Bruno Jablonsky

Bruno Jablonsky (around 1913)

Bruno Jablonsky , also Jablonski , (born August 27, 1892 in Berlinchen ; † April 21, 1978 ) was a German aviation pioneer , inventor and British entrepreneur.

biography

Bruno Jablonsky was already working on drafts for aircraft construction as a schoolboy. He learned to fly with Orville Wright and on September 28, 1910 obtained the German pilot's license No. 30 with a Wright biplane at the Johannisthal airfield . At the age of 18 he was the second youngest pilot in Germany after Bruno Werntgen . Jablonsky later described himself as the "first Jewish pilot in history". Also in 1910 he received his first patent for a wing strut for multi-decker planes.

In 1911 Jablonsky was director of the propeller manufacturer Garuda in Berlin-Neukölln . In Britain he received before the First World War the license, there Albatros - biplane to sell. During the war he was interned there as an enemy alien , while his factory produced propellers for the German aircraft industry. In 1919 he founded the Avia aircraft factory in Rotterdam , but only completed one aircraft. He later worked as an advisor to the Dutch General Staff.

In 1931 Jablonsky went to Great Britain again. There he founded the Manchester- based company Jablo Propellers Ltd. in Croydon . , which produced propellers and other molded parts from wood laminate , which was compressed under high pressure to about half of the original volume. The high strength achieved in this way made it possible to manufacture propeller blades that were designed for significantly higher loads than previous propeller blades made of wood and metal. According to the company, these propellers were three times more unbreakable than wooden propellers and lighter, cheaper and more durable than metal propellers. The mechanical properties, for example the torsional strength or the continuously decreasing density from the root to the tip of the propeller blades, could be precisely adjusted. Other companies he founded to market products made of wood laminate (brand name: Jabroc ) and fiber-reinforced synthetic resin (brand name: Jablin ) were Jablo Plastics Industries Ltd. and Molded Components (Jablo) Ltd. who also made pressing tools and special adhesives. Jablonsky received numerous patents in the course of his life, most of them for propellers and manufacturing processes for laminate and synthetic resin materials, but also for direction indicators , windshield wipers and life rafts .

After 1933, Jablonsky was expatriated from Nazi Germany and took British citizenship. While Jablo Propellers offered complete propellers before the war, during World War II the company specialized in manufacturing and supplying laminate propeller blades, which were standard equipment on most British fighter jets such as the Spitfire , Hurricane , Mosquito , Bristol Beaufighter and others according to Jablonsky, more than 400,000 propellers. In May 1953, he received a prize of £ 15,000 (around £ 421,000 in today's purchasing power) from the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors for his wartime invention of the high-performance laminated wood propeller blade . In the course of the conversion to civil production after the end of the war, he brought lightweight construction elements for the interior of aircraft to the market under the brand name Jablite . In November 1954, Jablonsky appeared as a witness before the Cohen Commission investigating the De Havilland Comet crashes , where he took the (erroneous) view that the catastrophes were not caused by material fatigue but by failure of adhesive seams as a result of rapid temperature changes. Jablonsky spent the last years of his life with his wife Anne in Lugano .

Jablonsky was a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society , the Royal Geographical Society, and the Plastics Institute .

literature

• William D. Rubinstein: The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4039-3910-4 , p. 463 ( limited preview in Google book search).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Flugsport , No. 8, 1911, pp. 265–268.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} William D. Rubinstein: The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4039-3910-4 , p. 463 ( limited preview in Google book search).
3. ↑ ^{a b} Comet Inquiry: The Fourth Week. In: Flight. November 19, 1954, p. 740 , accessed November 1, 2016 (English). 
4. ↑ Standard: Alte Adler - German pilots before the outbreak of war in 1914. In: frontflieger.de. August 1, 1914, accessed July 6, 2016 . 
5. ↑ It is possible, however, that the magician Harry Houdini was this first Jewish pilot, since he completed a flight in Australia in March 1910.
6. ↑ Oskar Ursinus: Zeitschrift Flugsport - Born 1910. Editorial and publishing house Flugsport, Frankfurt am Main, 1910, p. 278 ( limited preview in Google book search).
7. ^ Kondor Flugzeugwerke GmbH (1). In: Gelsenkirchen stories. Retrieved October 9, 2016 . 
8. ↑ Cecil A. Ross: Bibliography of Aeronautics. Part 27 - Aircraft Propellers . Ed .: US Works Progress Administration. New York 1937, p. 135 (English, aviation-library.org [PDF; accessed November 1, 2016]).
9. ↑ Jablo Propellers. In: gracesguide.co.uk. January 22, 2016, accessed November 1, 2016 . 
10. ↑ Jablo Propeller. Retrieved November 1, 2016 (1937-1958 ads for Jablo Propellers at aviationancestry.co.uk). 
11. ↑ 1939 Suppliers to the Aircraft Industry, J. In: gracesguide.co.uk. June 30, 2016, accessed November 1, 2016 (English, source: The Airplane , December 15, 1939). 
12. ^ Jablo Plastics Industries. In: gracesguide.co.uk. January 14, 2013, accessed November 1, 2016 . 
13. ↑ Moulded_Components_ (jablo). In: gracesguide.co.uk. May 11, 2016, accessed November 1, 2016 . 
14. ^ B. Jablonsky: Patents with Google Patents. Retrieved November 1, 2016 . 
15. ↑ £ 15,000 For Inventor . In: The Sunday Herald . Sydney May 24, 1953, p. 5 (English, gov.au [accessed November 1, 2016]).
16. ^ Report on the committee meetings in Flight , November 19, 1954, pp. 740 , 741 , p. 732 .
17. ↑ Laura Selo: Bruno Jablonsky - 'One of ours' . In: Association of Jewish Refugees (ed.): AJR Journal . tape 8 , no. 4 . Stanmore April 2008, p. 10 (English, org.uk [PDF; accessed on November 1, 2016]). Bruno Jablonsky - 'One of ours' ( Memento of the original from September 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.