Other Forces

The Hellenic Air Force’ Hs 126

Personnel of the Royal Hellenic Air Force (Ellinikí Vasilikí Aeroporía) standing in front to Henschel Hs 126K-6 of the same Air Force concealed bottom some tree’s branch. The summer dress of the men suggest a hot season, perhaps Summer 1940 before the Italian-Greek war. On April 1939 the Greek purchased 16 Hs 126K-6, a model specifically designed for the Greece of Hs 126 export version and rather different from the Luftwaffe’s model. Despite the outbreak of the WW2 the planes was regularly delivered, the first ten on December 1939 at Dekeleia, the last on February 1940 at Athens. At the moment of the declaration of war by Italy (28 October 1940) this planes were in service with the 3rd Army Cooperation Squadron for reconnaissance and light attack missions. On 30 October 1940, two days after the outbreak of the war in the Balkans, a Hs 126 was attacked and shot down by five Italian fighter Fiat CR.32 of the 160th Gruppo Autonomo Caccia’s 393rd Squadriglia based in Albania, at Drenova (and not CR.42 as indicated by some Greek sources, the first CR.42, 150th Gruppo, was deployed in Albania from 1 to 5 November 1940). Its pilot, Evanghelos Giannaris, was the first Greek airman killed in World War II. One air-to-ground action was flown on 21 November 1940, when three Hs 126 in just one attack raided a 6 km long column of Italian troops at Pogradec, near the Lake Ohrid, Eastern Albania, on the Albanian-Macedonian borders. When, 6 April 1941, the Germany attacked Yugoslavia and Greece the 3rd Squadron with its Hs 126 were deployed at Agrinion in Western Greece. The Hs 126 still survivors was all but one destroyed by a Luftwaffe’s raid on 22 April. On same day the last serviceable Hellenic Hs 126 flown to Argos in the Peloponnese to join the surviving Hellenic Air Force’s plane, but on 23 April a raid of German bombers destroyed all this aircraft. A damaged Greek Hs 126, aircraft code Σ 43 (Sigma 43), visible in a photograph taken after the end of hostilities, was found by the German forces advancing into on an abandoned Greek airfield. Victor Sierra