Bremen (plane)
The Bremen D 1167 is an aircraft of the Junkers W 33 type , with which the first successful transatlantic flight of an aircraft from east to west took place. Previously this was only done with airships.
Transatlantic flight
After Charles Lindbergh managed the first solo crossing of the Atlantic from west to east in 1927 , Ehrenfried Günther Freiherr von Hünefeld , who worked as press officer at Norddeutscher Lloyd (NDL) in Bremen , planned a flight in the opposite direction, from Europe to America. He had two Junkers W 33 aircraft, named Europa and Bremen after the two flagships of the NDL, converted for long-haul flights at the Junkers factories .
After a first attempt at an Atlantic flight in Dessau failed in August 1927, Hünefeld flew with the pilot Hermann Köhl and the Irish co-pilot James Fitzmaurice on April 12, 1928 with the Bremen on a 36-hour flight from Baldonnel , Ireland to Greenly Island on Newfoundland . There the machine was damaged on landing. The damage could be repaired, but the crew's originally planned onward flight to New York could no longer take place due to an engine failure. The aviators left the Bremen in Greenly Island when they left.
In the past, despite the high fever, the American aviation pioneer Floyd Bennett and his aviator friend Bernt Balchen wanted to come to the aid of the stranded ocean pilots, but Bennett died on the flight to Greenly Island of complications from pneumonia.
Whereabouts of the aircraft
The aircraft was made ready for take-off on the lighthouse island by mechanics from Junkers Corporation. When the Junkers pilot Fred Melchior wanted to take off the plane on an uneven meadow area, another accident occurred, so that the Bremen was ultimately transported to Quebec , where it was on display for a few days. The aircraft then took a NDL steamer to Bremen, from there to Dessau and, after a short period of maintenance, to the International Aviation Exhibition (ILA) in 1928 in Berlin, where the “Bremen” was an attraction at the Junkers stand.
Baron von Hünefeld offered the Bremen as a gift to the Deutsches Museum in Munich, which, however, declined because the machine was of historical importance, but was not a "technically important stage of development". Hünefeld then bequeathed the aircraft to the City Museum of New York because - as he wrote in a newspaper - those abroad do not want to represent the German name in the world by sacrificing their health and their last penny, at the risk of their lives to abandon them like their own countrymen do it all the time.
An NDL steamer brought the Bremen to New York. Since the New York City Museum was not yet completed, the Bremen was hung in the hall of the New York Central Station after Hünefeld's death in February 1929. About ten years later Henry Ford purchased the aircraft for the Edison Institute (known as the Henry Ford Museum ) in Dearborn , where the Bremen was exhibited for several decades in a number of mostly American pioneer aircraft. At the end of the 20th century the Bremen came back to Germany on loan and has since been exhibited in the Bremenhalle at Bremen Airport .
On January 1st, 2009 Flughafen Bremen GmbH took over the loan contract of the association We bring the Bremen to Bremen with the Henry Ford Museum and thus also the insurance and the return of the machine in ten years at the earliest.
Commemorative coin
There is a commemorative silver medal (25 grams, diameter 36 mm). The front shows the profiles of the three pilots. Inscription on the back: Ein Wille --- Eine Tat --- Ein Sieg --- Flight of the "Bremen" on April 13, 1928 . Marginal writing: Preuss. State coin.
literature
- Horst Brinkmann: Airport Bremen - Restoration of the Junkers W 33 - Bremen. Memories of Bremen's flight to the Atlantic in 1928 . Irmgard Wenz publishing house, Bremen 2000, ISBN 3-927697-23-0 .
- Fred W. Hotson: The Bremen . Nara-Verlag, Allershausen 1996, ISBN 3-925671-22-6 .
- Hermann Köhl: Brake blocks away! ' The life book of a German aviator . Publishing house Bong, Berlin 1938.
- Hermann Köhl; James C. Fitzmaurice; EG Freiherr von Hünefeld: Our ocean flight. Life memories . Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, Berlin undated (1930)
Web links
Footnotes
- ^ Friedrich Walter: Hünefeld. A life of action. Harvest Publishing House, Potsdam 1930.