Erich Warsitz
Erich (Karl) Warsitz (born October 18, 1906 in Hattingen ; † July 12, 1983 in Lugano / Switzerland) was a German test pilot . He became known when he was significantly involved in the development and test flights of rocket and jet propelled aircraft at the Heinkel Works on behalf of the Reich Aviation Ministry . He carried out the first flight of an aircraft equipped with a liquid rocket engine, the Heinkel He 176 , on June 20, 1939. The maiden flight of the first jet- powered aircraft, a Heinkel He 178 , also took place on August 27, 1939 in Rostock-Marienehe .
biography
Aviation career
Erich Warsitz began his aviation training (1929–1930) as a sports pilot for the A2 license with the Academic Aviation Group ( Akaflieg ) Bonn / Hangelar. This was followed in stages by B1 and B2 training at various airfields at the aviation clubs of the time and further training at the German Aviation School in Stettin (DVS), i.e. C2 training for land aircraft and for "commercial passenger transport" as well as all glider licenses. In between he made the big aerobatic license K 2 and completed the blind flight training as well as the helmsman's license for "short trip". After he had visited the DVS and obtained all the flight licenses there, he initially worked as a sports aircraft instructor, before he was later assigned to the Reichsbahnbahn (RB route: a code name for long-distance experience, hidden in the 100,000-man army) as a flight instructor, group flight instructor and training manager has been. In 1934 he moved to the Rechlin Air Force Test Center , where he soon flew everything that was manufactured by the German aircraft industry, which was in full swing. He began the activity that a little later should familiarize him with historical developments in aviation.
Heinkel He 111 & He 112
At the end of 1936 he was transferred from the RLM to Kummersdorf for the first tests at the stand with a converted Heinkel He 112 because he was considered one of the most experienced test pilots and because he had extraordinary technical knowledge. Warsitz worked there closely with the developer of the rocket engines, Wernher von Braun . The Neuhardenberg airfield, which had been newly created in 1934 as a secret military airfield, was made available by the RLM for the first test flights with the rocket engines . Warsitz moved there and continued testing the machine. The aircraft, equipped with an additional rocket and normal engine, took off for the first time with Warsitz at the controls at the end of May 1937. After take-off, the aircraft was only flown with the rocket engine, but there were technical problems and Warsitz was only lucky to land the machine. However, it was possible to prove to the superior departments that an aircraft propelled from the end of the fuselage can fly. Warsitz then flew every prototype that had anything to do with rockets and jet engines on airplanes. This also included the start-up kits from Walter , which were tested on a Heinkel He 111 E. The RLM was interested in the so-called start-up aids, which, for the sake of simplicity, were to be attached under the surfaces of bombers to help launch heavily loaded or overloaded small aircraft Shorten airfields and operational ports with short taxiways. Said starting aids should be dropped on the parachute for further use after take-off. Later in Peenemünde , the starting aids were also tested on a Messerschmitt Me 321 .
Furthermore, the Walter company had received the order from the RLM to build an engine for the He 112, so that not only the Braunsche He 112 was in Neuhardenberg for a while. In contrast to von Braun, Walter only used different fuels. High-proof alcohol and liquid oxygen used by Braun. In contrast, Walter used high-percentage hydrogen peroxide and potassium permanganate as a catalyst. With the Braun drive, fire came out and with the Walter drive, steam, because the first mentioned drive was a direct combustion, while with Walter decomposition took place, but with the same outflowing speed. The further flights of the He 112 were from then on made with the Walter engine instead of the Braunschen: It was more reliable, easier to operate and not associated with such a great danger for the machine and Erich Warsitz. After the He-112 tests with both engines and the start-up tests on the He 111 had been carried out, the tents in Neuhardenberg were demolished at the end of 1937. Peenemünde was meanwhile under construction.
Heinkel He 176
While the test flights were still running in Neuhardenberg, the term "interceptor" was coined and the Heinkel He 176 was to become the research object for this. The RLM intended to use a new type of fighter aircraft. Due to its enormous climbing ability, it should only start and go up almost vertically when an enemy bomber formation came into view at a height of six or seven thousand meters, for example, and carried out a short attack at high speed from below by firing the volleys from the machine-gun or cannons and landed again after the tanks were emptied. The Messerschmitt Me 163 , which was developed and tested independently of the He 176, was still in use at the end of the Second World War. Since the construction development of the He 176 was subject to the greatest secrecy, Ernst Heinkel set up a special department in his plant in Rostock- Marienehe and first built a wooden barrack in which the first experimental work was carried out. Only a very few employees were allowed in. This “shack” quickly became a permanent building. The development took place very quickly at the time and Warsitz carried out the first taxi tests in Peenemünde to determine the behavior of the machine on the runway. When Erich Warsitz believed he knew the peculiarities and pitfalls through the ongoing attempts at taxiing and jumping in the air at ever increasing speeds, he carried out the first successful flight on June 20, 1939. On this successful first flight, the machine already reached 800 km / h.
On July 3, 1939, Warsitz demonstrated the He 176 to Adolf Hitler in Rechlin . Although the flight went perfectly, no one in the leadership recognized the technical and military importance of the missile flight.
Heinkel He 178
After his experience with the He 176 rocket aircraft, which had been gathered in close cooperation with the Reich Aviation Ministry, Heinkel was bitter because he no longer received the support he had hoped for, because after the first flights it no longer encountered anything special Interest. In the Ministry of Aviation, not all the relevant people were disinterested, but World War II was just around the corner and there were other worries. The He 176 was developed almost from the start on behalf of and with the approval of the RLM, but the He 178 was not. Heinkel carried out this development without the knowledge of the RLM, and that little machine opened the nozzle age a little later. On August 27, 1939, four days before the outbreak of war, Erich Warsitz carried out the world's first flight by a jet aircraft on the Heinkel He 178 at the Heinkel factory airfield in Marienehe near Rostock, equipped with Hans Joachim Pabst von Ohain's jet engine , the HeS-3 -Turbine. The Heinkel 178 was accelerated by a radial turbine, which achieved a static thrust of 495 kiloponds.
