DFS Olympia Titmouse

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DFS Olympia Titmouse
DFS Olympia Titmouse
Type: Glider
Design country:

German Reich NSGerman Reich (Nazi era) German Empire

Manufacturer:

DFS

First flight:

1938

The DFS Meise is a glider that was designed for the Olympic competition .

history

Since gliding was to be introduced as an Olympic discipline in 1940, a team led by Hans Jacobs designed the titmouse as a unitary aircraft in 1938 at the German Research Institute for Gliding (DFS) in order to guarantee equal opportunities for all pilots. The design should meet the conditions of the tender as a glider for the Olympic class. While the predecessors constructed by Jacobs in 1937/38, such as the heron or the consecration, would have required further modifications, the tit appeared perfect from the start to meet the requirements of the announcement for the Olympics. Together with the Mü 17 of Akaflieg Munich (designed by Ludwig Karch), the two machines represented Germany before an Olympic selection committee in Sezze near Rome in February 1939. Despite strong competition in the form of the Polish Orlik and two Italian gliders, the international committee chose the titmouse. According to rumors, the Orlik was the better plane and the tit was only chosen because of the strong German, Italian and Hungarian fascist influence within the jury. Whether that is the truth can no longer be understood today. Despite everything, the tit has excellent, balanced aerodynamic handling in flight.

construction

The DFS Meise is a light performance sailor. The simple wooden construction made it easy to repair and recreate the aircraft. The tail unit was the tit's weak point and was the first to break away under negative G loads such as rolling, inverted and high-speed flight. But the aircraft was never designed for that.

use

With the outbreak of World War II, the Helsinki Olympics, for which the titmouse was destined, never took place. During the time before that, Seff Kunz, organizer of the 1938 Rhön competition , flew a target flight of 348 km in 1939. Although Kurt Schmidt flew over 480 km with a Mü 13 on the same day, the route can still be regarded as a good performance. In 1939, DFS sent the construction plans to all participating countries in preparation for the Olympic Games so that they could begin construction. This also happened during the war in Sweden, Hungary, Switzerland and Yugoslavia. After the war, the titmouse was also built in France, England and Austria. With over 625 titmice built in Germany during the war, this ranks fourth among gliders built in Germany during the war, after the SG 38 (9500 pieces), the Grunau Baby 2b (over 4000 pieces) and the Kranich 2 (1600 pieces). After the end of the war, 150 tits were built in the GDR until 1959 and flown with the GST until 1977 . Three of them were self-made, but the largest part (147) of the Lom-59 "Lo-Meise" model came from VEB Apparatebau Lommatzsch .

More than 150 were built in England after the war, as well as over 100 in France in 1947. Although the Titmouse never became the “Olympic” glider it was intended to be, it can still be said that for many pilots in in many countries was the plane with which they left the funnel around their seat for the first time to learn the art of overland flight. No other overland glider before was available in such large numbers as the titmouse. The air brakes developed by Schempp Hirth in 1939 made it ideal for field landings in small fields.

Technical specifications

Meise in the technology museum "Hugo Junkers"
Parameter Data
crew 1
length 7.27 m
span 15.00 m
Wing area 15 m²
Wing extension 15th
Wing profile Gö 549 / Gö 676
Glide ratio 25.5 at 69 km / h
Slightest sinking 0.7 m / s at 59 km / h
payload 95 kg
Empty mass 160 kg
Takeoff mass 255 kg
Wing loading 17.0 kg / m²
Top speed 220 km / h

Received aircraft

Olympia Meise D-1469 in the Flugwerft Schleissheim

Some DFS Meisen are exhibited in museums, such as the D-1469 (built in 1959) in the Schleissheim aircraft yard of the Deutsches Museum, the D-5618 from 1954, which was restored in the German Gliding Museum on the Wasserkuppe , the D-7504 of the German Museum of Technology Berlin and the DM -2052 of the technology museum "Hugo Junkers" in Dessau . A titmouse with the registration number D-1348 is owned by the Association for the Promotion of Historic Gliding.

The D-8569 from LSV Weinheim 1932 eV and the replica D-1522 from the Mühldorf Aviation Club are regularly flown.

See also

Web links

Commons : DFS Olympia Meise  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Scale Soaring UK ( Memento from September 24, 2011 in the Internet Archive ): DFS-Olympia-Meise Modellbau, accessed on July 16, 2010
  2. ^ Detlef Billig, Manfred Meyer: Airplanes of the GDR. Type book military and civil aviation. Volume I until 1962. Friedland, 2002. ISBN 3-613-02197-8 . P. 22/23
  3. ^ Detlef Billig, Manfred Meyer: Airplanes of the GDR. Type book military and civil aviation. Volume III until 1990. Friedland, 2003. ISBN 3-613-02285-0 , pp. 162/163.
  4. ↑ Flugwerft Schleißheim : DFS-Olympia-Meise, accessed on January 22, 2019
  5. ↑ DFS Meise (D-1348). Retrieved January 22, 2019 .
  6. ^ LSV Weinheim : DFS Olympia Meise des LSV Weinheim, accessed on July 15, 2010
  7. ↑ aircraft park . In: edmy.de. Retrieved January 22, 2019 .