Emil Thuy

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Emil Thuy (born March 11, 1894 in Hagen ; † June 11, 1930 near Smolensk ) was one of the most successful German fighter pilots in World War I and a knight of the Pour le Mérite order . Thuy took part in the battle against the Ruhr and in the secret establishment of the air force in the Soviet Union , where he was killed in a crash.

Life

Thuy was born in Hagen as the son of the factory owner of the same name. As a 14-year-old boy, he was already busy with model aircraft and tried out a self-made glider. After graduating from high school, Thuy worked for a short time in the Johannissegen colliery near Hattingen , before enrolling in the mining and metallurgy faculty of the Clausthal mining academy in the winter semester of 1913 . During his studies he was active in the Germania gymnastics club (now Rheno-Germania gymnastics club).

In August 1914, when the First World War broke out, Thuy volunteered and after six weeks of basic training came to the Western Front as a pioneer . Seriously wounded in November 1914, after his recovery he volunteered for the air force and completed his aviation training in Berlin-Adlershof and Berlin-Johannisthal . In June 1915 he came to Aviation Department 53 in Rethel on the Western Front via the Aviation Replacement Department in Böblingen . Here Thuy achieved his first aerial victory and in December 1915 received the silver honorary goblet for the winner in the aerial combat from the head of field aviation .

Thuy, promoted to lieutenant since March 1916 , joined Jagdstaffel 21 and in autumn 1917 took over Jagdstaffel 28w (w = royal-Württemberg) of the 4th Army. In 1918 he became the commander of Jagdgruppe 7, whose three fighter squadrons he led with his Fokker D.VII fighter plane marked with a capital "T". Thuy, awarded Pour le Mérite on July 30, 1918, scored 36 kills. During the war he was also awarded both classes of the Iron Cross , the Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords and the Knight's Cross of the Württemberg Military Merit Order.

After the end of the war, Thuy resumed his studies in Clausthal and, after graduating, joined his father's factory in Hagen . Thuy stayed true to flying, wrote essays on aviation and finally accepted an offer from Siemens-Schuckert , who sent him to Finland as a technical consultant and engineer for aviation . In 1925 Thuy, who was a member of the paramilitary " Stahlhelm -Bund" and had actively participated in the resistance against the Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr area in 1923, was called to Berlin by the Reichswehr Ministry, where he was offered to train as a trainer for the secret construction of the German Air Force in Russia. Thuy made himself available, went to the Soviet Union and was at the flight school Lipetsk used as trainers for pilots of the Red Army and the Reichswehr from the 1925th

On June 11, 1930, Thuy and his Albatros L.76 fatally crashed while flying from Moscow to Berlin near Smolensk.

Emil Thuy was buried in the Invalidenfriedhof in Berlin.

In 1940 the Comradeship I (a merger in which, among other things, the above-mentioned Germania Gymnastics Association) was renamed “ Kameradschaft Emil Thuy ” at the Clausthal Mining Academy . The “Thuyring” in Berlin-Tempelhof is also named after him.

See also

literature

  • Karl-Friedrich Hildebrand, Christian Zweng: The knights of the order Pour le Mérite of the First World War. Volume 3: P-Z. Biblio Verlag, Bissendorf 2011, ISBN 978-3-7648-2586-7 , pp. 412-413.
  • Arthur GJ Whitehouse: Aviator Aces 1914-1918 . Stuttgart 1970.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Turnerschaft Rheno-Germania in the CC zu Clausthal (ed.): 75 years Turnerschaft Rheno-Germania in the CC zu Clausthal . Osterode am Harz.
  2. ^ In Whitehouse ( Flieger-Asse 1914–1918. Motorbuch Verlag. Stuttgart 1970.) the number of aerial victories is given as 32.
  3. ^ Olaf Groehler, Suicidal Alliance. German-Russian military relations 1920–1941, Visa Verlag Berlin, 1992, p. 51ff.
  4. ↑ Thuyring. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
personal data
SURNAME Thuy, Emil
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German fighter pilot in the First World War
DATE OF BIRTH March 11, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Hagen
DATE OF DEATH June 11, 1930
Place of death Smolensk