Marinens Flyvebaatfabrikk MF.11
| Marinens Flyvebaatfabrikk MF.11 | |
|---|---|
|
|
| Type: | Maritime reconnaissance aircraft |
| Design country: | |
| Manufacturer: | |
| First flight: |
September 29, 1931 |
| Commissioning: |
1932 |
| Production time: |
October 11, 1930 to January 1, 1939 |
| Number of pieces: |
29 |
The marinens flyvebaatfabrikk m.f.11 (also known as hover MF.11 a three-seater, single-engine was known - - after its designer) biplane -Wasserflugzeug, the Norwegian by the Royal Naval Air Division in the 1930s used for maritime patrol was.
overview
The hull of the MF11 consisted of steel struts and wooden frames, which were covered with canvas. The crew used Gosport vocal tubes for communication. 29 aircraft were built in total.
The MF11 was the main aircraft of the Royal Norwegian Naval Aviation Department until the German invasion of Norway in 1940. In 1939 the decision had been made to replace the MF11 with the Heinkel He 115 , but only six aircraft had been delivered by the time the invasion began on April 9th.
Construction and production
When the last Hansa Brandenburg W.33 seaplane was launched in the Marinens Flyvebaatfabrikk in Horten - Karljohansvern in 1929 , it was already clear that a new machine was needed to meet the needs of the Royal Norwegian Naval Aviation Department. Therefore, in the summer of 1929, Marinens Flyvebaatfabrikk and its chief designer, Captain J. E. Høver, were instructed to design and build a new seaplane. Over the course of a year, Høver constructed the Høver MF11 in collaboration with pilots, observers and other experts. During the development phase, several foreign designs had also been examined by the Norwegian military, but on October 11, 1930, the production of the MF11 was commissioned by the Norwegian Ministry of Defense. The MF11 was known as a "self-defense reconnaissance aircraft" at the time.
At the beginning the Norwegian naval aviators wanted to have their new aircraft designed as a monoplane , but since the Royal Norwegian Naval Aviation Department stipulated that a maximum wingspan of 15.4 meters could not be exceeded in order to be able to continue using the existing hangars, an interpretation was made as Double decker necessary.
The first plane, which F.300, completed its first flight on 29 September 1931. The MF11 were designed with UK Armstrong Siddeley Panther II - radial engines equipped, of which the first 14 pieces were manufactured in the United Kingdom. In 1934, the license production of these engines began at Marinens Minevesen in Horten, with the F.314 being the first aircraft to be equipped with an engine made in Norway. Soon after the engines, which were handcrafted in Norway, were installed, it was clear that they were of far better quality than the machine-made originals. The same engine was made for the planes of the Norwegian Army Aviation Forces. A total of 17 Panther IIs were made in Norway, seven for the navy and ten for the army. License production ended in 1938 when imported engines became freely available at low prices after the Panther II was no longer needed by the British armed forces because it could no longer be used to power the increasingly powerful British aircraft.
The MF 11 in Norwegian service
Use in the pre-war period
The MF11 entered service in the Royal Norwegian Naval Aviation Department in 1932 and was used for a wide variety of tasks along the Norwegian coast and in Norwegian territorial waters .
After the start of the Second World War in 1939, this included participation in all central military exercises, the search for mines and missing ships, and stationing as reconnaissance units not far from the country's various coastal fortifications. On the eve of the German invasion, some of the robust aircraft had completed nearly 900 hours of flight.
Trøndelag Marine District
After the German invasion, MF11s did their active service along the entire Norwegian coastline from Vestlandet to Northern Norway . An MF11, the F.342, was one of the first Norwegian units to come into contact with the invading forces. On April 8, 1940, Lieutenant Kaare Strand Kjos and Magnus Lie were sent from the Trøndelag Marine District to Kornstadfjord near Lyngstad in Eide , where a German Arado Ar 196 had made an emergency landing. After the two German pilots, Oberleutnant Werner Techam and Lieutenant Hans Polzin, attempted to get fuel for their aircraft, they were captured by a group of civilians. They were then reported to and arrested by armed police officers. When Kjos and Lie landed a short time later, they took command and organized the transport of the Germans and their plane to Kristiansund for internment. It later turned out that the Arado was launched by the German cruiser Admiral Hipper by catapult procedure . A few days earlier, the Trøndelag air group of the Royal Norwegian Naval Aviation Department had been reduced from two to one MF 11 after the F.340 capsized in Trondheim harbor due to strong winds.
