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Stealing the Stuka

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upnorth:
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.

GTX_Admin:
Ok, you have piqued my interest...

apophenia:
I like where this is going 'north  ;)

upnorth:
Thanks guys. Hopefully I'll have time for at least one more installment before I go on holidays next week.

upnorth:
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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