No photo at Freeman Field

White 7 with foreign equipment code FE-117 and a rather ugly coat of American paint at an outdoor display in Washington DC shortly after the end of World War Two. 

Focke Wulf FW-190 F-8/R1, White 7
W.Nr. 931884 

Kurt Tank, technical director of Focke Wulf Flugzeugbau and his team of engineers had designed the Focke Wulf 190 in the summer of 1937 as an alternative to the Messerschmitt Bf-109. Officials in the RLM (German Air Ministry) believed that they had little chance of competing with Messerschmitt. But because Tank’s engineering team decided to choose a radial engine to power their new design, instead of overburdening the already short supply of liquid cooled inline engines, Tank was able to convince the RLM’s Technische Amt with his proposal for this “zweites Eisen im Feuer.” (Second iron in the fire)

 Destined to be one of the most important aircraft in the Luftwaffe inventory, Hermann Göring was impressed enough with the prototype to order Kurt Tank to turn out the FW-190 “wie warme Semmel” (Like hot rolls). 

The Würger, (Shrike) as it was nicknamed was an extremely compact and well proportioned machine designed to be built in sections by a large number of subcontractors in dispersed locations. This was progressive engineering for its time and showed much foresight considering that after 1944, most Luftwaffe aircraft were manufactured in this manner in order to escape the Allied bombing of their factories.  

Designed from the outset for mass production, with ease of maintenance in mind, along with quick replacement of components, it was easier to replace entire sections of the aircraft instead of repairing them.

It was also extremely versatile. Although designed as a medium altitude day fighter, the FW-190’s ability to carry heavy loads coupled with the airframe’s ability to easily adapt a number of Umrüst-Bausäte (factory conversion sets) and Rüstsätzen, (field conversion kits) engines and weapons, this air superiority fighter could be converted into a bomber interceptor, long range fighter bomber, anti tank aircraft, night and bad weather fighter, assault aircraft and even torpedo bomber. 

Although it was undoubtedly one of the best multi role aircraft of World War Two it was not without its vices. Its performance declined above 25,000 ft and at 30,000 ft. was inadequate, making it unsuitable for high altitude combat.  If the engine stopped running, there was no way for a pilot to safely glide it back to earth. Without power, the FW-190 dropped out of the sky like the preverbal brick.

The compact cowling around its BMW 801 air cooled radial engine was ingenious bit of engineering that blended the bulky engine into the contours of the airframe, caused no end of problems with engine overheating. During the initial test flights, the temperature in the cockpit had actually rose to 131° F! Test pilot Hans Sander had stated in his post flight report that he felt he was flying with his “feet in the fire!”

Fires and power plant failure from seized up engine cylinders had plagued the aircraft during its development and almost caused the cancellation of the entire FW-190 program. 

The FW-190 F variant was developed from the A series of fighters in 1942 and specifically designed for the tactical fighter-bomber, close support role. Manufacture of the F model was given to Arado at Warnemünde and Norddeutsche Dornierwerke, (NDW) at Wismar, Berlin. These two companies had been building the FW-190 under license. The basic airframe was strengthened, especially the wings and landing gear. An extra 30 gallon fuel tank was added behind the cockpit area, along with some 800lbs. of additional armor to protect the pilot, fuel and oil tanks, engine and landing gear against ground fire, although some of this armor was later deleted by the factories or ground crews in the field in order to save weight.

All of this extra weight made it necessary to eliminate the outer wing cannon, restricting its defensive armament to two 20mm cannon in the wing roots and two 7.92mm machine guns in the cowling. These were later replaced by two 13mm machine guns. A centerline rack for carrying a 250 kg bomb was added under the fuselage, while four smaller units to carry 50kg bombs were placed under the wings. This was the FW-190F’s standard war load. The electrical bomb release controls allowed the pilot to release his bombs in pairs or in one salvo.

 The Luftwaffe’s plan was to replace the obsolete and vulnerable Ju-87 Stuka of the dive bomber groups and transition them into close support units re-equipped with the FW-109F by the autumn of 1943.

The importance of the FW-190 F series aircraft and its contribution to the German war effort can be measured by the 6,634 planes that were built by war’s end. 

White 7, W.Nr. 931884 was one of these machines. Although well known after it’s restoration by NASM, its war time service record is sketchy at best. It is thought that this aircraft served with I Gruppe of Schlachtgeschwader (Ground Attack Wing) 2, “Immelmann”. The Kommodore of SG 2 was none other than the famous Stuka pilot Hans Ulrich Rudel.

