Wernigerode Aircraft Museum

When we were on our Harz tour, I rode over to Wernigerode, a small town at the foot of the Harz hills, which has an aircraft museum. The museum has 4 halls, called hangars but they aren't, Wernigerode doesn't even have an airfield. I've divided my photos into 4 sections, WW1, civilian utility planes, Mach 1 fighters and Mach 2 interceptors. They also have helicopters and partially restored junk not worth mentioning. Here are some of my photos.

The aircraft shown above is a 7/8 replica of a french Nieuport 11 introduced in 1915 to counter the Fokker plague. The Germans had machine guns synchronised to fire through the propellor circle, the allies didn't have this technology, so Nieuport mounted the Lewis or Hotchkiss machine gun above the upper wing. Power was an 80 hp Gnome Rhone radial. Alledgedly this unarmed replica is currently capable of flying. Methinks it was the only aircraft in the museum thus rated, all the rest in the museum were gate guardians or mere engineless shells :-(

This silver monoplane is a Messerschmitt 208 Taifun, the nosewheel version of the 108 taildragger. It is a WW2 era light liason transporter. I've flown a 108 Taifun taildragger, better performance than current Cessnas or Pipers! 240 hp, 310 km/h, 19,000+ ft ceiling.

The czeck-built (1967-1990) Zlin 37 Cmelak was the eastern-block cropduster and fire-bomber used until the fall of the iron curtain. Reload time for the hopper was only 1 minute so it was a really good utility plane. Motor is an M-601 9 cylinder radial. Equivalent to a Boing Stearman on which I learned crop-dusting.

This is the Antonow 2 heavy duty biplane, still in use around the world, e.g. for parachute jumpers. To give you a sense of scale, each of the 4 propellor blades is the size of a man!

Moving on to the Mach 1 fighters, this is the MIG 15, widely used by the eastern bloc, e.g. during the korean war. It's counterpart there was the american F-86 Sabre.

Just after the F-86, NATO published an RFP for a Mach 1 fighter and ground-support plane. Italy came up with the Fiat G.91 which West Germany also bought for the Luftwaffe. Power was an Orpheus 203, with 23 kN thrust, giving a top speed of 1085 km/h. It only had 2 cannons. The Luftwaffe also had 225 F-86 Sabres, just as fast but with 6 half-inch calibre machine guns in the nose (no cannons). These were phased out in 1965 and replaced by the Starfighter.

Moving on to the Mach 2 jets, here are a couple contemporary to the F-104 Starfighter. This is a french Mirage III RS canard delta shown above. The Swiss bought 18 of these for photo missions 1969-2003. The SNECMA ATAR 09 C-3 engine could push it to 2400 km/h.

Finally, we saw a soviet-bloc MIG 21, produced from 1959 onwards. Upgrades such as radar and double-seating were introduced late. It could reach 2175 km/h. The cockpits of both MIGs were small, like the EE Lightning interceptor we used in the UK (you had to be under 5ft 8" to fit ;-).

Sadly, none of these planes were in flying condition, some were just shells with their engine removed. Disappointing. On the bright side, there was an F-16 cockpit on display and you could "fly" a static Messerschmidt 109 simulator (static, so no Gees felt even even when pulling really hard in combat turns (about 8 or 9 G, I guessed).

Comments (1)
Hattie (Hawaii) wrote " The planes look so pretty, but I can see how you would be disappointed that they were just shells." Armaments removed as required by german law. But engines removed from the jets; some you could see straight through!

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on June 27, 2017 permalink Comments Email

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