WWII FOCKE-ACHGELIS FA 223 DRACHE "DRAGON" HELICOPTER CAPTURED GERMAN FILM 27385
Вставка
- Опубліковано 11 вер 2024
- Join this channel to get access to perks:
/ @periscopefilm
Want to learn more about Periscope Film and get access to exclusive swag? Join us on Patreon. Visit / periscopefilm
Visit our website www.PeriscopeFilm.com
This rare film, assembled by the U.S. Army Air Force from footage retrieved from Germany, shows the Focke-Achgelis Fa 223 Drache or "Dragon". The Fa 223 was a twin rotor helicopter powered by a single 750-kilowatt (1,010 hp) Bramo 323 radial engine powered. The rotors, which were mounted on twin booms on either side of the fuselage, were three-bladed and measured 11.9-metre (39 ft). The Fa 223 was the first helicopter to attain production status, but production was crippled by Allied bombing of the Focke-Achgelis factory, and only 20 were built.
The segment starting at :56 apparently shows events of May, 1944, when an Fa 223 flown by Karl Bode and Luftwaffe helicopter pilot Helmut Gerstenhauer recovered parts from a Drache that crashed while attempting to salvage wreckage of a crashed Do 217. The Fa 223 made 10 flights carrying loads beneath it in a cargo net and setting them down where they could be loaded onto road vehicles. All the major parts of the V11 and the Do 217 were retrieved, and much useful experience was gained. At 1:59, the aircraft is shown lifting a Fieseler Fi 156 Storch. At 5:51, mountain or alpine tests are shown in the Karwendel Mountains in Austria. Two Draches were assigned to the Mountain Warfare School at Mittenwald, near Innsbruck. Numerous landings were made at altitudes of over 1,600 m (5,200 ft) above sea level, plus experimental transportation of artillery guns to mountain troops. When the trials ended in October 1944, a total of 83 flights had been made, with a total flying time of 20 hours. At 9:43, the helicopter is shown transporting wounded troops and at 10:55, moving a light artillery piece and later, trash from a mountaintop base, and a mortar.
The Fa 223 could cruise at 175 kilometres per hour (109 mph) with a top speed of 182 km/h (113 mph), and climb to an altitude of 7,100 m (23,300 ft). The Drache could transport cargo loads of over 1,000 kg (2,200 lb) at cruising speeds of 121 km/h (75 mph) and altitudes approaching 2,440 m (8,010 ft). The roles envisaged for the Drache were rescue and anti-submarine patrols, and one variant was to be fitted with machine guns and two 250kg bombs for armed reconnaissance missions.
After WWII, two Fa 223s ended up in Allied hands. The British aircraft flew across the English Channel but later crashed due to poor maintenance. The American one did not survive into 1946.
Postwar, two Fa 223s were built in Czechoslovakia from German-manufactured components and development was also continued in France, with the help of Professor Focke as a consultant, under the designation Sud Est SE 3000. The prototype flew on 23 October 1948.
Motion picture films don't last forever; many have already been lost or destroyed. For almost two decades, we've worked to collect, scan and preserve the world as it was captured on 35mm, 16mm and 8mm movies -- including home movies, industrial films, and other non-fiction. If you have endangered films you'd like to have scanned, or wish to donate celluloid to Periscope Film so that we can share them with the world, we'd love to hear from you. Contact us via the weblink below.
This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit www.PeriscopeFi...
Ride of the Valkyries - nice omage to the helicopter attack scene in Apocalypse Now.
A horse-drawn wagon and a helicopter. If that’s not the most perfect image of just how screwed up German logistics were during the war I can’t imagine a better one. 😂
Believe it or not the German army used a lot of horses for transport in WWII -- far more than seems to be generally recognized. I assume a lot of the horses were eaten by starving soldiers on the Eastern Front ...
@@PeriscopeFilm That’s exactly my point. The Germans had a reputation for ’lightning war’ but in reality they were chronically short of trucks and rail transport so most of their troops could only move at the speed of a marching soldier and a horse-drawn wagon. The British Army was fully mechanized before the war started and the Americans were not far behind. The Italians were even worse off than the Germans were.
