11 on: June 20, 2012, 02:58:13 AM »
OK folks, I'm going on a couple of weeks of holidays so won't be updating this for a bit. Stay tuned though, I did at least get a start on the next section.
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Offline upnorth

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Re: Stealing the Stuka
« Reply #12 on: July 20, 2012, 04:54:27 PM »
Working in the Shadows

The German team working on the Garza project was, as much as possible, working under a veil of secrecy. Not so much because their aircraft was worthy of great secrecy, but more because 1930s Argentina was a very unpredicable place to be Socially and politically.

The 1930s in Argentina were marked by rampant political corruption scandals, including electoral fraud, and questionable political decisions and policies. Historically, this period became known as the “Infamous Decade”. The only certainty seemed to be that the successive governments were maintaining diplomatic ties to Germany, though this created other risks at the social level.

Since the late 1800s, Argentina had seen several waves of European immigrants which included many Germans. While the good diplomatic ties between Argentina and Germany had made it relatively easy for the former Junkers men and their former Dornier supervisor to enter and settle in Argentina, those same ties also made it quite easy for Germans loyal to Hitler and his ideals to enter the country and quietly keep watch over activities of German people in the country.

That Hitler, Goring and several others directly connected to the rebuilding of Germany’s military might were still publicly fuming over the loss of the Stuka in spite of the recently established cooperation with Japan in developing a new dive bomber was a constant point of concern for the Garza team and enough of a reason to keep a low profile about their work and a tight lip when associating with other Germans they encountered in Argentina.

In October 1936, with the official formation of the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis; the Garza team’s concern turned to outright alarm. They pleaded for, and received the highest level of secrecy for their project that FMA could provide. Additionally, it was requested than no new workers be brought into the Garza project, particularly Germans, and that those currently involved be held to the highest levels of confidentiality.

Taking Shape

Early November saw the joining of the revised Stuka fuselage and wing at FMA. The engine had yet to be installed, but the aircraft was ready for testing of the new control surfaces and retracting landing gear.

While many fuselage refinements had been made to the cockpit area, the tail of the aircraft remained mostly unchanged from the original Stuka blueprints. The only revision to the tail unit at the prototype stage was the removal of the external braces for the horizontal stabilizers in favour of some crude but effective internal bracing. Much more extensive revisions to the tail unit had been planned, but the tight deadline for a flyable prototype and higher priority on the new wing design and engine instalation meant that certain refinements would have to wait until after the first prototype had flown.

The full canopy revisions would also have to wait until after the initial flight. A canopy with reduced framing had been designed and made, but it still had more framing than the engineers wanted. It would have to do for the prototype.

By the end of November, testing of the new wing control surfaces and internal tail bracing had been completed with satisfactory results. However, the retracting landing gear was proving rather problematic. The gears themselves retracted with no problems, but the larger gear doors were quite unpredicatable in both opening and closing completely if at all.

With the deadline clearly in mind, it was quickly decided to remove the larger gear doors and leave the wheels exposed when retracted. Further work on the gear doors was clearly one more thing that would have to wait until after the first flight.

A note in the journal of one of the former Junkers workers is rather telling of the general attitude towards the Garza:

“Frankly, we had hoped for something a bit more graceful even at the prototype stage. We’re very optimistic that we will have a flyable prototype for January; though it is quite clear that, like it’s progenitor, the Garza will not escape a certain degree of crudeness at least at the prototype stage.”

December saw the Engine mounted and successfully run. Taxi trials at early dawn, away from prying eyes, were very satisfactory. The first flight, albeit short, was also at early dawn away from urban areas. In the words of the test pilot:

“Overall, it was a good flight. It’s a solid and stable machine and should be even better when they make the revisions to the tail unit, which I know they’re planning.”

All looked well for the Garza as the prototype went to the paint shop for a smart looking overall red paint scheme with some white trim.

The Pride of the Axis?

The Heinkel/Yokosuka team, working to a near identical deadline as the Garza team was. However, while their efforts were as secretive as the Garza team’s, they were much better funded as the Axis insured money from both Germany and Japan would feed their project well.

Very early on, it was determined that the aircraft would carry it’s bombload completely internally and would have a radial engine. From there, much else would change.

Germany took a “Pride of the Axis” point of view to the project and envisioned it being used in large numbers as a projection of power. Japan, on the other hand, saw it more as “Pride of the Fleet” being as how the primary user, as far as Japan was concerned, would be the Imperial Japanese Navy. At this, Yokosuka’s determination that the entire design be reduced in size enough to ensure it would fit on a carrier was the driving force behind many of the other changes in the aircraft. With the Japanese government standing in support of Yokosuka, the Germans did not argue the reduction in the aircraft’s size.

Germany also did not argue the demand that the prototype must incorporate operable folding wings and tailhook despite the fact they would have no need of such things in their own versions of the type. With both Germany and Japan demanding their dive bomber in short order, there was no time to argue over such things.

The eliptical planform of the wing and tail surfaces that was so typical of the Heinkel design philosophy was retained in the new aircraft the only difference being that the gull wing of the He-118 was changed to a straight wing. This change was made to accommodate a simpler but stronger landing gear unit design more suitable to carrier operations.

The aft fuselage was deepened to accommodate a somewhat larger weapons bay and the structural strengthening to support carrier launch and recovery related gear.