I Gruppe’s last known area of operations was Hungary, where they consolidated with the Royal Hungarian Air Force’s attack group 102 in Nov. 1944, who were also flying the FW-190F. By Jan. 1945, this consolidated group was flying fighter-bomber sorties against Soviet armor in the Budapest area. I/SG2 was under the command of Luftflotte (Air fleet) 4, which was responsible for covering the approaches to Austria both in Hungary and Yugoslavia. By March 1945, the Hungarian attack group had retreated to Wöllersdorf and Markersdorf in Austria, where they flew operational sorties until April 1945. It is not known whether I/SG2 were still with them at this time. 

By the end of hostilities, I/SG2 had surrendered to the Americans to escape Russian captivity and at least some of their aircraft had ended up at Neubiburg Airfield, an Allied collection point south of Munich. It is not clear whether the German pilots flew here to surrender, or if these aircraft were ferried in later by the Allies.

White 7 was one of five FW-190F’s acquired by Capt. Fred McIntosh, who was attached to Watson’s Whizzers. Capt. McIntosh’s group was responsible for retrieving piston engine examples of German aircraft to ship back to the United States under Operation Lusty. Capt. McIntosh recalls that collecting captured aircraft wasn’t exactly a simple exercise. The first FW-190 they chose was bobby-trapped. While up on jacks to test the undercarriage, an explosive charge blew off a wing when the landing gear was retracted. Obviously this was supposed to happen to some unlucky pilot taking off in the aircraft. 

Difficulties aside, White 7 was given the foreign equipment number, FE-117 and taken to Cherbourg, to await shipment to the U.S. Although some if not all of the Focke Wulfs were in airworthy condition, it is not known if White 7 was flown to Cherbourg, or made the journey by truck. White 7 was covered in preservative and tarps and loaded aboard the British aircraft carrier, H.M.S. Reaper along with forty other Luftwaffe aircraft and sailed from Cherbourg on July 19^th, 1945, arriving at pier 14, at New York Harbor on the 31^st of July.

 The Reaper’s cargo was then off-loaded onto barges and taken to Ford Field, an Air Material Command facility in Newark, NJ. While here, airworthy machines were maintained while the rest were crated and stored for eventual shipment to Patuxent River, Maryland, Wright Field in Ohio, or Freeman Field in Indiana. Records indicate that FE-117 arrived at Newark on the 1^st of August, 1945, its disposition was for storage and its estimated date of completion was the 5^th of September, 1945. It was then to be sent to Freeman Field. It is most likely while at Newark that FE-117 picked up its rather ugly coat of American paint.

FE-117 was then transferred to Freeman Field and was known to be there as late as May, 1946. Although other examples of the FW-190 may have been test flown at Freeman, FE-117 was used only for display purposes. The lack of American radio or oxygen equipment, or English labels on the instruments and controls confirms this. Aircraft that were test flown after the war had these items replaced. 

Many of these captured aircraft toured the United States to be shown to the public. One known exhibition was an outdoor display in Washington, D.C. shortly after the war.

With the testing and rebuilding work finished and no new projects to begin, it was decided to preserve examples of enemy aircraft for a still to be organized AAF museum. FE-117 was in the first batch of aircraft to be transferred to Orchard Place Airport, Park Ridge Illinois. This could be the reason that its foreign equipment code was never changed to T2, as with other captured aircraft.

The facility at Park Ridge was used by the Douglas Aircraft Company to build the C-54 Skymaster transport and is now Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. FE-117 was stored here until the Korean War. The Douglas factory was needed for other matters and those lucky enough to escape being scrapped were transferred to NASM’s facility, in Suitland, Maryland sometime in the 1950’s. Many other aircraft were not so lucky and ended up as landfill for O’Hare Airport.

 NASM had kept FE-117 in storage until 1980, when it was decided to restore the machine and in August 1980, a now disassembled FE-117 was brought to Building 10, of the Paul E. Garber facility in Silver Hill, Maryland, for what was to be a three year restoration project. Thirty years in storage had not been kind to the Focke Wulf. Wooden stands supporting the fuselage had rotted away and collapsed, rendering the cowling panels stored underneath the aircraft, damaged beyond repair, along with the leading edge wing roots. Luckily, there was an extra FW-190 cowl in the NASM collection from a A-series fighter, that only needed slight modification to adapt it to the FW-190F.

