Britchon

hg t5\yyt Dear Acesfakia, Very pleased to see confirmation of a Storch in the EVA. I guess you must have a photo (from Raven?), could you please send me a copy? One correction I'd like to make: the serial should be HK986 (See Air Britain's "Royal Air Force Aircraft HA100-HZ999", p.68). This aircraft, together with HK987, had been captured in Rhodes. It was transferred to the EVA on 23.4.1946. The other Fi156, HK987, was also in Greece, on the strength of RAF Air Headquarters Greece, and may eventually have gone to the EVA also, but the Air Britain record only says "No further trace". For the colour, I would guess silver paint (maybe faded), rather than light grey. This would have been typical for RAF training/communications aircraft of the time, like the Anson, Oxford, Tiger Moth, Auster, Harvard, etc. The wing markings seem very non-standard; if the photo doesn't show them, then the normal presentation would be roundels on both wings, top and bottom, and serials under both wings, but not on top. Height of letters: one-half of wing chord at one-sixth of span (as the Storch had a constant chord from root to tip, it's easy to figure). In the book Ellinika Aeroscafi apo to 1912 eos simera (1992, IPMS Greece), you can see an Oxford, Anson and Auster with very large fuselage serials aft of the roundels, which were likely painted by the EVA. Standard RAF fuselage serial height was only 8 inches, and overall serial length was 29". Letter/number width was 5", strokes 1" wide, separation between letters/number 1". The same proportions under the wings, so if you had a letter/number height of 32", overall length would have been 116", ltr/no width 20", stroke/separation 4". Oh, nearly forgot: the first letter of the serial was always next to the roundel, so if a plane is flying toward you, you can read the serial under the left (actually right) wing, but the serial under the other wing is upside-down. Hope this helps! and that the photo will clarify some of these details. I plan to make a 1/72 model, even if everything isn't 100% certain. Another nice-to-have scheme would be the Fi.156 in the RHAF in 1941. Maybe we'll never see a photo. That one existed is certain - M.G. Comeau, at the beginning of Chapter 5 of "Operation Mercury", mentions "a Fieseler Storch, like a greenhouse with wings..." at Menidi (Tatoi) on 20/4/41. This plane with two Bucker Jungmann trainers was seconded (loaned) from the JKRV (Yugoslav Air Force) around March 12th (p.107, "Air War For Yugoslavia, Greece and Crete" by Christopher Shores, Brian Cull and Nicola Malizia). One can imagine these retained standard Yugoslav colours, but with Yugoslav insignia painted out and replaced with Greek markings. Codes, if any, are a question mark. All the best, Britchon