The work on the new aircraft was relentless at the Yokosuka factory. They had received responsibility for the aircraft in October of 1936 with a flyable prototype demanded for January of 1937; such constraints of time required a shift system to cover all 24 hours of the day to ensure work would not stop on the project until the prototype was ready to fly. Many years later, a former Yokosuka factory worker said this of the system:

“It was complete maddness in the minds of most of us, but we didn’t dare object or protest; you simply didn’t say no to those in power in imperial Japan.

My first child had been born shortly before Yokosuka was assigned that aircraft as a project; I was there to see her born in late September and then I rarely saw her or my wife again until after the prototype had flown in mid January. I missed the first few months of my daughter’s life because the empire decided that an unproven military aircraft being developed when we were not officially at war with anyone was more important.

As I said, you simply didn’t say no to the empire. Even the highest men in our company didn’t dare to say no.”

The Heinkel/Yokosuka aircraft took to the air for the first time in mid December and was quite ready for the official January presentation.

The aircraft was, for Japanese purposes, given the name D4Y “Suisei”. The prototype so impressed German officials who were on hand for the official first flight that Heinkel was immediately ordered to make a land based prototype with the naval equipment stripped and a German engine installed.

By July of 1937, the He-130 “Komet” took to the air over Heinkel headquarters at Rostock under the power of a Jumo 211 inline engine. The Heinkel variation impressed the RLM and was ordered into production.

While externally very similar, the removal of the naval equipment allowed Heinkel to give the He-130 a decided advantage over it’s Yokosuka sister internally. Where Yokosuka had eschewed armor in order to accommodate the weight of carrier gear and still maintain performance, Heinkel put the weight savings towards armour and self sealing fuel tanks.
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Offline upnorth

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Re: Stealing the Stuka
« Reply #13 on: July 21, 2012, 03:55:13 AM »
Here's a sketch I did tonight showing the Garza as it appeared on it's December 1936 maiden flight, prior to receiving the red and white scheme for the official unveiling and presentation flight.



The canopy was provisional for the prototype with only the front section sliding. As there was no need of a second crew member in the initial prototype flights, the rear section was fixed and the rear cockpit was occupied by flight monitoring gear or a counterweight.

The prototype Garza also had a chin radiator in place as the wing radiators planned for production variants were still in development. For appearances, the prototype did have mock ups of the wing radiators built into the prototype.

Also visible is the lack of external bracing for the horizontal tail surfaces and the somewhat extended wingspan of the Garza.

« Last Edit: January 10, 2020, 12:48:16 AM by upnorth »
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Offline upnorth

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Re: Stealing the Stuka
« Reply #14 on: July 26, 2012, 06:37:51 PM »
Garza Aloft

The prototype Garza stood ready for presentation on the runway of a remote airfield. Highly polished and resplendent in it’s red and white scheme with the Argentine flag proudly diplayed on it’s tailfin. It was the second week of January 1937, the morning sun was shining and the same pilot who had taken the Garza on her maiden flight in December was more than ready to show the machine off.

The first week of January had been spent dismantling the Garza and moving it by rail from the FMA factory in Cordoba to this isolated airfield in the neighboring state of La Pampa, reassembling it and taking the subsequent shakedown flights.

It was a minimally staffed airfield that could be secured with relative ease, that it also took some effort to reach by any other means than air transport would keep prying eyes to a minimum. Hardly the place one would envision for the presentation of a prototype aircraft, but certainly it served the purpose.

As the last of the official guests to the event took their seats, the Garza’s engine roared to life. The pilot opened the throttle and began the takeoff roll. The aircraft’s extended wings gracefully lifted it from the ground in a distance that was remarkably short for an aircraft of the Garza’s size.

The Garza showed itself to have very impressive climbing abilities and to be able to hold very stable in the air despite some turbulance and updrafts. As the aircraft was intended as an observation platform, the rear cockpit had a camera installed for the flight and a series of photos were taken of various geographic features in the area.

As the aircraft touched down and was presented for closer inspection, the film from the camera was quickly taken away for processing. The resultant photos were of a very high standard for the day and showed great clarity. The Garza had definitely proved itself to have potential as an aerial photography platform.

The day ended with everyone in good spirits. A few days later, a generous grant was officially provided to further develop the garza into more refined pre production versions to further explore it’s potential in observation and photography roles.

A second, smaller grant had come from the Ministry of Transport to finance the development of a sport plane/glider tug variation of the Garza. This was a surprise as the transport ministry had fallen silent on the subject of the Garza shortly after the initial presentations of concept drawings had taken place.

With the interests of two government ministries behind them, the Garza team set to work on refining the design with a new vigor in spite of the high secrecy that surrounded them and their project.

The Garza Continues

Refining the Garza started exactly where the prototype work had stopped. The fuselage and wings required no further work; all efforts focused on reworking the tail unit, the new canopy and making the landing gear doors work relaibly.

Work went on at an even but efficient pace with a variety of small scale wind tunnel models being built, tested, reworked and retested or discarded outright.

While the fuselage did not require much refinement aerodynamically, it was not built for speed after all, the rear cockpit was restructured to accommodate camera ports and mountings in the fuselage. The photos taken during the prototype flight had been taken directly through the canopy glass. As good as those photos were, better could be achieved.