Romsdalsfjord aerial group
The composition of the air group
One of the Norwegian air units in which the MF11 served was the highly improvised Romsdalsfjord Luftgruppe (Norwegian: Romsdalsfjordgruppa ). In the end, it consisted of four aircraft: an MF11 (the F.342 from the Trøndelag marine district), an Arado Ar 196 (the one captured in Lyngstad) and two Supermarine Walrus from the Fleet Air Arm . The first Walrus (P5649) of the 700 Naval Air Squadron was cleared by the Norwegian authorities after being interned in Kristiansund on April 8th. She had previously not been able to return to the warship HMS Rodney after a reconnaissance mission due to high waves . The other arrived in Molde on April 13th to brief the Royal Norwegian Navy command of the imminent arrival of a Royal Navy task force . After a meeting with Captain Ullring, the commander of the local district of the Royal Norwegian Navy in the Romsdal area , the crew of the Walrus decided to join the Romsdalsfjord air group for the remainder of the time. The air group was stationed outside Eidsøra , where the newly built school was used as a barracks and the local firearms association provided an armed guard to oversee the air and sea operations. A group of local women provided food and other goods for the unit, which consisted of around 25 officers and men.
Calls
The operations of the Romsdalsfjord Luftgruppe, including the MF11 F.342, were almost exclusively limited to searching the coast around Romsdal for enemy forces. This resulted from the fact that the group had only 2000 rounds of machine gun ammunition, no tracer ammunition or bombs and only fuel for a few days if all four aircraft were to be used. On April 12, the F.342 found the exact position of two German merchant ships on one of these missions and reported it to Captain Ullring. This report helped the Royal Norwegian Navy warships seize the German ships on the same day. Actual contact with German forces was very rare; On a reconnaissance mission over Trøndelag, the F.342 was hit by a German aircraft, but escaped without damage. The only real fight in which the air group was involved occurred on April 14th off Vigra , when the F.342 encountered a German Heinkel He 115 and exchanged shots with her at alternating distances of 300 to 50 meters. Neither the German nor the Norwegian aircraft were hit and when the He 115 turned north to take flight, the F.342 lacked the speed to track it.
Escape to the UK
On April 17, Lieutenant Kjos and this met with Captain Gottwaldt of the Royal Norwegian Navy and decided that the four planes had to be evacuated because the fuel reserves had dropped to a flight time of only five to six hours. The British pilots' wish to return to their own units also had an impact on the decision. The hope and plan was that the Norwegian pilots would return as early as possible with better planes and supplies. At 3:30 a.m. of the next day, the first to take off was the Arado Ar 196 with a crew of three, mastered the trip to the Shetland Islands without any problems and landed safely at around 6:30 a.m. Since the air group only had two sets of maps, the F.342 had to fly in formation with the two Walrus aircraft. As the planes approached Orkney , the F.342 had fallen behind the British planes and was intercepted by three Gloster Gladiators from Scapa Flow . The crews of the gladiators misinterpreted the situation - they believed the Norwegian biplane was chasing the two Walrus flying boats - and began to attack the MF11. Fortunately for the Norwegians, Lieutenant managed to land this immediately on the water. Although their aircraft was hit by 40 to 50 rounds of machine gun ammunition, the crew survived unharmed. After this initial friendly fire incident, the Norwegians were welcomed as allies and reported to the British commanders about the situation in the Romsdal area. The German Arado Ar 196 attracted special attention among the British and a commander of the Fleet Air Arm was commissioned to fly it to Helensburgh , where aircraft designers waited to dismantle and study modern German construction. However, this did not go entirely according to plan, as the aircraft overturned and sank during the landing, although the pilot was able to leave it alive. Although the Norwegian officers expressed their desire to return to Romsdal to continue the fight there, none of them returned to Norway in time to take part in the final fighting.
Use in Finland
When the Norwegian campaign came to an end in June 1940, the Norwegian military pilots were instructed not to let their aircraft fall into German hands. Most of the Norwegian He 115 were flown to the United Kingdom to keep them in the war, but for the three operational MF.11s and one He 115 (F.50) this escape route was not feasible and the only way to escape was to Finland to fly.
On June 8, 1940, the MF11 landed with the registration numbers F.310, F.336 and F.346 on Lake Salmijärvi in Petsamo , whereupon they were immediately taken into custody by the Finnish authorities. The three Norwegian aircraft were initially stored and repaired at both the Finnish Polytechnic School and the Finnish State Aircraft Factory before being handed over to the Lentolaivue 15 squadron in August 1941, with the registration numbers NK-171 to 173. All three MF 11 were throwing devices for 200 kg of water bombs equipped. In addition to normal maintenance, the NK-172 also received a new engine and propeller.
In autumn 1941, the aircraft carried out about 20 reconnaissance and propaganda missions in the area around Lake Ladoga before the ice conditions caused their winter storage. The planes were also used in the Continuation War to support long-distance patrols behind the Soviet lines.
For the summer of 1942, the three aircraft of the Lentolaivue 6 squadron were handed over and flew from Mariehamn ( Åland ) on anti-submarine missions over the Baltic Sea . During the summer months, depth charges were dropped on Soviet submarines on two occasions with no apparent consequence.