The He 176 stood around unused in the Rostock-Marienehe plant for years. The two prototypes, the He 176 and the He 178, landed after only a few test flights in the Aviation Museum in Berlin, where they were later destroyed in a bomb attack while still packed.
Second World War
Until the summer of 1940 (the first flight of the DFS 194 with rocket propulsion under Heini Dittmar ) Warsitz remained the only pilot in the world with experience in jet-powered aircraft. Warsitz flew pretty much every prototype up until the 1940s. “In 1939 he became chief test pilot in Peenemünde. But he was never in war operations ”.
After the leader's order that all developments that did not come to fruition within a year in the form of large series were to be stopped with immediate effect, Warsitz devoted himself entirely to his work as flight director and chief pilot of the Peenemünde test site. In 1941 he received an order from Ernst Udet to train German bomber crews in Nantes and Eindhoven in the use of starting aids (Heinkel He 111 and Junkers Ju 88 ). In 1942, Warsitz suffered a serious accident with a broken vertebra during a shipyard flight with a Messerschmitt Bf 109 ; the cause was an incorrectly connected fuel line. One of the most experienced test pilots in Germany could not go into the cockpit for more than a year.
He ended his active aviation career after the accident. He opened metal works in Nossen , Niederlausitz Luckau / Niederlausitz and Dresden . Bullet cases were manufactured in the E. Warsitz Nossen factory. At the same time, he took over the management of his parents' business and founded the “Warsitz Werke” in Amsterdam , where a wide variety of fine mechanical individual parts were manufactured with the highest precision.
While the situation in Germany worsened during the war, he was commissioned by the armaments staff in 1943 to mass-produce valves and certain furnace parts for the A4 rocket , which came to the highest level of urgency.
post war period
Siberia
After the end of the war, Erich Warsitz was kidnapped by four Soviet officers from his apartment in the American sector of Berlin on the night of December 5-6, 1945. During the countless interrogations, the focus of his earlier work was in the field of rocket and jet aircraft developments in the OKH and RLM, in Peenemünde and the Heinkel works. After he had refused to sign the contract, according to which he should commit himself to five years of cooperation in the Soviet development in this special field, he was sentenced to 25 years of forced labor and then taken to Siberia in the notorious prison camp 7525/13 near Prokopyevsk .
Hilden machine factory
After his return in 1950 he worked as an independent entrepreneur through the mediation of Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer by founding the " Maschinenfabrik Hilden " Gerresheimer Straße 93 (today Aldi) in Hilden . The Warsitz villa was nearby in Hilden Auf dem Sand 25 (formerly Sandstrasse). In the beginning he had old ball bearings repaired in the Hilden plant, later high-performance pumps were built. On September 5, 1959, his friend Wernher von Braun visited him in the Warsitz villa.
Warsitz retired in 1965 and moved to Switzerland with his family. His residence was the former municipality of Barbengo , today a district of Lugano.
Erich Warsitz suffered a heart attack at the age of 76 and died on July 12, 1983 in Lugano / Switzerland . He is buried there in Barbengo, Lugano, together with his son Bernd (born April 11, 1942, † January 26, 1982).
In 1963 the American Brake Shoe Company (Abex GmbH Denison, based in New York City ) took over the Hilden machine factory and produced hydraulic valves for industrial applications there. On June 30, 2006, the US parent company Parker-Hannifin closed the Denison plant in Hilden. Rolf Krebs (former production manager Denison Hydraulik) founded the company "Hilden Components GmbH" as a partner and managing director with 25 former Denison employees.
Cultural
documentary
ROCKETMEN , produced by director Philip Osborn in 2009. The documentation mainly traces the research of the Heinkel He 176 in detail with recreated scenes, archive recordings, computer animations, contemporary witnesses and historians .
Special postmark
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the successful start of Sputnik 1 and the 70th anniversary of the first take-off of the Heinkel He 112, equipped with the rocket engine designed by Wernher von Braun, the flight performance of the Erich Warsitz was given a special stamp of recognized by Deutsche Post .
literature
- Lutz Warsitz: Flight captain Erich Warsitz - the first jet aircraft pilot in the world. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2006, ISBN 3-8334-5378-8 .
- Lutz Warsitz: The First Jet Pilot: The Story of German Test Pilot Erich Warsitz. Pen and Sword Books Ltd., England 2008, ISBN 978-1-84415-818-8 .
Web links
- Website about Erich Warsitz, with video and audio sequences, pictures, book excerpts, etc.
- Firstjetpilot.com/Archive: Collection of newspaper clippings 1969–1983, videos, letters, anecdotes
- Video with Erich Warsitz as a test pilot in the Heinkel He 178 in the first jet flight on August 27, 1939
- Flight Captain Erich Warsitz , accessed January 10, 2020
- Erich Warsitz - rocket pilot from the very beginning in international air sports, No. 8 / August 1983 / year 18
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Blog Warsitz, Erich Karl
- ↑ a b c d e Erich Warsitz was the world's first jet pilot
- ↑ a b Manuel Praest: Ascent in the first jet
- ↑ a b MBB: Obituary for flight captain Erich Warsitz, September 1983
- ^ Jo Brettschneider: "Friend and helper of Wernher von Brauns", Rheinische Post August 6, 1983
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Warsitz, Erich |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Warsitz, Erich Karl |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German test pilot |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 18, 1906 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hattingen |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 12, 1983 |
| Place of death | Lugano , Switzerland |