By late April, two new fuselages were nearing completion and being prepared for connection to their completed wing sections. Both fuselages had the camera modifications to the rear cockpits, but each had slightly different tail units. The team had come down to two tail units that seemed to work particularly well in wind tunnel tests and the time had come to build them at full scale and test them in the air.

Both new wings had fully retractable landing gear with landing gear doors that did finally work reliably in tests.

The canopy, however, was creating problems as the Garza team wanted a very refined shape that seemed all but impossible to achieve without more framing than they were willing to accept to stabilise it.

While the new tail and landing gear arrangements were near ready for testing, it appeared as though the prototype canopy design would have to be kept a while longer.

Tapaculo

While the refinements to take the Garza from prototype to pre production machines were clear and straight forward; modifyng it from the observation and photography roles to a sport plane with glider tug abilities, would takea good deal more work.

The new variant was given the name Tapaculo, after a small bird quite common in South and Central America.

The first consideration was in regards to who would be using the aircraft. While the Garza operations would be overseen directly by the government and be serviced by an infrastucture befitting that; the Tapaculo would be operated by a wide array of civilians with quite possibly much more limited resources to service and maintain the aircraft. The Tapaculo would have to be a simpler machine than the Garza.

With the list of simplifications becoming longer, the Tapaculo’s development was markedly slower than that of the refined Garza. However, that slowness worked to the Tapaculo’s advantage as it was able to benefit from work being done on the Garza.

The most notable feature of the Tapaculo was it’s shorter wings with constant chord. The wings were designed to get maximum lift from a relatively short span. The wings also included fixed landing gear, partly for ease of maintenance and partly as a safeguard against lesser experienced pilots making accidental wheels up landings.

The Tapaculo benefited mostly from the Garza around the tail unit. Several of the tail units that were tried on wind tunnel models of the Graza were retried on models of the Tapaculo, some with positive results. The most promising was ultimately chosen for the Tapaculo prototype.

The biggest hurdle in developing the Tapaculo was chosing an engine. It was decided quite early on to explore radial engine options for simplicity and durability in a wider range of operating situations.

Eventually, an Armstrong Siddeley Cheetah VI was located and chosen for the prototype.
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Offline apophenia

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Re: Stealing the Stuka
« Reply #15 on: July 27, 2012, 07:08:23 AM »
Great stuff 'north! Keep 'er coming  :)

Love the Garza sketch too. I'm not sure about not needing a second crew member on the first flight though. In 1937, the "flight monitoring gear" was probably an engineer -- no comments on the "counterweight" though   ;D
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Offline upnorth

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Re: Stealing the Stuka
« Reply #16 on: July 27, 2012, 01:13:26 PM »
Glad you're still following along and enjoying.

Your right, of course. I forgot 1937 was before black boxes and other automated flight monitoring and recording gear.

As for the counterweight, that was just something that hit me as a feature to push home the point that the development had been a bit rushed and the prototype wasn't quite perfect in all ways. ;D
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Offline upnorth

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Re: Stealing the Stuka
« Reply #17 on: August 04, 2012, 03:19:56 PM »
Here's the second pre-production Garza aircraft during camera placement testing. you can see one of the camera ports just aft of the cockpit and wing trailing edge:



The first and second pre-production machines flew with different tail designs so the designs could be tested concurrently. Subsequently, both machines were fitted with the preferred tail design and testing for camera placements and supporting structures commenced.

The pre-production Garza models had smoother nose profiles than the prototype as the wing radiators were fully functional by the time they flew so the boxy nose radiator could be done away with.
« Last Edit: January 10, 2020, 12:49:08 AM by upnorth »
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Offline apophenia

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Re: Stealing the Stuka
« Reply #18 on: August 07, 2012, 11:52:45 AM »
That's shaping up nicely ... I especially like the new tail  :)
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Offline upnorth

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Re: Stealing the Stuka
« Reply #19 on: August 07, 2012, 09:42:27 PM »
Bird Spotting

Spring and Summer of 1937 passed uneventfully for the Garza team. Their time taken up by testing of tail arrangements and camera placements on the pre production aircraft. Towards the end of August, they felt they had the best mix of features in the second pre production machine and sought approval for an initial production batch. The approval was painfully slow in coming.

In early August, a photograph of the first pre production Garza in full flight had found it’s way to the German Embassy in Buenos Aires. Initially, nobody took much notice of the photo. It was simply an aircraft to most who looked at it; a hastily scrawled note on the back of the photo made it to the attention of the military attache.

When the attache returned to his office to find the photo on his desk, he initially put it to one side without so much as a glance and proceded with his other paperwork of the day. Later, as his work day was coming to an end, he took the time to look at the photo. There was something familiar about the aircraft, but he couldn’t put his finger on it; deciding the matter could wait, he set the photo down and went home.

As he was finishing dinner at home, he realised that the aircraft in the picture was very much like the Stuka design which had been lost in the hangar fire. While the hangar fire had been proven an arson attack, the matter had officially been closed when the Stuka was cancelled.

Consumed to the point of sleeplessness by the ramifications of the Stuka design not simply being destroyed, but rather stolen and used for the basis of another design; the attache raced to his office in the middle of the night. People would just be arriving at work in Germany; he picked up the reciever of his telephone and placed a call to Berlin.

