German research institute for aviation
The German Research Institute for Aviation ( DFL ) was a research facility near Braunschweig that served (military) aviation research from 1936 to 1945 and from 1953 to 1969; from 1938 to 1945 it was called the Aviation Research Institute Hermann Göring (LFA, also: LHG).
history
To promote German aviation research, a further research institute was to be created in 1935 in addition to the existing research institutes, the German Aviation Research Institute (DVL) in Berlin-Adlershof and the Aerodynamic Research Institute (AVA) in Göttingen . The planning for the establishment and construction on a suitable site near Braunschweig began in 1935, and in the following year the German Research Institute for Aviation (DFL) was formally founded as a registered association . Hermann Blenk became the head of the institution . The thermodynamic scientist Ernst Schmidt was the deputy head of the research institute. Hermann Göring appointed Ernst Schmidt in 1943 as "authorized representative for jet propulsion". As part of this function, Ernst Schmidt established the largest German research network for the development of solid rocket technology from the LFA.
Construction work began in 1936. At a cost of around sixty million Reichsmarks , eighty buildings were built on the site of today's Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) and the Research Institute for Agriculture (FAL) near Braunschweig, plus eight buildings in a branch near Trauen in the Near Faßberg . A runway was also created on the site near Braunschweig. 400 apartments were built near the DFL site for the staff.
In 1938 the DFL was renamed "Aviation Research Institute Hermann Göring" (LFA). By the end of the Second World War , the workforce had grown to 1,500 (including 150 scientists). During the war, the LFA suffered little damage from air strikes, which was due to the fact that the bomber associations of the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) suspected the LFA to be in von Pawelschen Holz and Ölper Holz, and so theirs Bombs missed the target. For this reason you can still find a good number of bomb craters there today.
After the city of Braunschweig was surrendered without a fight to units of the 30th US Infantry Division on April 12, 1945, the LFA in Braunschweig was occupied by US troops; the research reports (around three million documents) were handed over to the Americans. The Trauen branch was occupied by British troops on April 16, 1945 . In July 1945 British occupation troops also took over the LFA in Braunschweig. Many LFA scientists had to report on their work in writing, and some test facilities were back in operation. The branch office in Trauen worked under the direction of Mr. Lufft until the summer of 1947 .
Some of the facilities were dismantled and removed (including the high-speed wind tunnel of the Institute for Gas Dynamics) or blown up, but not the laboratory, workshop and administration buildings or the casino. The remains of the blown up facilities on the Braunschweig site, including the remains of large wind tunnels, were not removed until 1967.
A part of the Braunschweig site of the LFA was used from 1946 for the establishment of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt as the successor to the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt (PTR), which had been scattered through the chaos of war, the other part from 1948 for the establishment of the Research Institute for Agriculture (until the end of 2007: Federal Research Center for Agriculture , from 2008: Johann Heinrich von Thünen Institute (vTI)).
In 1953 - again under the original name - the DFL resumed its work at Braunschweig-Waggum Airport . Research work by the DFL began again in the Trauen branch in 1959 . In 1969 the DFL was merged with the Aerodynamic Research Institute Göttingen (AVA) and the German Research Institute for Aviation (DVL) to form the "German Research and Research Institute for Aviation and Space Travel" (DFVLR) and later in the German Aerospace Center (DLR) ) renamed.
Institutes from 1936 to 1945
The research institute comprised five research institutes:
- Institute for Aerodynamics . Head: Hermann Blenk . Equipment: including three wind tunnels (a smaller one, a high-speed wind tunnel , a large one with a diameter of 8 m).
- Institute for Gas Dynamics . Head: Adolf Busemann . Equipment: including a wind tunnel with speeds up to three times the speed of sound and another wind tunnel.
- Institute for Strength. Head: Bernhard Dirksen . Equipment: including a hall for statics tests on large components and another test hall.
- Institute for engine research. Head: Ernst Schmidt . Equipment: Among other things, an altitude test bench for tests on engines, where an altitude climate (corresponding to an altitude of up to 20,000 m) could be set inside, halls for tests on engines, a vacuum chamber for temperatures down to -60 ° C and negative pressures up to corresponding to a height of 20,000 m, which was equipped with a wind tunnel.
- Institute for Kinematics (weapons research). Head: Wilhelm Thomé until 1938 , then Paul Hackemann , Richard Grammel and Theodor Rossmann . Equipment: Among other things, a 400 m long firing channel (volume 15,000 m³) with measuring points along the channel, in which a negative pressure corresponding to a height of 22,000 m could be generated, and two further shooting channels; the launch point of one could be tempered between −60 and +80 ° C.
There was also a missile flight technology institute of the Luftwaffe under the cover designation "Flugzeugprüfstelle Trauen" as a branch of the DFL near Trauen near Fassberg with eighty employees; The director was Eugen singer . The equipment included a large test stand for rocket engines (75 × 20 m, height 5 m), a small test stand and a system for the production of liquid oxygen (81 kg / h). Here work was carried out on the development of a large rocket engine and a space glider with rocket propulsion. A ramjet engine was also developed.
literature
- Heinz Giller: On the history of the German Research Institute for Aviation in Braunschweig. Braunschweig 1987, writing for the 100th anniversary of the PTR / PTB
- Rolf Ahlers and Gerhard Sauerbeck (editors): History of the research location Braunschweig-Völkenrode. Appelhans, Braunschweig 2003, ISBN 3-930292-90-4
- Aviation research, aviation industry and aviation economy in Braunschweig. Text contributions to a lecture event of the DGLR specialist group 12 "History of Aerospace" on May 18, 1990 at the DLR Research Center in Braunschweig. (= Sheets on the history of German aviation and space travel, No. 3). German Aerospace Society, Bonn 1992, ISBN 3-922010-70-9
- Andreas Haka: Social networks in mechanical engineering at German university and non-university research institutions 1920–1970. Stuttgart Contributions to the History of Science and Technology, Vol. 6. Logos, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-8325-3695-4
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Andreas Haka: Social networks in mechanical engineering at German university and non-university research institutions 1920–1970. Logos, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-8325-3695-4 , pp. 79-164.