Emilio Herrera Linares

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Emilio Herrera Linares

Emilio Herrera Linares (born February 13, 1879 in Granada , Spain , † September 13, 1967 in Geneva , Switzerland ) was a Spanish military engineer , general , minister and physicist . The enthusiastic pilot was primarily active in aerospace technology and established numerous innovations during his lifetime. Above all, the pioneer of today's space suit, which he invented, contributed to his international fame.

Career

Childhood to university

Emilio Herrera Linares was born on February 13, 1879 on San Isidro Street in the San Antón neighborhood of central Granada to a middle class family. His parents were Rita Linares Salanava and the military man Emilio Herrera Ojeda. One of his ancestors was the famous Spanish architect Juan de Herrera , who helped design El Escorial for King Philip II . During his childhood, Granada suffered three major disasters: a major earthquake on December 25th, 1884, a severe cholera epidemic and severe flooding from the Río Darro in the following year 1885. The family survived all three disasters unscathed. He completed his schooling mainly in his hometown before moving to the city of Guadalajara , around 500 kilometers away, in central Spain, where he also attended the Academia de Ingenieros de Guadalajara , from which he left at the age of 17. At the academy, which was headed by Pedro Vives Vich at the time , he studied architecture and came to aviation primarily through his sponsor Vives Vich, who was subsequently the first in command of the Aeronáutica Militar Española , the Spanish air force at the time.

Military career

Emilio Herrera Linares began his military career, which lasted until 1939, in 1896, shortly after completing his architecture degree. Subsequently, he rose to lieutenant and asked in 1903 for a transfer to the Escuela Práctica de Aerostación , where he wanted to study ballooning and aviation. In the following years he took part in various scientific advancements, such as the solar eclipse in Burgos in 1905, but was also active on a sporting level. In the Gordon Bennett Cup , the oldest annual international balloon sport event for gas balloons , he took part in the first edition in 1906 and also came second at the Grand Prix in Paris that same year . In 1909 he married Irene Aguilera Cappa and from the summer of 1909 took part as an aerostatist in the Rif War in the later Spanish protectorate of Morocco. In the same year their son José Herrera Petere (1909–1977), a later poet and member of the Generación del 36 , and friend of Miguel Hernández , who also belonged to the Generación del 27 , was born. After the use of various airships in various military campaigns in Africa, the need for airships in this area has been limited. As a result, airships were built with their own steering. After managing the balloon flight department in numerous campaigns, Herrera focused primarily on airplanes in the following years, after seeing an aircraft built by the Wright brothers during a visit with his friend Alfredo Kindelán Duany at an exhibition in Augsburg was excited about it. During this period, territorial plans were drawn up based on aerial photographs taken from airships and early aircraft.

In 1914 he crossed the Strait of Gibraltar with his military comrade José Ortiz Echagüe in an airplane, both of them after this test flight by King Alfonso XIII. were appointed royal chamberlains . At the same time he also took part in another military campaign in the Moroccan protectorate. During these years he dealt intensively with various still unresolved aviation issues and during these years concentrated on the intensive study of scientific principles, as well as on technical, economic or legal issues. In 1915 it was sent to the United States to see the Curtiss JN-4 , also known as the Curtiss Jenny , which was first built there that year . He then returned to his Spanish homeland after buying the country's first seaplane for a pilot school. Subsequently, he took part in the First World War on several fronts as a military observer. In 1918 he helped found the intercontinental airline Transaéra Colón , which was supposed to allow passengers to fly between North America and Europe .

In 1918 he and Leonardo Torres Quevedo designed an airship called Hispania for the transatlantic flight in the hope of gaining the fame of the first transatlantic flight for Spain. However, due to financial problems, the project was delayed so that the British John Alcock and Arthur Brown of 14 on June 15, 1919, the first nonstop - Atlantic crossing from Newfoundland to Ireland in a twin-engined Vickers Vimy succeeded. The project of a transatlantic passenger flight finally succeeded a German company. In later years Herrera was invited as deputy commander together with José Ortiz Echagüe to take part in a transatlantic flight with the rigid airship LZ 127 , also known as the Graf Zeppelin . In the 1920s, he worked alongside his compatriot Juan de la Cierva on the invention of the gyroplane , the first aircraft being built under the name Autogiro . At that time he was working on the new acquisition in the Laboratorio Aerodinámico de Cuatro Vientos , which opened in 1921 . The Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial , the Spanish space agency founded in 1942 , is considered the indirect successor to the Laboratorio Aerodinámico de Cuatro Vientos. Here Emilio Herrera Linares began developing special spacesuits and oxygen and breathing air systems.