Approximatly an hour later, the German Ambassador arrived at the office disheveled and clearly stressed; Berlin hadn’t waited until he was in his office to call him. He told the attache to keep the photo under lock and key and to find out everything he could about the aircraft in the photo.

An envoy from the RLM had been dispached and would be in Argentina within the next 48 hours.
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Offline upnorth

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Re: Stealing the Stuka
« Reply #20 on: August 11, 2012, 07:05:05 AM »
The Wait

As the dawn light trickled into the German Embassy and the work day began, preparations were being made to provide the RLM team with office space during their visit. Many phone calls were also being made to the Argentine government, particularly the Ministry of Transport and aviation authority offices.

Almost as soon as calls from the embassy to the government were completed, calls were made from the government to FMA headquarters in Cordoba with news that the RLM team would most certainly want to pay them a visit in the course of the investigation.

Initially, FMA executives insisted that they were under no obligation to allow the RLM team onto company property or give them access to anything regarding company projects. The RLM had no jurisdiction in Argentina, why should they be bowed down to all?

As FMA was a state owned company, the executive were over ruled by the government. It was decided, in the interest of maintaining diplomatic ties and giving reasons for the RLM team to keep their impending visit as brief as possible, to not pretend that the aircraft didn’t exist. However, it was also decided to create the image that the aircraft was a relatively new development of Argentine origins.

It was decided to present the first pre production machine as the prototype to the RLM and keep only documents and toolings specific to that aircraft at the Cordoba site; everything else Garza or Tapaculo related would be quickly and quietly moved by rail to the La Pampa airfield where the Garza prototype and second pre production machine were already hangared.

Fortunately, due to the insistence of the former Dornier and Junkers men that no other Germans but themselves were to work on the Garza, there were enough Argentine personnel high enough up in the project capable of explaining it to the RLM that the German members of the team could go to La Pampa with everything else until the RLM left.

Opening Doors and Putting up Walls

The RLM contingient arrived at the German Embassy from Buenos Aries airport armed with blueprints and photographs of the Ju-87 Stuka prototypes for comparison to the Garza and were eager to talk to Argentine government officials as soon as they had settled into their temporary office.

The representatives of the Ministry of Transport were very cordial to their RLM guests in spite of the latter’s thinly veiled accusations that the Garza design was taken from the Stuka and thus it could be construed as an unauthorised development which the RLM felt it was well within its rights to demand be halted.

The ministry provided the RLM representatives with a much abridged version of the Garza project documentation that outlined nothing more than the request for and approval of a single prototype machine.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and their involvement and interest in the aircraft were never mentioned to the RLM. Betting that the RLM would never suspect that ministry to be involved, any documentation that could have tipped them off to more than just a prototype machine existing had been temporarily transferred there from the transport department.

On to Cordoba

At the invitation of the Transport Minister, the RLM men were taken to the FMA factory in Cordoba for a viewing of the “prototype” Garza. After a short briefing, they were taken to the section of the factory floor allocated to the project to inspect the aircraft, it’s blueprints and related toolings and jigs.

They stayed in Cordoba for two days and exhaustively compared the Garza blueprints to those of the Stuka in minute detail. On balance, they found enough similarities to be suspicious but enough differences that the similarities could almost be dismissed as coincidental.

As they prepared to conclude their business at Cordoba, one of the investigators suggested that the aircraft they had just finished inspecting looked particularly well refined for what was ostensibly a “prototype” and that the team should dig deeper. The note on the back of the Garza photograph  stated that the aircraft had been flying over La Pampa when the photo was taken; the photo, however, showed the aircraft against a solidly sky background. It contained no landmarks to betray the aircraft’s exact wherabouts at the time.

Questions were asked in regards to which airfields in La Pampa the Garza could reach from Cordoba. The small field where the bulk of the Garza was being hidden was mentioned; however, it was described by FMA people and the transport ministry as a private airstrip where the owner was quite unwelcoming to outsiders.

With other pressing matters back in Germany and a looming deadline for completion of the investigation, the RLM team decided to close their investigation with an unsatisfying result of “inconclusive” and not bother looking into La Pampa airfields any further.

A retired RLM official who had been involved in the investigation said this of it years later:

“Broadly speaking, the whole thing was a waste of time. The Ju-87 was dead and, in the He-130, we had an aircraft that could fill the Stuka’s void and more. Our time would have been better spend staying in Germany and preparing the first production run of He-130s for the training unit and preparing more for use by the Condor Legion in Spain.

From the very beginning of the investigation, we felt as though we were simply going through the motions. We were given a ridiculously short time to conduct the investigation, which indicated to me that even those further up in the RLM were sceptical of it’s actual usefulness.

Hitler and Goring never really warmed up to the He-130, perhaps because it wasn’t wholly German in design. They were still sore about the loss of the Stuka and when the Garza photo came to light, it was like picking at their wounds.

I suppose, ultimately, the investigation was simply ordered to quell their anger somewhat and give the appearance that something was being done. It was a nice holiday in Argentina if nothing else.”

Garza Go Ahead

Almost as soon as the RLM’s plane to Germany departed Argentina in late August, production for the first batch of Garzas was approved.

