Albert Falderbaum

Albert Falderbaum (born April 11, 1913 in Niederpleis near Bonn ; † September 29, 1961 near Augsburg ) was a German stunt pilot .

Youth and education

Albert Falderbaum came from a sporty family and grew up in Niederpleis. His father encouraged him to do intensive art cycling , but also to ride a motorcycle. His love for aviation developed in his early years with the construction of model aircraft. From the age of 14 he began gliding in Hangelar near Bonn ; There he passed the A + B exam at the age of 15. At the age of 18 he passed the test as a motorized pilot in Bonn-Hangelar and obtained his aerobatics license 1½ years later. He also trained as a car mechanic.

Flying as a job

With the German Air Force he expanded his flying skills; he was deployed in Fliegergruppe 124 at Rothwesten Air Base. Here he found the opportunity to develop his motor aerobatics skills. During this time he also had contact with Gerhard Fieseler , who was able to give him a lot of advice based on his wealth of experience. The Bücker Bü 133 became his preferred aircraft in aerobatics. With this type of aircraft, Falderbaum succeeded in 1937 in reaching 2nd place at the German Aerobatic Championship in Dortmund.

Kassel-Waldau major flight day July 17, 1938, Albert Falderbaum (left) and a colleague in conversation with Fiesel employees Fiedler and flight captain Knoetsch

In 1938 he became a sergeant major in Kassel-Rothwesten with the reconnaissance squadron 3 / F 24 and was employed there as a flight instructor. This year he was able to take 1st place at the German Aerobatic Championship in Nuremberg. In the meantime, Falderbaum had become a crowd puller with his aerobatic demonstrations at national and international flight days. Also that year he showed his skills together with Vera von Bissing and Hanna Reitsch at the big flight day in Kassel-Waldau .

In 1939 he succeeded in Frankfurt / Main, despite an acute irritation of the appendix, to get the title of German aerobatic master again. That year he married Hildegard Melchior, who lived there in Kassel.

War years

Falderbaum was promoted to captain in the following war years because of his achievements. From October 1943 to July 1944 he was used as a group commander in Jagdgeschwader 110 in Altenburg . There the focus of his activity was in the blind flight training of pilots. From Aug. 1944 he received a retraining on the most modern aircraft of the Luftwaffe, the Me 163 and the Me 262 . First he was used in Jagdgeschwader 400 , then probably until the end of the war in Jagdgeschwader JG 7 at Brandenburg-Briest airfield . During this time he suffered a serious back injury when his plane exploded.

Post-war period, new beginning and end

After the end of the war, Falderbaum managed to come to Ziegenhagen near Kassel with his family . Professionally, he started again in Kassel. He did an apprenticeship there and moved with his family to Witzenhausen to open a dye works and dry cleaning company. A daughter was born here in 1947 as the fourth child. In 1950 he moved with the family back to Kassel, where he traded in gas bottles. But the flying did not let go of him; so he renewed his license in Switzerland in 1951. There he also flew with the Swiss aerobatic pilots Albert Rüesch in Sisseln near Basel and Werner Kessel in Lugano. In 1952 he got a job with a mineral oil company in Stuttgart. He moved there with the family. The second aerobatic career began for Falderbaum. He flew his programs again on a Bücker Bü 133 with Swiss approval and the Lo 100 aerobatic glider . In the following years he took part in many flight days in Germany as well as in Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands and France.

In 1955 he was transferred from the mineral oil company to the aviation department in Hamburg. During an aerobatic demonstration in Düsseldorf in September this year, Falderbaum had a serious accident with the Lo 100. At the end of each glider demonstration, he flew inverted at a height of about 10 m, but at a safe distance from the spectators, parallel to them, and then landed in front of them after a bend. During the inverted flight, one of the seat belts loosened from the central lock and struck his eye. As a result of the shock reaction, the aircraft's vertical tail made contact with the ground. He still managed to bring the plane back up a little; but the damage to the tail unit severely restricted controllability. In order not to get into the crowd, he tried to fly an evasive maneuver in the direction of the open area. He touched the parked jet of an aerobatic team involved in the flight day and hit the ground heavily with his glider. In this impact he suffered life-threatening injuries and was in a coma for 14 days. After several weeks of recovery, he was ready to start flying again. He was represented at most of Germany's airfields on air days or special occasions with the Bü 133 and / or the Lo 100. At the first German championships in aerobatics after the war in Handorf / Dorbaum near Münster , he managed to get 1st place again in 1960. But he could only endure the associated physical strain by wearing a steel corset. The reason for this was the long-term consequences of the back injury during war aviation.

His experience, which he had gained in 10,000 flight hours, was used by the emerging German aircraft industry. When testing a new sports aircraft, the Siebel Siat 222, for aerobatics, it was used as a test pilot. On September 29, 1961, he carried out spin tests with this aircraft from what was then the Augsburg airfield . He got into a helpless flight condition with the machine and wanted to jump off with the parachute. He was able to leave the plane, the parachute also opened, but got caught in the tail unit of the crashing machine and tore it down with it. Albert Falderbaum was so badly injured when the plane hit that he died at the scene of the accident. He was buried in Kassel. After his accident, a total take-off ban for German powered aircraft was imposed in Augsburg, which was lifted again on the instructions of the Bavarian Minister of Transport.

The city of Kassel honored Falderbaum in 1972 by naming a street at the former Kassel-Waldau airfield .

literature

• P. Supf, G. Brütting: The book of German flight history. Drei Brunnen Verlag, 1979, ISBN 3-87174-001-2 , pp. 44–45.
• Fieseler Zeitung , August 1938.
• W. Hermsdorff: A look back at old Kassel. From HNA (Hessisch / Niedersächsische Allgemeine) series, Volume 6, p. 96.

swell

Records and documents from the Falderbaum family

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wolfgang Pepper . In: Der Spiegel . No. 43 , 1961, pp. 92 ( online ).