The spacesuit Escafandra estratonáutica created by Herrera (second from left) ; a pioneer of today's spacesuit, c.1935.

In 1935 he created the Escafandra estratonáutica spacesuit, the first suit of this type, which is considered to be the pioneer of today's spacesuit. The then Coronel developed the suit for a flight in a stratospheric balloon planned for the following year . However, this flight never took place due to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and the suit was never used or tested under real conditions. From this time on, he also participated in the development of the Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Aeronáuticos , which still exists today , which arose near the Madrid-Cuatro Vientos airport from the urgent need to train qualified specialists for the growing business field of aerospace technology, At the same time, the first Spanish airlines were about to emerge and there was only very limited specialist staff in Spain. The Esperantist was subsequently together with Julio Mangada Rosenörn in the Asociación de Militares Esperantistas . Together with Leonardo Torres Quevedo and Vicente Inglada Ors , he became the representative of the Spanish state in 1925 at the Conferencia Internacional para el empleo del Esperanto en las Ciencias .

Second Spanish Republic

After King Alfonso XIII. allowed the establishment of the first fascist dictatorship in Spain by Miguel Primo de Rivera , by expressly approving it on September 13, 1923, the king was deposed after a few years of dictatorship by the Cortes , the constituent assembly, and declared for arrest. In addition to high treason, he was accused of abuse of power and breach of the constitution; afterwards all dignities, rights and titles were stripped from him. In view of the election results of the municipalities, most of which were against a monarchy, Niceto Alcalá Zamora proclaimed the Second Spanish Republic on April 14, 1931 . On the same day, the occasional king went into exile without formal abdication , where he first settled in Paris and later in Rome . Most of his followers, including Emilio Herrera Linares, followed him into exile. However, this situation led to a loyalty conflict Herreras, because on the one hand, a personal loyalty to King Alfonso XIII. and on the other hand wanted to serve and remain loyal to the Spanish Republic and the Spanish people as a member of the military. At that time Herrera was already considered a respected person in aviation and was appointed by the League of Nations as an expert in international aviation. In 1932 he represented his home country at the Geneva Disarmament Conference and was honored in the same year by the Real Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales . On April 19, 1933, he gave a speech on the subject of science and aviation here and at the same time patented the previously mentioned pioneer of a modern space suit, Escafandra estratonáutica .

In addition, the then Teniente Coronel was at that time the technical director of the Republican Air Force and was mainly involved in the organization of flight schools. With the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, when he was teaching at the University of Santander , among other things , he ended his work as technical director of the Air Force. Since he remained loyal to his king, who had fled into exile, he was raised to the rank of general in 1937 as one of only a few officers . Despite his conservative way of thinking, which was often incompatible with the prevailing radicalization, he retained his loyalty to the government and thereby also lost various friends and previous companions, including Alfredo Kindelán Duany, who was a close confidante before and during the Spanish Civil War Francisco was Franco and directed the Air Force during Franco's reign . On the other side was his son José Herrera Petere, who glorified the republican side during the civil war and was awarded the national literary prize in 1938 for his works. A year earlier, his second son Emilio Herrera Aguilera, called Pikiki , died at the age of 19. The Sargento Herrera and pilot of the Polikarpow I-15 fighter plane was killed in September 1937 at the Battle of Belchite .