Soon after the production line opened, FMA was visited by representatives of the Ministry of Transport as well as the military. A prototype for a third variant was ordered.
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Offline upnorth

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Re: Stealing the Stuka
« Reply #21 on: August 17, 2012, 06:56:48 PM »
Full Circle

“It’s a killer, plain and simple! You can’t civilize a killer!”

The well known words of the former Dornier man turned supervisor to the Garza program hung in the air of FMA boardrooms through early September as the military representatives who had ordered a prototype for a third variation on the aircraft briefed the FMA executive and the Garza team on exactly what they wanted in the new version.

As the list of clearly military requirements was given, the hearts of the former Dornier and Jukers men sank. Along with machine guns, higher speed and armor; there was also the requirement that the new variant be capapble of carrying a variety of bombs and possibly a torpedo.

A flyable prototype was deemed as urgent by the military, and the Argentine government in general. A deadline of December 31, 1937 was put on the new prototype and any further development on the Tapaculo variant was to be completely suspended until further notice.

The urgency of the armed version was explained partly by the military and partly the security ministry. There was a growing number of complaints from citizens of German descent, primarily in the Buenos Aires, Cordoba and Entre Rios provinces, of being approached and offered quite substantial rewards for reporting anything they heard or otherwise witnessed that could lead to conclusive proof of the Garza, or any other industrial development currently going on in Argentina, being stolen from German plans.

A former Security Ministry official explained the situation:

“We had learned, from several local and provincial police forces, that several Argentine citizens of German heritage had reported offers of bribes to be informants to the German Embassy regarding technological and industrial developments in the country.

Fortunately, ethics seemed to be winning out in the case of most people. Some of the bribes offered were very handsome sums that would have been very difficult to refuse. While many of them were certainly proud of their German roots, just as many were a generation or more departed from Germany itself and had only known Argentina as home and weren’t keen to betray it.

It became a much more convoluted matter when those same people started giving names of people they claimed to know had taken bribes. The whole situation created a great deal of divisiveness in German-Argentine communities and street fights and other altercations were becoming more common as more accusations of bribe taking were made. Local and provincial police forces had their hands full investigating constant vandalism, arson, fights and so forth. The military was brought in to assist when it was felt that full scale rioting was becoming a very real future possibility.

While the help of the army on the ground was quite a useful deterent to any serious escalations of such activities, it was felt by the military that the extra dimension of an armed aerial presence over those areas would be prudent.

As my ministry would soon be very busy investigating the German Embassy regarding the origins of those offering bribes, we couldn’t disagree with the military that anything extra that could be done to keep tensions in those communities from increasing further should be done.”

It was the beginning of a rapid degradation of the good relations that Argentina and Germany had held for so long.


Yarara

With the first batch of Garzas under construction and the Tapaculo suspended, the German members of the project dedicated their time to planning the armed variation. They had accepted that their aircraft would inherit a certain crudeness in its lines regardless of how they tried to refine it; now they had to resign themselves to letting the aircraft inherit its legacy of an attack aircraft.

The Yarara, as the new variation would become known, took it’s name from a species of pit viper found in the north of the country.

In the interest of expediency, they decided to use the Garza’s fuselage with as few modifications as possible. They had already treated the wing as a modular aspect to the design so that the wing attachment area was common between the Garza and Tapaculo. In this fashion, the Yarara’s wing would also be treated as modular to negate any redesign in the wing root area.

The Yarara, at its heart, was a hybrid of the Garza and Tapaculo. While the fuselage would clearly be from the Garza, the wing would owe much more to the Tapaculo with its short span and wider chord. The only aspects of the Garza that were evident in the wing were the retracting landing gear and wing radiators, both had been designed out of the Tapaculo wing, but were incorporated into the finalised Yarara wing with little difficulty.

In the end, the Yarara’s wing span was something between the Tapaculo’s and Garza’s and while the Tapaculo had constant chord wings, the Yarara wing had a modest forward taper to the trailing edge.

As the Yarara would be expected to have an observational capability, the two place cockpit was retained as was the accomodation aft of the wing root for camera placements. In missions where the second crew member wasn’t required, the rear cockpit could be quickly converted to hold an additional fuel tank.

The Yarara wing had a weapons station on either side of the fuselage roughly midway between the fuselage and the landing gear. Outboard of the landing gear were the gun bays which were designed to house three Browning .50 calibre machine guns or two Hispano-Suiza HS.7 20mm guns per wing.

In the spirit of Stuka crudeness, the centreline torpedo mounting brackets and associated gear were simple bolt on affairs that could be installed or removed with relative ease depending on the mission.

The Yarara prototype was fitted with a new version of the 12Y engine, which was now being built domestically by Hispano-Argentina, which introduced a locally developed supercharger that was a marked improvement over the original Hispano-Suiza unit.

The Yarara prototype made its impressive first flight on time and was approved for production very quickly without any request for pre production machines. For the military and security ministry, the presence of the aircraft was initially of much more importance than anything else.

Heir to Darkness, Bringer of Light

“We were proud of the Garza and had great hopes for the Tapaculo, but the Yarara was no point of pride for us. The risks we had taken to remove the original design from Germany, the efforts we had gone to in order to see something more honorable in the design than a tool of oppression and invasion seemed to have been for nothing everytime we looked at the Yarara with its guns and weapons pylons sticking out of it. The predator that the Stuka had been was coming to the surface again.

