Talk:Focke-Achgelis Fa 223 Drache

Capability?
Would this thing have been able to hover? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.247.183.222 (talk) 15:25, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It was a true helicopter and could certainly hover. Salmanazar (talk) 14:02, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Vehner Moor
The Vehner Moor in Austria was most certainly not between Oldenburg and Osnabrück. The city of Delmenhorst, where the thing was manufactured, was between the two (nearly 1000 km away from Austria), so I guess there is some sort of confusion. 134.130.113.86 (talk) 15:04, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Danzig flight
The section on the Danzig flight is intriguing and prompts a lot of questions for which it does not contain answers. What was the purpose of the flight ? I think a specific citation might be a lot of use, after all, this places a robust, proven helicopter and its crew in the neighbourhood of Hitler's bunker at the point at which he might have been plotting an escape to an Alpine Redoubt or elsewhere, it also puts the machine in the area of the Amber Room's last known locale. I hope this is true but without citations this section remains suspect and may require removal. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.195.219.204 (talk • contribs) 13:50, 21 September 2009

The route description of the Danzig flight is incorrect in stating that they headed to the northeast from Berlin-Tempelhof to reach Würzburg, Crailsheim and Meiningen. All three of these cities are located in the south and southwest of Germany, so they took initially an opposite course to that which will have led them to Danzig. I have no primary sources upon this event so I cannot correct the section for myself but the geographic description is simply false. J. J. Hornung (talk) 12:16, 22 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm writing the italian version and I also noticed this error. If the total distance of 1675km is right, I think the Fa 223 has never departed from Berlin-Tempelhof airport; instead, from Crailsheim to Werder (what Werder? there are three neighboring cities with this name!) the flight cover about 1300km: you can verify this with Google Earth. For this reason i think the Fa 223 probably took off from south Germany.


 * NRG1985 (talk) 10:55, 26 July 2010 (UTC)


 * The Air International article states that the flight took off from Tempelhof for Würzburg on 8:00 on the morning of the 26th, noting that it is in the opposite direction to Danzig, becoming lost over the Schwäbischen Alb and hence landing at Crailsheim on the way, flying to Würzburg-Giebstadt (30 min flight) where there was no fuel, and then to Würzburg itself, where it refuelled and flew to Meiningen via the Werra Vally (total 288 km). The next day it flew to Werder, via Erfurt and Kölleda (315 km). The next morning it set off towards Stettin-Altdamm, flying an indirect route via Prenzlau. On 3 March it flew to Stolp, and from there to Danzig-Praust on the 5th. From there it flew to Gotenhafen, and then to Garz and finally to Werder. Apart from the initial diversion to the South-West - and how it ended up at Crailsheim I'm not sure, the route makes some sort of sense when considering the state of Germany at the time and the need to avoid the fighting and route via German-held airfields that actually had fuel available. The article states that the reason for the flight is unknown, but speculates that it may have been an attempt at evacuation of high ranked Nazi officials from the centre of Danzig Nigel Ish (talk) 20:24, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Draches vs. Drachen
The correct German plural for Drache isn't Draches it's Drachen so I changed this in the articel. --Tinti (talk) 12:00, 15 May 2011 (UTC) Kite is a secondary English translation of Drache; the naming appears quite appropriate if one thinks of a kite flying almost stationarily.Puddington (talk) 17:48, 5 January 2013 (UTC)


 * A Kite is also a type of bird. Possibly the better reason behind the name, seeing as the Fl 285 was the 'Kolibri' (Humming bird) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.150.100.255 (talk) 15:59, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 02:13, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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Survivors?
Most aircraft type pages include a comment and list of the known surviving instances. Not this one. Will (Talk - contribs) 02:43, 3 September 2020 (UTC)


 * There probably aren't any surviving examples, especially as the lead photo is of a model in a German museum. But without a reliable published source that says there aren't any, we can't add it. BilCat (talk) 03:10, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Development: 226
So in the body there still is much the talk about how the 226 became the 223, but not the 266. As per the Variants section & BilCat, the proposed passenger variant was called 266, and absolutely no mentioning of a 226. http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/weapons_focke-achgelis_Fa_266.html states 266 too.

Can someone clean this up? UniversalNation (talk) 14:28, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Combat Use
Faye Schulman was a young Jewish woman, living in Lenin (Poland, nowadays Belarus). In May 1942 the Jewish population of the Lenin ghetto, 1.850 souls (at the start of the war 6.000), were murdered by execution and buried in a mass grave, at the outskirts of the town. Faye Schulman was one of the few who could escape. She joined the partisans until the liberation of the region by Russian troops, in July 1944.

Hiding in the woods in the spring of 1944 she witnessed what she describes as a German helicopter attack. In her book 'A partisan's memoir: woman of the Holocaust', edited by Rhea Tragebov (ISBN-13:978-0-929005-76-8) she writes what happened down as follows (page 187);

"The routine of a peaceful day reigned that spring day of 1944 at our base. Then suddenly, around noon, a Nazi helicopter dove down at us. We all ran for the nearest bushes. I flung myself down on the ground and lay there, my arms covering my head, petrified. When I finally looked up it seemed as though the helicopter was right on top of me, that each bullet would smash directly into my head. The bullets flew like hail, like sparkling rain. The helicopter was so low over us that I saw the faces of the Nazis, their machine guns pointed to the ground, showering us with bullets. We lay there helpless. Returning their fire would have been futile because we had no anti-aircraft weapons or firearms heavy enough to shoot down the helicopter. Our rifles could do nothing. Hiding was our only option. The enemy had known exactly where our base was located. The Nazi collaborators, their informers, had directed them to our exact location. [...]The sky cleared. The helicopter was gone".

We learn of the text that there were at least three persons in the helicopter; the pilot and at least two soldiers. So the conclusion must be that the helicopter was a Focke-Achgelis Fa 223. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Robertzapatero (talk • contribs) 19:31, 6 July 2021 (UTC)


 * Unless the book says specifically it was an Fa 223 I am not sure you can conclude much from that account. - Ahunt (talk) 19:40, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Question
How did Luftwaffe helicopter pilot Helmut Gerstenhauer end up flying across the English channel and objecting to RAF tests ? Noliscient (talk) 15:50, 20 October 2021 (UTC)


 * The details are all described in the cited ref. Perhaps more should be added to the article to make that clear? - Ahunt (talk) 13:39, 21 October 2021 (UTC)