The first step in the restoration process was to try and ascertain the aircraft’s identity and discover some of its wartime history. This was done with infra red photography to reveal markings underneath many coats of paint that were not visible to the naked eye and three months of laborious and careful sanding to expose successive layers of colors and markings. 

AAF records had recorded FE-117 as being an FW-190A; however, the werk number revealed on the rudder, 931884, is consistent with number blocks assigned to the F series and built by Norddeutsche Dornier Werke (NDW) at Wismar, near Berlin. This and the four bomb racks under the wings and the fact that the aircraft had only two wing cannon instead of the usual four, confirm that FE-117 is indeed an FW-190F model.

Unfortunately, the data plates on the outside of the fuselage were missing and it was at this time that a data plate was found inside the fuselage with the number 640069 stamped on it. Sources claim that this is an indication the aircraft was rebuilt from an FW-190A-4, A-5 or A-7 fighter, possibly built by Arado’s Warnemünde plant and later modified and converted to F-8 standards. A check through known werk number blocks though, does not come up with a match. The closest I’ve come is 620001 – 620205. These were A-8 models built by Weserflug, Tempelhof, or 650315 – 650320, which is part of a very small batch of A-6 models produced by NDW. What is more likely, according to author and researcher Peter Cohausz, is that this may have been a sub assembly data plate for the fuselage or some other component assembly and the 640069 is the serial number for that particular component, not the werk number of the aircraft. But not having seen the offending plate, I shall reserve judgment on this point. 

This does not mean that White 7 wasn’t rebuilt from an older model FW-190. Careful sanding has revealed four different paint schemes on the fuselage, while only two were discovered on the wings. Restoration expert Mike Lyons states; “I didn’t sand off every bit of paint. Instead I concentrated on those areas we might expect to find something.” An expert at the process, the edges between camouflage colors was sanded in both directions to trace the pattern. If insignia or markings were discovered, drawings and photographs were made to document them before being sacrificed to find out what earlier markings might be concealed underneath. 

Eventually, a picture emerges that gives us some insight to this machine’s history. The earliest scheme was a desert tan with greenish gray undersides. The national insignia on the fuselage was a full black and white German cross. An earlier style, but fairly common on the FW-190 A series up to 1944. In front of the cross, was a pointed horizontal bar, the symbol of a Staffelkapitan. Aft of this was another standard horizontal bar to indicate that this machine belonged to II Gruppe. As these markings are consistent with a fighter squadron and not a ground attack group, it would suggest that White 7 was indeed rebuilt from an A series fighter.

The second paint scheme had the horizontal bars over painted and a white 7 added along with a yellow band aft of the cross. This band was a tactical marking common on aircraft assigned to the Eastern Front.

It seems that at this point, White 7 was rebuilt to FW-190F standards, as evidenced by the lack of these two paint schemes on the replacement wings. Most likely, the fuselage was salvaged after being damaged in combat or a flying accident. The paint scheme for its new role was a combination of grey-violet (RLM 75) and black-green (RLM 70) upper surfaces with blue-grey (RLM 76) undersides in a standard pattern. The national markings were of the late war style, consisting of outlines only, black on the fuselage and white on the upper wings. The white 7 and the yellow band were reapplied, as they did not match the earlier set. A yellow chevron was applied to the leading edge and lower surface of the left wing. This tactical marking was common on ground support machines operating with SG 2. In the winter of 1944-45 irregular blotches of white paint were added for camouflage in the snow.

White 7’s last paint scheme seems to have taken place in the spring of 1945. All upper surfaces were painted a dark green-gray, (Possibly RLM 74) obliterating the fuselage band, white 7 and chevron. Traces of the band and chevron on the under surfaces were covered with a light blue paint. A yellow 10 was applied to the fuselage, while there seems a possibility of the rudder being painted in yellow also.  

Of interest is the engine cowling, with the exception of a possible tactical stripe, it was completely un-painted underneath the American top coat of paint. This would suggest a late war engine change where the entire unit, cowl and all was replaced. This would seem to be confirmed by restoration experts Joe Fichera and Mike Lyons, who tore down the BMW-801 and reassembled it into better than new condition. “It looked as if the engine only had about 25 or 30 hours on it”, Joe states. “The machining grooves weren’t even worn off and there weren’t any carbon deposits on the pistons or cylinder heads”.

Perhaps if fuel and oil were added to the engine, it would start up with that characteristic purr of the 14 cylinder twin row radial and run like a Swiss watch. (Albeit a very loud watch). 