It was also a symbol to us personally of how trapped we had become in it all. We should have liked to walk away from the whole matter when the Yarara was ordered, but throught the Garza and Tapaculo, we were too deeply in by then. We were still foreigners in the country and we were wanted men in Germany, we couldn’t risk doing anything that would see us deported.

Worse yet, was the news that was coming from Spain in Autumn of 1937. The Heinkel He-130 had started being used to bomb several cities and towns in the civil war that was happening there. We knew that Germany would find something to fill the gap of the Stuka, we didn’t think they’d have it so quickly though.”

Those words of one of the former Junkers men were published in a retrospective book of the Garza family of aircraft, its development and service which was published some years after the last aircraft type descended from that line had been retired from service.

While perhaps they coud not stop their project from returning to its combat aircraft roots, what they could not deny in all their pessimism was that the project was a very positive thing for Argentina.

The project had created several jobs, not only at FMA but also at Hispano-Argentina; where, with the exception of the engines used for the Garza prototype and pre production machines, all the 12Y engines used in production Garzas and Yararas had been built.

Hispano-Argentina also produced the HS.7 cannons for the Yarara.

In Argentina, 1937 ended with the sound of people working and the roar of the fruits of their labours overhead.





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Offline upnorth

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Re: Stealing the Stuka
« Reply #22 on: August 23, 2012, 04:44:33 PM »
A day in the life of a Garza

Early one  morning in the first week of January 1938, a Garza was wheeled out of it’s hangar at the airport in Mar del Plata. The ground crew methodically went about preparing the aircraft for the daily observation flight between Mar del Plata and Rawson

By mid morning, the two man crew were strapping into the aircraft and completing the pre flight check. The pilot taxied the aircraft from the shadow of the hangar into the full sun. The aircraft, respendent in the bright white and blue trimmed scheme of governmental operated aircraft, sat at the end of the runway awaiting take off clearance.

Once clearance had been granted, the Garza roared down the runway and took to the air in what was a remarkably short distance for an aircraft of its size at that period of time. It climbed aloft gracefully and the sun reflecting off of its white paint kept it visible for a long time after it had taken to the air.

Once fully aloft, the pilot put the aircraft on a south west flight path along the coastline. At the same time, a second Garza flying from Rio Gallegos was on a north east path conducting an identical fisheries observation. The two aircraft would meet at Rawson before turning onto the return leg to their home bases.

Along with a two man crew, both aircraft were equiped with cameras for photographing the various river mouths and fishery related activity along the coast.

Under the jusidiction of the natural resources ministry, such activities were routine for the Garzas and their crews. Such things were exactly what the aircraft were meant to do.

Further inland, Garzas flying from Tucuman and Santa Rosa airfields carried out similar observation flights in the intrests of forestry and mining.

Peripheral Vision

As expected, the two Garzas stopped for fuel at Rawson before beginning their respective journeys home. Also, as usual, the crews got together over coffee while their aircraft were being refueled.

On this particular day, the subject of a large military ship just outside Argentine territory was brought up by the crew of the Mar del Plata crew. The observer had caught sight of it not long after their aircraft had taken off. The observer from the other Garza, who had been on the previous day’s observation flight, commented that he had seen a similar large military ship on a northern heading the day before.
Brought up as more a point of intrest and banter than anything else, the crews speculated about the ship and what it might be doing. Once finished their coffees, they returned to their respective aircraft and began making their ways home.

On the way home, the observer of the north bound Garza occaisionally looked to the ocean side of the aircraft to possibly catch sight of the ship again. He did spot the ship and attempted to train the camera on it to take a photo.

Once the film had been processed and the various photos of rivers and coastline had been catalogued and filed, the crew of the aircraft were summoned to their supervisor’s office.

The three men sat at the supervisor’s desk. There was a photo on the desk; blurry as it was, it was clearly a photo of a military ship. The observer immediately thought they were going to receive a reprimand for wasting film.

Contrary to the observer’s expectations, their supervisor quite calmly enquired if they knew what the subject of the photograph was. Beyond being able to say it was a naval vessel of some sort, the crew didn’t really know what it was.

The supervisor, a recently retired navy man, told them that it very much reminded him of a German heavy cuiser, likely Deutschland class, which he had seen once at a distance while on cruise.

While a German ship in or near Argentine waters was not a cause for alarm, relations between the two countries had slid from cordial to strained as the result of attempts made to bribe German-Argentine citizens to spy upon Argentine companies and their products.

The ship in question had been spotted on two consectutive days just outside Argentine waters and had not announced itself in any way or made any move to cross into Argentine territory. While not immediately worrisome, it was indeed curious behaviour if the ship was indeed German in origin. Why would it not make contact? Why would it not enter Argentine territory as it was free to do so?

The navy was contacted and a P2Y flying boat was dispatched to locate the ship and make contact with it. The aircraft found the ship with relative ease and was able to take much clearer photos of it than the Garza did. However, the ship did not respond to repeated hails from the aircraft.

The aircraft relayed the position of the ship and a pair of Argentine naval vessels were sent to investigate it more closely.

Upon analysis, the photos from the P2Y confirmed the ship to be Deutschland class; most likely the Amiral Scheer based on the finer points of its deck configuration.
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Offline upnorth

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Re: Stealing the Stuka
« Reply #23 on: September 03, 2012, 05:52:11 PM »
The Fuse Alight

Approximately 48 hours after the German ship, now confirmed to be the Admiral Scheer, had been spotted just outside Agrentine waters; three men sat silently in the office of FMA Cordoba’s site security services.

