Fl 282 Kolibri

[Charly1975]

Wat ik niet wist (tot nu toe dan) was dat de Duitsers de allereerste operationele helikopter in frontdienst hadden, nl. de Fettner Fl 282 Kolibri. Het toestel werd door de Kriegsmarine gebruikt voor verkenning. Ik heb een site gevonden met mooie foto's. (indien de link niet geplaats mag worden dan hoor ik dat graag van de moderators)

http://www.studenten.net/customasp/axl/ ... 507&page=0

Iedereen die nog meer info weet geef het me s.v.p. door. Zijn er verhalen van piloten enz enz ?

[Auke]

Hier nog een mooie:

Flettner Fl 282

[Nicodemus]

Charly,

Kijk dit topic op het AHF er eens op na!

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... keachgelis

Zeer interessante info over zowel de Kolibri als de Fa-223 'Drachen'. Deze heli werd o.a. gebruikt voor de bevoorrading van Duitse Gebirgsjäger in berggebieden boven de 2000 meter.

''The existing Fa-223 helicopters carried on in demonstrating the usefulness of vertical flight aircraft. Two of the Fa-223s were used in maneuvers at the mountain Warfare school in the Alps near Innsbruck during September 1944. Ships V14 and V16 were utilized to supply the mountain troops. The aircraft flew 83 missions, flying on 29 of the 30 days. The one day of non operation was due to fog so thick the pilot could not see the tips of the rotors. Seventeen landings were made on sites that were 4500 feet or more above sea level, including three on the Dresdener Hutte, at an elevation of 7600 feet.
The extensive maneuvers demonstrated the helicopter had a place in mountain warfare. The Fa-223 could lift 1100 pounds of provisions to a remote site at an elevation of 6500 feet in just seven minutes, a feat that would require twenty men, a day and half of strenuous climbing, to accomplish. in one fifteen minute round trip flight from the base at Mittenwald, a mountain howitzer and its ammunition were lifted on a cable below the helicopter, then flown to, and safely lowered to a position just below the Wornergrat peak. The gun had to be winch lowered, because there was not enough room to land.

The Fa-223 was used as a troop transport during maneuvers and carried as many as 12 troops in addition to the pilot. Four men were carried inside the cabin and eight were carried on tractor seats fastened to the outriggers.''

En lees dit verhaal van een van de eerste 'search & rescue'-missies uit de geschiedenis:

'' Meanwhile, the Tempelhof produced Fa-233E was delivered to the Luftwaffe and by "Order of the Fuhrer' on February 25, 1945. ordered to fly to Danzig. it took off from Tempelhof the next morning to proceed on its mission. Due to dodging storms, Allied bombing attacks, advancing allied forces, and having to search for fuel, the helicopter's pilot did not arrive on the outskirts of Danzing until the evening of march 5th. There, because of advancing Soviet forces, it was now impossible to fly into the center of Danzing as ordered. While awaiting orders on where to proceed, the crew got word that a fighter pilot had gotten lost in a snowstorm and had made a crash landing. Lt. Gerstenhauer took off in the Fa-223 and proceeded to search the area. The helicopter crew spotted the downed Me-109 with the injured pilot still in the cockpit. They rescued him and flew him back to the base for medical attention. By this time, Danzing was falling to the Russians, and the Fa-223's crew took off to try to reach a safer haven. Fuel was still a problem and when they did find a fuel stockpile, they realized that the Allies push had captured or destroyed all the friendly airfields along their projected route. After topping the tanks off, they loaded a 55 gallon drum of gasoline and a hand pump on board, took off and overflew the Soviet forces. When they finally put down at the German base at Werder, they had flown a total of 1041 mile on this escape mission. After a rest the ship was flown to Ainring to join Transportstaffel 40, only to be captured by American troops.''

Waarschijnlijk waren er ook helikopters betrokken bij de bevoorrading van Festung Breslau (het tegenwoordige Wroclaw in Polen), een stad die door de Russen omsingeld was.

Cheers,

Nick

[pionier]

Ze hadden nog een hoop meer dan helikopters. Er zijn diverse boekjes uit gegeven met een prijs rond de 20 euro (nieuw)

[Charly1975]

@Nicodemus: Dank voor de interessante info. Ik wist niet dat de Duitsers ook op deze manier gebruik maakte van de helikopter.

Ik wist alleen dat een YR-4 van de Amerikanen de allereerste helikopter MEDEVAC missie hadden uitgevoerd nl. 25/26 - 04- 1944

[Harro]

Er is zelfs al een topic over in dit forum...

Werden er gevechtsheli's gebruikt in wo2?

The pioneer work of Anton Flettner is often overshadowed by the more publicised activities of his contemporaries Focke and Sikorsky; yet Flettner's first fully practical helicopter, the Fl 265, was far superior to the Fw 61 and made a successful free flight several months before the VS-300 began tethered flights.