Restoration began with the disassembly of the aircraft. Each part being broken down into its smallest components, cleaned, treated against corrosion and reassembled before being reinstalled. Corrosion control specialists Will Powell and Bayne Rector, who processes are studied by other air museums around the world, carefully cleaned and treated every nut, bolt, wire and rod on the aircraft. 

Master machinist Harvey Napier, was tasked to turn out all manner of replacement parts, including the canopy hand crank that was copied from the museum’s un-restored Focke Wulf Ta-152. Other missing parts included the fuselage bomb rack, canopy and rails, several cockpit instruments and the horizontal tail surfaces. Original components were used whenever possible, but where new parts had to be fabricated, they were duly marked; “Replacement Part by NASM” in order to preserve the original condition of White 7 and not mislead any future researchers. 

“We got lucky on the stabilizer,” comments restoration expert Dale Bucy, who did a lot of the sheet metal work. “We had to get six supporting bearings for the elevators and going through a catalog we found out that FAG, the company that made bearings for the Luftwaffe in WW2, was still in business. We bought the very same self-aligning, double-row bearing still in production, right down to the serial number.” 

Other parts had been borrowed by the Air Force Museum in Dayton, for use on their FW-190D model which they restored and have on display. In a high degree of cooperation between the Air Force Museum and NASM, the horizontal tail surfaces were sent back to NASM, where Dale fabricated exact copies from scratch. The originals were retained for White 7 and the copies were sent back to Dayton. Meanwhile, the Air Force Museum had made a mold of the canopy to reproduce a copy for the FW-190D. The original being sent back to NASM to install on White 7. 

When it became time to choose the armament to re-install back into White 7, two wing cannon were selected that seemed to be in worse shape than the others in the inventory. The reasoning was that this pair could use restoration now while the others in stock wouldn’t need attention for a long time. It turned out to be the right choice. Cleaning these weapons exposed markings that showed that these were the very same wing cannon that were removed from the aircraft over thirty years ago. 

The final phase of restoration was to decide which of the four camouflage schemes was to be applied to the aircraft. Museum personnel selected the middle scheme just prior to the winter camouflage of white paint. It was felt that White 7 most likely spent the longest portion of its career in these colors and the previous two schemes dating to its life as an A model being inappropriate for the F series. The Focke Wulf was once again painted in grey-violet and black-green upper surfaces with light blue underneath, along with the yellow fuselage band and wing chevron. Late war style wing and fuselage crosses were applied along with the white 7 on the fuselage sides. 

After three years and 13,458 hours of work, a factory fresh Focke Wulf FW-190F was rolled out on Oct. 11, 1983 for public display at the Garber facility. White 7 has been on display there since then, but was recently moved to NASM’s new Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles Washington International Airport in Chantilly, Virginia. 

Richard Corey

 

Color photos courtesy of Dick Powers via Dave Mc Donald.

An over head view of White 7. Of interest is yellow marking on the wing. This was a chevron that continued on the wing’s lower surface and was a tactical marking common on ground support aircraft operating with SG 2 at the end of the war.

A ground floor view. A beautifully proportioned and aerodynamically clean airframe. The tight cowling around the BMW 801 radial engine blended well with the over all contours of the airframe, but caused no end of problems with engine overheating.

The business end of White 7, showing its two 20mm wing cannon and standard load of a 250kg bomb on the centerline rack, with four 50kg bombs under the wings. 

Sources: 

Wings, vol. 14 no. 1 Feb. 1984

Wings, vol. 27 no. 5 Oct. 1997

Airpower, vol. 30 no. 6 Nov. 2000

Monogram Close-up no. 8, FW-190F, by Gebhard Aders

War Prizes, by Phil Butler

Wings of the Luftwaffe, by Capt. Eric Brown

Warplanes of the Third Reich, by William Green

Focke Wulf FW-190, by Robert Grinsell

Eagle Files no.2, Yellow 10, by Jerry Crandall

The Rise and Fall of the German Air Force 1933-1945, Public Record Office

TSEAL 6D document, dated Sept. 1, 1945, supplied by James West

Base History, Freeman Field, Air Material Command, Seymour, Indiana, supplied by the Air Force Historical Research Agency

Aircraft of the Smithsonian, Focke Wulf FW-190F8, at http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/aero/aircraft/focke_190f.htm

The Focke Wulf 190 Production and Werk Nummer Listing, at http://fw190.hobbyvista.com/werkn.htm

Special thanks to Dave McDonald of Classic Wings Magazine and Dick Powers for color photos of White 7.

Focke-Wulf Fw 190 F-8