The men were caught by security in the early hours of the morning walking along the outside of the facility fenceline. Security had become extremely tight at FMA for fear of espionage related activities. The men had put up no resistance to being captured by FMA security, but carried no identification and had not spoken a single word since being captured. Later that morning, the three men were handed over to the Cordoba city police along with a small notepad with some indecipherable scribblings that had been confiscated from one of the men.

The men were no more talkative to the police then they had been to FMA security. After they had been photographed and fingerprinted, they were placed in separate cells to await more intense questioning.

Reports of bribe offers to spy on local businesses were still common and the Cordoba police typically fielded several such reports per week. As usual, they would take down information about where the bribe was offered and ask for a description of the person who offered it. Most of the time, investigations of the bribes came to nothing.

Early in the evening of the same day, a young man entered the police station to report that he’d been offered a bribe to spy on a local company. When the man started describing the person who had tried to bribe him, the officer taking the information felt the description was quite close to one of the three men that had been captured at FMA that morning. On a hunch, the officer decided to show the young man the photos of the three men; without hesitation, the young man’s finger landed solidly on on of the photos: “That’s him! Without a doubt!”

In the course of a more detailed interview about the bribery attempt, the young man said that the person offering never identified himself, but was clearly not Argentine. The man had spoken to him in fluent Spanish that had a light, but still discernable, European accent to it. The accent had been too light for him to make a concrete guess about exactly where the other man was from in Europe, but strong enough for him to know he wasn’t dealing with one of his countrymen.

With that information, though the man in question still had not spoken a word, the police were reasonably sure that he was German national. As the interogation room was being prepared, copies of the three mens’ photos were checked against the country’s registry of foreigners in hopes of positive identification.

Babble from the Beach

Two Argentine navy ships had been vainly attempting to contact the Admiral Scheer while holding a matching course with it just inside Argentine waters. While the German ship had made no attempt to reply to repeated hails, it had also made no attempt to enter Argentine territory.

Through binoculars, the Argentine crews could see a good deal of activity on the deck and in the windows of the Admiral Scheer, so there was no obvious evidence of distress aboard it

On a secured channel, the Captains of the Argentine ships were contacted  by another Argentine ship further inside territorial waters and instructed to tune recievers to a particular frequency. The requested frequency seemed initially to be carrying nothing but disorganised chatter interspersed with static; however, as the static was cleared, the chatter was clearly some sort of coded message and it was originating from the mainland.

As crews aboard the Argentine ships and code specialists ashore worked to discern some meaning from the signals and who they might be intended for, the mood toward the Admiral Scheer’s presence and continued silence shifted from that of piqued curiosity to deep suspicion.

At the request of the military, a few Garzas at Mar del Plata and Rio Gallegos were to be fitted with more powerful camera packages and photograph the entire coastline in detail, particular attention was to be paid to any known areas of minimal human activity.

To avoid tipping off whoever might be sending the signal, the Garzas with more powerful cameras were used for the standard scheduled patrols so as not to show any increase in such activities.

Exhaustive analyisis of the resultant photographs revealed two areas along the coastline that were felt to warrant a closer look.

As army teams arrived at the two locations specified by the photos, they found remnants of recent human habitation, very spartan and mobile habitation. Fresh vehicle tracks were clearly visible in the soil as were imprints on the ground from a large tent or similarly collapsible structure. Both loctations had cearly been abandoned quite recently but quite thoroughly cleaned up in the abandonment process.

A closer inspection of one of the sites did yield the broken remnants of a vacuum tube. For the Argentine government, it was enough to press the Germans for more. Two of the three men captured by FMA security in Cordoba, including the one the young man identified, had since been confirmed as German nationals though the German embassy denied any knowledge of them.

Yarara’s First Blood

With evidence of mobile and illegal radio transmiters on the coast broadcasting a still indecipherable message and the still stony silent Admiral Scheer holding station just outside national waters as the possible recipient of that message; The Argentines decided to give the Garza’s predatory offspring a chance to show its abilities in earnest.

On an early February morning, the usual Garzas were up doing their daily coastal surveys. However, they had been keeping a careful eye out for structures that could indicate the location of a mobile transmission site. At a discrete distance, a pair of Yararas armed with six .50 calibre machine guns each awaited their signal to attack.

The southbound Garza from Mar del Plata spotted a structure typical to what had come to be recognised as the usual configuration for the suspected transmission sites. The Garza gave the coordinates to the waiting Yarraras which swiftly found and straffed the location.

The army quickly moved in on the site to find the smoking remains of a radio setup and a dead man nearby it. A short distance away, a wounded but concious man was found. After the man’s injuries had been tended to, he confirmed that both he and his dead colleague were Argentine citizens.

The man was interviewed while remains of the destroyed equipment were analysed.

The man maintained that his role was to keep the generator, which powered the radio, in operable condition while the other man had been responsible for the radio itself. He claimed to know nothing about the radio related gear. He was there to keep the generator and truck, which had been damaged in the attack, running and to drive the truck.

He told the interviewers that to call him and the dead man colleagues was a bit strong as they barely had known each other. The other man had always told him to keep the generator and truck going and to let him worry about the radio.

