Alexander Baumann (aircraft designer)

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Alexander Baumann (born May 15, 1875 in Heilbronn , † March 23, 1928 in Stuttgart ) was a German aircraft designer. Baumann was the first scientist to hold a professorship for airship, aviation technology and automotive engineering in the German Reich. He constructed in the First World War, the so-called Zeppelin Staaken - giant aircraft and was in the mid-1920s, then in Japan as a designer for Mitsubishi operates.

Life

Baumann was born the son of an oil manufacturer in Heilbronn. After the liquidation of the Baumann oil mill in Heilbronn in 1885, the family moved to Halle an der Saale , where the father ran a machine factory and iron foundry. After the early death of the father in 1893, the mother returned to Stuttgart with three children, where Alexander and his younger brother Richard studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University under Carl von Bach . Alexander received a scholarship from the Halle'schen Maschinenfabrik through contacts with his late father . Alexander Baumann applied for a first patent during his studies. In 1899 he completed his studies as a government building supervisor (title later converted into a graduate engineer ). He initially worked for various companies, including the Sächsische Maschinenfabrik in Chemnitz and Siemens & Halske in Charlottenburg, before becoming a lecturer at the Zwickau engineering school in 1902 . There he also founded the design office Zwickau, Seyboth, Baumann & Co. , in which designs for washing machines , a vacuum cleaner , overhead crane bridges and various turbines were created. While still in Zwickau, he married Gertrud Vorweg, and the marriage had four children.

A newspaper article in the Zwickauer Lokalanzeiger from 1907, which reported about flight attempts by the Wright brothers , aroused his interest in working with flying machines. He was more interested in the theoretical mathematical background than the practical execution of flight tests, for example the air resistance of non-load-bearing surfaces or the calculation of the efficiency of propellers and other drive details. As early as 1907 he announced plans for an airplane that would only be powered by two bicycle motors. In 1908 he was appointed to the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt in Berlin, where, among other things, he gave a lecture on "Slip tests and the basis for their calculation". In 1911 he received a professorship for airship, aviation technology and automotive engineering at the TH Stuttgart.

With the support of the manufacturer Ernst Emil Freytag , he built the Baumann double-decker in 1912/13 . Contrary to his plans, structural changes were made to the aircraft, so that a test flight ended in the crash and death of the test pilot. The airplane therefore undeservedly became known as the professor's airplane , which works in theory but not in practice. For the first time, Baumann used a self-inflating wing profile similar to that of today's paragliders on this aircraft.

In 1913 he published Mechanic Basics of Aircraft Construction, a standard work that was valid for around a decade.

VGOI 1915.

After the outbreak of World War I, Baumann constructed functioning giant aircraft with three Maybach engines and a wingspan of 42 meters on behalf of Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin , Robert Bosch and Albert Hirth . The construction of the first aircraft took place at the test construction Gotha Ost (VGO). By the end of the war, 34 of these aircraft had been built in series, including 18 of the Zeppelin-Staaken R VI . The aircraft yard, founded in Gotha and later relocated to Berlin-Staaken, employed around 2500 people in 1917.

At the end of the First World War, aircraft construction in Germany came to a standstill. In 1919 Baumann resumed teaching in Stuttgart. In 1925 he switched to Mitsubishi in Japan as chief designer. There he designed fighters and light bombers, including the Mitsubishi 2MB2 . His family returned to Stuttgart in mid-1927. He himself followed at the end of the year but found his wife with leukemia . About two months after her rapid death, he died of nicotine poisoning on March 23, 1928 .

In the Heilbronn district of Neckargartach , Alexander-Baumann-Straße has been named after him since 1996 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gerhard Schwinghammer, Reiner Makowski: The Heilbronner street names. Edited by the city of Heilbronn. 1st edition, Silberburg-Verlag , Tübingen 2005, ISBN 3-87407-677-6 , pp. 21-22.

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Baumann, Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German aircraft designer
DATE OF BIRTH May 15, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH Heilbronn
DATE OF DEATH March 23, 1928
Place of death Stuttgart