83 Years Ago Today: March 20, 1939

83 years ago today: On March 20, 1939, the third prototype of the Fieseler Fi 156 Storch, registered as D-IGLI, landed on the Unter den Linden boulevard in Berlin during the Wehrmacht Day parade, surprising the crowd with its extreme short-field performance. By this time approximately 60 Storchs were already in military service. This particular airplane was built in 1936 and was used to test various types of radio equipment. The press photo, which is in my collection of vintage media, was published by J.J. Weber, distributed by Pressebildzentrale, and it appeared in many European newspapers on March 20 and 21, 1939. I discovered a copy that was filed at the Office of Naval Intelligence by John J. Ide who was NACA’s long-time European aviation analyst living in Paris.