Similar missions were flown over the Baltic Sea during the summer of 1943 and 1944, but no submarines were sighted , at least partly due to the construction of an anti-submarine network in the Gulf of Finland . The missions in the Baltic region ended on August 21, 1944. Following the armistice in Moscow on September 4, 1944, the MF 11 were sent to the Jauri Division in northern Finland to take part in the Lapland War, where they flew about 60 transport missions in October . In November 1944, the MF11 were permanently mothballed.
In Finnish services, the MF11 were given the aircraft registration numbers NK-171 to 173, after the Finnish abbreviation for "Norwegian machine" (" norjalainen kone ").
Two of the MF11s used by Finland were offered for sale in Norway in 1948 and 1950, but no one showed any interest in buying them, and they were scrapped.
MF11 used by the German Reich
During and after the Norwegian campaign, the German invasion troops may have captured exactly 16 Norwegian MF11s. The aircraft were in repair shops (F.302 and F.318) or left behind in Drøbak (F.3204, F.308 and F.338), in Flatøy near Bergen (F.322), in the Sola air base (F. 324) and in the Skattøra Air Force Base in Tromsø (F.312, F.334 and F.344). F.314 II and F.326 disappeared from the records, but could have been used by the Germans. F.348, F.350, F.352 and F.354 were also looted, all of which are still under construction at Horten.
The captured aircraft were probably used for connecting and mail flights to support the German occupation of Norway as well as for monitoring fishing waters. Records from the German aircraft company Walther-Bachmann-Flugzeugwerke show that operational MF 11s were accepted for maintenance up to and including February 1942.
During their German career, the aircraft were used in an area that stretched from Finnmark in northern Norway to Warnemünde in northeast Germany.
User states
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German Reich : up to 16 captured Norwegian aircraft that were used to support the occupation of Norway by the German Reich -
Finland : 3 planes (Norwegian planes interned in June 1940 after being evacuated to Petsamo from northern Norway ) -
Norway : 25 planes
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Technical data (Høver MF 11 of the Finnish Air Force)
| Parameter | Data |
|---|---|
| crew | 3 |
| span | 15.4 m |
| length | 11.72 m |
| height | 4.45 m |
| Wing area | 53.5 m² |
| Empty mass | 1850 kg |
| Takeoff mass | 2850 kg |
| drive | an Armstrong Siddeley Panther II - radial engine with 430 kW (575 hp) |
| Top speed | 235 km / h |
| Cruising speed | 170 km / h |
| Range | 800 km |
| Summit height | 5000 m |
| Armament | a Vickers machine gun 7.7 × 56 mm R |
| Drop ammunition | a 200 kg depth charge |
See also
swell
- Bjørn Hafsten, Ulf Larsstuvold, Bjørn Olsen, Sten Stenersen: Flyalarm - Luftkrigen over Norge 1939–1945 ( Norwegian ), 2nd, revised edition, Sem og Stenersen AS, Oslo 2005, ISBN 82-7046-074-5 .
- Timo Heinonen: Thulinista Hornetiin ( Finnish ). Keski-Suomen ilmailumuseo, 1992, ISBN 951-95688-2-4 .
- Arild Kjæraas (ed.): Profiles in Norway no.2: Høver MF 11 ( Norwegian & English ). Profiles in Norway, Andebu 2003.
- Svein Carl Sivertsen (ed.): Jageren Sleipner i Romsdalsfjord sjøforsvarsdistrikt April 1940 ( Norwegian ). Sjømilitære Samfund ved Norsk Tidsskrift for Sjøvesen, Hundvåg 1999, ISBN 82-994738-3-7 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Kjæraas 2003: 3
- ↑ a b Kjæraas 2003: 3, 21
- ↑ a b Luftwaffe.no: Heinkel He 115 in Norway ( Memento from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ a b Kjæraas 2003: 28
- ↑ Sivertsen 1999: 105, 115-116
- ↑ Sivertsen 1999: 105
- ↑ a b Sivertsen 1999: 117
- ↑ a b Sivertsen 1999: 118
- ↑ Sivertsen 1999: 117-118
- ↑ a b c Sivertsen 1999: 122
- ↑ a b c d e f g Kjæraas 2003: 30
- ↑ a b Hafsten 2005: 333
- ↑ Finnish Air Force Aircraft - Maritime, Short-Range Reconnaissance and Transport Planes 1939-1945: Høver MF 11 ( Memento from October 26, 2009 on WebCite )
- ↑ English-Finnish-English Dictionary: norjalainen ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ English-Finnish-English Dictionary: kone ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b c Kjæraas 2003: 21
- ↑ Kjæraas 2003: 23
- ↑ sci.fi: FAF in Color ( Memento from February 24, 2011)