Anton Flettner was a German aeronautical scientist who experimented with helicopters in the 1930s. He built his first helicopter in 1930's, a complicated and odd-looking craft, and realized it was not a practical helicopter design. It was destroyed during a tethered flight in 1933, and Flettner turned his attention to autogyros. He built a craft called the Fl 184, which had full cyclic control that allowed the pilot to tilt the rotor by moving the control stick in the direction that he wanted to fly.
Flettner's initial Fl 184 design was successful, so the inventor added power to the main rotor. He also developed a collective pitch control, which allowed the pilot to increase the pitch of all of the lifting blades simultaneously. Flettner also removed the autogyro's main propeller and replaced it with two smaller propellers on outriggers located on the side.
In 1937, while the Focke-Achgelis Fa 61 was making its impressive test flights, Flettner began developing the Fl 265. This was a small helicopter, compared to its only contemporary, the Focke-Achgelis Fa 223. The Fl 265, which was called a synchropter because of its rotor configuration, had two counter-rotating rotors set close together and splayed outwards. The rotors intermeshed like the blades of an eggbeater. Flettner received a small production contract from the German Navy in 1938, and the aircraft made its first flight in May 1939. The aircraft proved impressively controllable in flight and was a major improvement over the Focke-Achgelis designs.
In 1940, Flettner debuted an improved version designated the Fl 282 Kolibri (hummingbird). The Kolibri could fly at almost 90 miles per hour (145 kilometers per hour), could reach 13,000 feet (3,962 meters), and could carry an 800-pound (383-kilogram) load. The fuselage was approximately 21.5 feet (6.5 meters) long, and the craft was 7.2 feet (2.1 meters) high. The rotor diameter was approximately 39.2 feet (12 meters) and had the same synchropter configuration as the earlier Fl 265.
A Siemens-Halske Sh14A engine providing 150 to 160 horsepower (112 to 119 kilowatts) powered the Kolibri Fl 282. The radial engine was mounted in the center fuselage, with a small propeller to draw in cooling air. A transmission was mounted on the engine crankcase front. It ran a driveshaft connected to an upper gearbox that split the power into two opposite rotating driveshafts that turned the rotors.
Flettner designed his craft to carry two people, a pilot and an observer. The pilot sat in front of the rotors in an open cockpit affording good visibility. The observer sat in a single compartment behind the rotors, facing the rear. The observer could spot submarines at sea or troop movements on the battlefield. The Kolibri was one of the first helicopters designed with a clear military mission.
The German Navy (Kriegsmarine) was impressed with the Kolibri and wanted to evaluate its use for submarine spotting. However, critics argued that fighter planes would easily attack the slow-flying craft. In 1941, the Navy conducted an evaluation using two fighter planes to stage a mock attack on a Fl 265. The fighters could not hold the agile craft in their gunsights.
Flettner also demonstrated that the little craft could land on a ship, even in heavy seas. Naval leaders were impressed and, in 1940, ordered several dozen of the craft with the clear intention of mass-producing them. Allied bombing ended production efforts, but 24 of the aircraft still entered service, with a number of them being used for escort service, flying off the gun turrets of ships to spot submarines, and performing resupply missions even in poor weather conditions. The German Army also evaluated this type of aircraft.
The Fl 282 served in the Baltic, North Aegean, and Mediterranean Seas. Only three of the craft survived the war; the Germans destroyed the rest to prevent them from falling into Allied hands. Two of the survivors went to the United States and Britain, the third to the Soviet Union.
The Fl 282 was designed so the rotor blades and landing gear could be removed and the helicopter stored in a compact area such as the pressure tank of a U-boat. There is no evidence that it was ever used this way. It was intended to search for submarines, and in the fairly clear waters of the Mediterranean, a pilot could see a submerged submarine as deep as 130 feet (40 meters). He could match the speed and course of the submarine and radio the position to the convoy. The pilot could also mark the sub's position with a smoke bomb. But the helicopter was too small to carry weapons, although some tests were conducted with small anti-submarine bombs. There is no good information on the helicopter's actual use during the war.
The Kolibri's intermeshing rotors represented the fourth approach to solving the control and torque problems, after Bréguet's stacked coaxial counter-rotating blades, Focke's widely spaced counter-rotating blades, and Sikorsky's tail rotor. The Kaman Huskie, which saw U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine service during the 1950s and 1960s, and the Kaman K-Max single-seat aerial crane used this design in the 1990s. The design has not proven to be long lasting or popular. The biggest problems with this design are that the helicopters are slow compared to other types and the rotors endanger people on the ground.
The Fl 282 is most notable for pioneering the Naval use of helicopters, particularly for hunting submarines. However, it would be many years before a helicopter was produced that routinely succeeded in this mission.

http://www.1903to2003.gov/essay/Rotary/flettner/HE6.htm

The Kolibri "Humming Bird" was the first helicopter put into mass production and the only helicopter to make any significant contributions in World War II.

[Charly1975]

Excuus Harro ! Ik had niet gezocht.

Dan ga ik daar lezen en kan dit topic ook gesloten worden.