Further life in exile

When the Spanish Civil War in April 1939 with the victory of the supporters of Franco ended and began a 36-year dictatorship under Francisco Franco, and at the same time ended the Second Spanish Republic, located Herrera was just in South America , where he the Spanish politician Indalecio Prieto at accompanied an official mission. After he was stuck in Chile , he made it to France , where he lived in exile from then on. Initially, however, he had only limited financial resources available there. Under the Vichy regime , the German government under Adolf Hitler offered him to work on a project in Berlin, which Herrera refused for good reasons. As a supporter of the opposition to Franquism, he belonged to the government-in-exile of the Second Spanish Republic, which acted from 1939 and existed until 1977, almost two years after Franco's death. In France he continued his career in research and development in the aerospace industry and had various publications in L'Aerophile , a French specialist journal popular at the time. This magazine, which existed from 1893 to 1947, was published at the time by his friend Blondel de la Rougerie , the son of the French politician Paul Blanchy . As has been reported many times, this was a difficult time for Herrera, but one that he endured stoically. He and his wife lived mainly from the patent rights of map network designs or a special mathematical system with integral functions. In 1945, just a few days before the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki , he published a report in the magazine in which he spoke out against atomic bombs. He was a supporter and defender of the relativity theory of Albert Einstein , with whom he cultivated a personal friendship after his visit to Spain in 1923. He was honored by the Académie des Sciences , the so-called French Academy of Sciences , for his studies in aerospace and advocated the introduction of artificial satellites in France . He later joined the Office National d'Etudes et de Recherches Aérospatiales , or ONRA for short , and was appointed by UNESCO as a consultant in matters of nuclear physics , a position which he then held at the United Nations .

He became internationally known as a bitter opponent of Franco and its politics. As part of the government in exile, he served in several cabinets , the most important of which was that of Prime Minister of the Second Spanish Republic in exile. He held this office under the head of government in exile Diego Martínez Barrio from May 9, 1960 to February 26, 1962, where he also served some time under the new head of government in exile Luis Jiménez de Asúa . During this tenure he endeavored to have republican legitimacy recognized in international forums. He did this in cooperation with the opponents of Salazarism , who were also in exile , the Portuguese dictatorship that was also ruling at the time. After Diego Martínez Barrio's death, he was, as already mentioned, only briefly active in his office before he was replaced by the historian Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz y Menduiña . Nevertheless, he remained in the cabinet of the incumbent Prime Minister as Minister for Military Affairs. After Herrera tried to hold a referendum through political and religious support in favor of national reconciliation, through which the Spaniards could freely choose between a monarchy or a republic, Emilio Herrera Linares died on September 13, 1967 at the age of 88 in the house of his son José Herrera Petere in Geneva . In 1993 his remains would be exhumed and buried in the cemetery of his native Granada.

Awards and honors

Emilio Herrera Linares has received numerous awards or honors during his career. As follows is a short list of his most important honors:

Literature (selection)

  • Emilio Atienza Rivero: Ciencia y exilio. el general Herrera . Ed .: Ayuntamiento de Granada . 1st edition. Proyecto Sur Ediciones SL, Granada 1993, ISBN 84-87713-13-0 .
  • Emilio Atienza Rivero: El general Herrera: aeronáutica, milicia y política en la España contemporánea . Ed .: Aena . 1st edition. Madrid 1994, ISBN 84-7952-138-4 .
  • Carlos Lázaro Ávila: La aventura aeronáutica. Pioneros del aire, autogiros y aerostatos . 1st edition. Nívola libros y Ediciones, Madrid 2001, ISBN 84-451-2109-X .
  • Emilio Atienza Rivero: Ciencia Aeronáutica . Ed .: Fundación Aena. 1st edition. Madrid 2010, ISBN 978-84-95567-52-9 .
  • Emilio Atienza Rivero: Ciencia en las Ondas. Crónicas científicas de Emilio Herrera emitidas por radio Paris. Ed .: Fundación Aena. 1st edition. Madrid 2010, ISBN 978-84-95567-55-0 .
  • Emilio Atienza Rivero: Emilio Herrera Linares. Colección: Protagonistas de la Aeronáutica . Ed .: Aena. 1st edition. Madrid 2012, ISBN 84-92499-80-X .

Web links

Commons : Emilio Herrera Linares  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Escafandra Estratonautica in the Encyclopedia Astronautica (English), accessed on 7 August 2016th
personal data
SURNAME Herrera Linares, Emilio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish military engineer, general, minister and physicist
DATE OF BIRTH February 13, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Granada , Spain
DATE OF DEATH September 13, 1967
Place of death Geneva , Switzerland