When asked how he had gotten involved in the activity, the man mentioned that he was desperate for money after losing his farm a few years before and, after working a series of poorly paying jobs, he had recently been offered an irresistable amount of money in return for his mechanical aptitude.

The man was clearly not of particularly high education and it bacame clear, mainly by how baffled he still was over the straffing attack, that he really had no idea he might be involved in anything sinister or harmful to the state. When he was informed of what he might have been involved with, a genuine wave of shame came over him.

Cutting the Lines

Late in February, the analysis of the destroyed radio equipment was complete. The components were of largely German origin and many parts were inconsistant with a standard radio set of the day, including one portion that was suspected to have a coding function.

With those findings, the continued reports of citizens being offered bribes and the Admiral Scheer quickly setting a course away from Argentine waters almost as soon as the transmission site had been destroyed gave the Argentine government the needed resolve to expel the indifferent German ambasador and cut diplomatic ties to Germany completely in early April.

Hitler made public threats against Argentina and swore he would not soon forget the country’s “Betrayal” of Germany. As Hitler would find out in the not distant future, that feeling was very mutual.
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http://pickledwings.com/

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Offline upnorth

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Re: Stealing the Stuka
« Reply #24 on: September 12, 2012, 06:12:45 PM »
Echos to the North

The cutting of diplomatic ties by Argentina from Germany  immediately caught the attention of Uruguay and Brazil.

The three countries were major trading partners and all had very high immigrant populations that included significant Germanic components. Like the rest of the world, all three were witnessing Hitler set up his attempt to take over his neighboring European countries. The annexation of Austria had occurred just weeks before Argentina formally cut all diplomatic ties with Germany and May had seen Hitler publicly declare his intent to destroy Czechoslovakia by military force.

Brazil had been experiencing similar reports of bribery attempts on German descended citizens as had occurred in Argentina, Uruguay had also been dealing wit hthe problem but to a somewhat lesser extent than the other two countries. While Brazil and Uruguay still had diplomatic connection to Germany, those connections were growing strained as they had in Argentina.

That Hitler was making open threats against Argentina created great concern for the leaders of Uruguay and Brazil as Argentina was a major trading partner for both and they were very aware that none of them were out of Hitler’s reach if he decided to make good on his threats.

Through a series of meetings between the leaders of the three nations, it was decided to create a military alliance for the mutual protection of all three. Part of the deal included the sale of Garza and Yarara aircraft to Uruguay and Brazil.

Meeting the Needs

As the numbers of Garza and Yarara aircraft had increased in Argentine service, the more visible presence of the two was having an increasingly positive effect on bringing order and calm to areas that had seen higher tensions from bribery and spying activities. People who simply wanted to get on with their lives saw the regular air patrols as a very welcome thing.

In the hopes of quelling similar problems, Uruguay and Brazil negotiated the purchase of fleets of both types for their own militaries. This sent FMA into a scrammble as they had not forseen either aircraft as an export product; with all the protection they had given the designs from prying German eyes, they hadn’t even considered the possibility of being able to sell them.

With a large portion of the Garza and Yarara production taking place at the La Pampa location, it was decided to continue in that way and purchase more space at that airport for expansion of the production line. More space at La Pampa meant that FMA could satisfy both domestic and Uruguayan orders for the aircraft. The Brazilian machines would be produced under license by CNNA (Cia Nacional de Navegacao Costeira).

By early summer of 1938, expansion of FMA’s La Pampa location was complete as were preparations at CNNA to begin production. Early Autumn saw the first aircraft enter Uruguayan and Brazilian service with crews  freshly returned from intensive training on both types in Argentina.

I the short term, the export of both types gave two distinct advantages to the three countries. First, as in Argentina, the presence of the aircraft brought noticable calm and order to the other two countries. Second, a locally produced combat type precluded the need for the three nations to purchase  American types of the day, many of which were designed around outdated philosophies.

Some might argue that the Garza and Yarara were also designed around obsolete ideas due to their Stuka lineage; However, the two aircraft had been so reworked and refined as to bear nothing incommon with their ancestor barring a family resemblance. The Curtiss Hawk 75, which the Yarara outperformed in all aspects, failed to find any sort of market in the three countries as did subsequent developments of the aircraft.

Neutral, for Now

Through the remainder of 1938, it became increasingly obvious that Hitler was in no way losing any sincerity in his demands for the lands adjacent European nations and exterminating any people he felt to be “inferior”.

In October, Winston Churchill addressed the United States in a broadcast condemning the Munich Agreement and emploring America and Western Europe to prepare for armed resistance to Hitler.

The three nations considered their options. Argentina had already made an enemy of Hitler by severing ties while the connection between Germany, Uruguay and Brazil were growing more strained by the day.

Toward the end of the year, the three countries had formalised  their agreement for the mutual protection of their respective territories which would create an uninterupted line of defence along the majority of South America’s eastern flank.

The three nations also took an official stand of neutrality to the increasing tensions in Europe. Despite the neutrality, Yararas practicing straffing of surface ships and torpedo runs were an increasingly common sight.
Pickled Wings, A Blog for Preserved Aircraft:
http://pickledwings.com/

Beyond Prague, Traveling the Rest of the Czech Republic:
http://beyondprague.net/