Fieseler Fi 156 Storch

The Luftwaffe used the Fi 156 Storch to land German troops behind Belgian lines early in the war to great effect. And, curiously, the very last air-to-air victory recorded over Germany during WWII took place on April 11, 1945, when Merritt Duane Francies and William Martin opened fire on a Storch with their Colt .45s from the side windows of their Piper L-4 Grasshopper. 

With a stall speed of just 31mph, the Storch could literally hover in a strong headwind. The airplane was designed to do one thing exceptionally well, operate from confined spaces close to the frontlines. With a fixed slat running the entire length of its wings and hinged, slotted, control surfaces, the airplane was all about generating lift, albeit at the expense of speed. 

The aircraft gained its nickname Storch (Stork) from another of its features designed to support operations close to the frontlines; gear legs with more than 15 inches of travel. This ungainly-looking undercarriage, with its associated shock absorption system, meant that the airplane could handle rough landing grounds with relative ease, but the manner in which the gear dangled beneath the fuselage bore a resemblance to a stork in flight, hence the comparison. 

The Storch’s design was so successful that its manufacture continued for some years after WWII. Indeed Morane-Saulnier produced the Museum’s example at their factory in Puteaux, France during 1949, although the aircraft has since been refitted with an original German Argus As 10 inverted V-8 engine in place of the post-war Renault. 

The Gran Sasso Raid: Our aircraft wears the markings of a Storch involved in the German rescue of Italian fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini. The Allies had captured Mussolini and imprisoned him high in the Apennine mountains at the Hotel Campo Imperatore on the Gran Sasso d’Italia. 

The mission, ordered personally by Adolf Hitler, involved the use of SS soldiers and Glider-borne Fallschirmjӓger to seize control of the hotel and free Mussolini. They principals were then supposed to escape via a primitive helicopter, due to the limited landing space on the mountainside. However, when the helo broke down, a Storch came instead. That aircraft, coded SJ + LL, landed in just 100 ft, bundled Mussolini and others aboard, and then took off in just 250 feet – despite being overloaded.