Current and Finished Projects > Stories

Stealing the Stuka

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upnorth:
Those are fantastic as always, Apohpenia! :)

upnorth:
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.

upnorth:
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.

upnorth:
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.

upnorth:
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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