Olympic Booklet Scan P1

Translation by Colin Anson Gliding Olympia Booklet No.24 p.2 No doubt the sport of soaring is the youngest kind of sport, which only originated after the world war. These were the hardest times for the German nation after the unfortunate end of the war, when we were prohibited by the Allies from practicing any form of aviation. All flight equipment, all installations and hangars, had to be destroyed. For a long time, no-one could muster the courage to create a new aviation movement, until one day a group of young Germans who were enthusiastic about flying met on the Wasserkuppe in the Rhön in order to lay the foundations for reviving German aviation. If the diktat of Versailles forbade us to fly powered aeroplanes, we would have to rise into the skies without engines. So we were obliged to go back to the origins of flight, remember the original master Otto Lilienthal, and regenerate motorless flight, based on his ideas and experiments. At first these initial trials were not taken seriously, especially abroad. However, these "phantasists", who quietly tried out their first slides and hops in primitive gliders they had cobbled together as well as conditions allowed, had no intention of amusing themselves with a trifling pastime. In tenacious and disciplined work they improved their achievements year by year so that even abroad one soon began to pay more serious attention to German gliding progress. The first trials at that time in the Rhön were of course pure gliding flights as at that time there was neither sufficient knowledge of the local rising wind currents, nor above all enough aerodynamic experience in the design of good performance sailplanes. In the first competition years 1920 and 21 especially Klemperer, Harth, Peltzner and Martens produced very useful results. The best flight performance was achieved by Harth with a flight of 21 ~ Minutes. Soon machines with markedly improved aerodynamic designs were built on the basis of the practical experience being gathered. P3 And so, already in the following year of 1922, a very successful forward leap in the gliding movement occurred which laid the foundation stone of development in both the sporting and scientific fields. It is not too much to say that once again the sport showed science the way and paved the way for action. For only by the tremendous sporting achievements, which at first no-one dared to believe possible, and which became accomplished facts as early as during the third competition in 1922, began professional circles as well as general public to pay attention to soaring and its possibilities. Picture caption: "Eva" - aircraft of the Aviation Science Association Aachen over the Wasserkuppe slopes (One of the first sailplane designs) As a special incentive for those concerned with building sailplanes a prize of considerable value had been offered for the first to achieve a minimum duration flight of 40 minutes, then to return to the launch point and from there to complete a distance flight of 5 km measured in a straight line. In spite of the excellent flights of the previous year, these conditions were very demanding and opinions were devided as to whether they could P4 ever be fulfilled. Picture caption: Tented camp on the Wasserkuppe during the 1924 gliding competition However Martens, who had been one of the most successful glider pilots of the Rhön during previous years, made all the pessimists eat their words: he launched in the afternoon of 18th August, 1924, in his "Vampyr" and stayed airborne for one hour and six minutes. After circling for 50 minutes at a height of one hundred metres between launch point and a neighbouring mountain ridge, he set out on a distance flight as stipulated in the prize conditions and landed ten kilometres away in the valley, 500 metres below launch point. The report, sent back by telegram, had a sensational effect. To-day, with Germany leading the world record listings, it is difficult to appreciate theastonishment and delight caused by this achievement. The gliding community, though even its members had no idea yet of the effects this performance on that August afternoon would have, were transported into a justified euphoria. But who could describe themood prevailing when on the next day Marten's fellow student from Hannover, Hentzen, stayed airborne for no less than two hours, ten minutes. And even this flight was exceeded by Hentzen himself, five days later, when on August 24th he splendidly circledsteadily and evenly for three hours and six minutes at a height of 300 metres over the Wasserkuppe, before landing near Gersfeld in complete darkness. p.5 captions: p.6 caption: "Harth-Messerschmitt" starts his flight. The launch crew in the background. Hugo Martens launches. He takes his cute Dachshund with him on the, hopefully, very long journey. "Greif' sailplane of the technical college Hannover, in flight after launching from the