That's a Feldküche (field kitchen) behind the horse. It was basically a big stew pot and burner they would trot into a bivouac. They usually showed up later when an area was secured so speed was not of the essence. The kitchen unit itself could be towed behind a truck when packed up and the horses diverted to towing field artillery. Not knocking your point about the Germans not being as mobilized as people think; just pointing out the specific nature of the unit in question. This wasn't something you'd use as transport to the front in the way you wouldn't likely arrive in Ukraine ready to roll in a food truck.
Bingo 🎯 @@PeriscopeFilm
There are many photos of the American south with horse drawn wagons that were taken in the 1950's and early 60's. Some parts of the south didn't get electricity until almost 1960. A Vietnam veteran could have grown up in a home with no electricity, no running water and of course no car.
Oh look, Uber Eats on the Russian front...................
This was still during WW2? Amazing.
Yes check the description on UA-cam -- flight trials ended in October 1944, a total of 83 flights had been made, with a total flying time of 20 hours.
@@PeriscopeFilm Yes, I've seen it. But I was not aware that the Germans had made so much progress in the helicopter developement.
@@petebeatminister When you dig deeper in aviation research, you'll find a lot of these advances came a lot earlier than most of us have thought. When they teach you about the German forces it's always Panther this, Tiger that, Stug over there, Bf109 here...but they had a lot of crazy irons in the fire as did the Allies.
@@wwiiinplastic4712 Well, I know that there were experiments with a similar machine (FW 61) as early as the late1930s. But its the first time I see it actually being used for something. And thats in 1944, years before the first useable helicopters were built in the US.
Yeah, but as soon as the Nazis could get a production line going they'd be destroyed by bombers@@petebeatminister
나치독일의 과학기술력은 21세기에 다시봐도 정말 감탄사가 절로 나옵니다.
Glad more people are seeing this. Most who research the subject & know about pre ww2 & ww2 helicopter technology. Try to chat to others about it & are not believed.
thumb 👍 the 2nd song Blue Danube made me want to watch 2001 A space Odyssey Again 😁
I have a 3 foot model of Discovery above and behind my head right now.
@wwiiinplastic4712 what dumb space agency would design a spacecraft with an emergency airlock that doesn't seamlessly create an airtight interface with their pods? Oh nevermind! -- sgned, Dave
@@PeriscopeFilm They didn't really think that through.
That helicopter looked amazing, I wonder what happened to it? Were they easy to fly?
I just watched a UA-cam vid about these being tested off of a German WWII cruiser. It was on Skynea History channel.
And we thought we invented the external load
The Germans were good innovators in WW2 and I love the music by Wagner 👍
@allgood6760 well it is true that this was innovative but the design did not go far after the war...and can be considered something of a dead end... whereas the American competitor -- the WWII designed and built R-4 helicopter actually had a significant post-war career.
07:44 Bit rough on lifting the net, much soup lost. Following shot the whole show was re rigged.
Interesting detail -- but maybe it was Schnapps!
@@PeriscopeFilm No I think not as the ground crew would have been shot. Since they re rigged you would have thought they would have re shot the sequence. It shows the German are not as thorough as we thought. The craft was very stable in hover.
Ante gamisou lidl elas
How do they go left and right ?
The use of the Cyclic Stick tilts the Rotor Heads in the chosen direction and the aircraft obeys, flying in that direction.
@@felixcat9318 yep, i imagined thats how is done
@@catalino8010 Apologies, I should have said Rotor Blades rather than Rotor Head.
That's what happened when you (I) type when you (I) should be sleeping...
So the Nazis relied on horses to drag cargo up to this advanced new flying machine. It's a perfect metaphor for how profoundly incompetent and self-defeating they really were. The Nazis loved pouring money and slave labor into expensive "wonder weapons" that never really accomplished much, while their logistics "systems" weren't all that much better than Napoleon's.
Yep. Germans used a lot of horse drawn supply wagons and artillery pieces. They famously lacked winter clothing for fighting in Russia. And some of the advanced German jet aircraft built during the end of the war - He-162 and others - had fuselages made out of plywood due to shortages of metal. (And the dictator in charge never allowed the country to go into a full time war economy.)