Fly Past

76 FLYPAST November 2018

Spotlight

Fieseler

Storch

Ten years

in the making

Norwegian aviator Tor Nørstegård spent a decade returning a Fieseler

Fi 156 Storch to the air. Tormod Løkling visits a remarkable restoration.

I

f you had known how much

time and energy this would

require, would you still have

taken on this project?

It’s a question I simply have to

ask Tor Nørstegård as we stroll

around his perfectly restored

German warbird on a sunny

evening at Kjeller airstrip, not far

from Oslo, Norway.

“Yes,” the air crash investigator

replies without hesitation, “because

almost every hour in the workshop

has been a treat. Although I must

admit I got home some evenings

with a ‘black cloud’ over my head!”

Nørstegård’s Storch has an

unusual history. Long before

someone coined the term

‘outsourcing’, the Germans

started producing the small liaison

aircraft at the occupied Morane-

Saulnier factory north of Paris.

It must have seemed an excellent

choice. The French company

was manufacturing aircraft there

even before World War One, and

its MS.406 was France’s most

numerous fighter when war broke

out again in 1940.

Fieseler Fi 156C-3, bearing the

‘werknummer’ 1816, was unfinished

when Paris was liberated in August

1944. The French added the missing
      parts and used the aircraft for coastal
      patrols for the remainder of the war.
      So, a machine built in France for the
      Germans ended up serving the Allies.

After the war the Storch flew with

the French Air Force for 15 years

before being sold to a flying club,

where it was used for towing gliders.

Another decade passed and the

Fieseler moved to the US, where in

1989 it was wrecked in a ground

accident that destroyed both of its

wings and parts of its fuselage.

Aviation buff

The task of restoring such a

severely damaged airframe is not

for the faint-hearted. Adding

to the challenge, the propeller,

engine and its mount, oil tank

and instruments were missing.

Nørstegård nevertheless comes

from a background that makes him

Below

An air-to-air view of

the Storch in Norway,

on June 2, 2018.

DANIEL KARLSSON