Wasserkuppe in 1923. Caption: Towards evening large log fires had been lit below, which showed the way to the capable pilot for a long way. As Hentzen set out towards the valley, the national anthem sounded from a hundred throats in his wake, which at that moment expressed not only a tremendous enthusiasm, but also an affirmation of affection for the enslaved German aviation which earned a new worldwide respect through these tremendous achievements. GUnther Groenhoff in his "Fafnir" p.7 caption: Sailplane "Westpreussen", a self-designed machine in which Ferdinand Schulz achieved several world records But other competitors also performed excellently well and flights of 1 Y2 to 2 hours were achieved. At last a system of standards had been established, in accordance with which individual aviators and aviation groups had built their aircraft. They no longer simply designed "ad hoc". Science, sport and technology had fInally combined to work together. Development advanced by leaps and bounds. Performance increased, and so in proportion did the number of new glider pilots and aviation enthusiasts. In addition to the RhOn, a new gliding site was discovered in East Prussia near Rossitten on the "Kurische Nehrung" - the spit of land dividing the lagoon of the Kurische Haff from the Baltic - and here, too, annual competition were organised. The sand dunes of the Nehrung are fundamentally different from the Rhön, nearly a hundred kilometeres long but of only some three kilometres maximum width. This terrain is excellently suitable for flying, and wind and weather conditions are quite favourable. In easterly wind directions the downs offer an excellent slope soaring location for distance flights.Presently, pilots no longer limited themselves to the east wind and the eminently excellent shore line of the p.8 lagoon but also soared the Baltic sea shore of the Nehrung, though the dunes were admittedly lower there. Caption: A team of horses pulls three sailplanes to launch point It was here that during the second coastal gliding competition in 1924 the East Prussian teacher Ferdinand Schulz achieved the world record duration flight of eight hours 42 minutes on his old SF3 and thereby brought the record achievement of eight hours seven minutes established by the Frenchman Barbot in 1923 back to Germany. It is surely not saying too much to state that this duration gliding flight represents one of the greatest of all personal sporting achievements. The quality of this record flight is not diminished by the fact that later other pilots, and especially Schulz himself, performed longer flights. In the history of gliding flight this achievement forms a milestone in that it was achieved by the simplest means. Schulz had himself home-built his glider from the most primitive materials and without any previous technical training, and had mounted his machine without any preparation for the flight. In scanty clothing and without any provisions he persevered for these 8Y2 hours with dogged determination in the icy cold on his machine. A further success for gliding was provided above all by the achievements during the 1926 Rhön gliding competition. The well-known glider pilot Max Kegel for the first time succeeded in performing a flight in a thunderstorm, establishing a new record by achieving a distance of 55.2 km. This flight was performed independently of the surface terrain solely by using lift in the free atmosphere. P.9 Caption: p.l0 Caption: Performance sailplane "Kassel 25" in flight during the Rhön competition 1932 The bunjy is hooked on at the nose of the glider Kegel launched in the midst of a heavy thunderstorm and set out in it on a distance flight by utilising the strong winds associated with the cumulus clouds. Nehring's flights during the same year of 1926 at wind speeds of as little as one or two metres per second proved to be of particular value for the further development of soaring flight. These flights finally provided the evidence to confirm that slope lift could be augmented by thermal air currents. The possibility of soaring over flat terrain was thereby presented as a new task for soaring flight. Wolf Hirth succeeded in finally solving this problem in September of 1930 during the first big gliding competition in America. Flying his sailplane "Musterle" he established two new American records with a distance flight of 55 km a maximum height of 1000 metres.This was the first purely thermal flight, performed in a completely cloudless sky. Due to the unequal warming or cooling of the ground there occur here and there rising air masses in the form of an air bubble. P.11 Caption: A holding crew holds the machine back by the tail until the command "let go" is given 2nd Caption: The launch crew takes up position at the bunjy rope It is the glider pilot's job to seize this air current and circle in it in order to climb with it.

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