Erwin Musger

Erwin Musger (born March 20, 1909 in Neumarktl / Krain ( Austria-Hungary ), † March 16, 1985 in Graz ) was an Austrian aircraft and vehicle designer.

Life

After attending elementary and community school in his hometown, Musger received vocational training from 1925 to 1927 at the Federal Institute for Mechanical and Electrical Engineering in Klagenfurt . From 1927 to 1929 he attended the electrical and mechanical engineering trade school in Vienna .

Musger got his first position as a designer at JM Voith in St. Pölten , where he was involved in the construction of paper machines and ship propellers based on the Voith-Schneider system. In 1933, Musger was fired because of a lack of work and moved to Herzogenburg . Since 1930 he was a member of the local glider club. To be able to fly more often than was possible in the context of the club, Musger began planning and construction of a large fuselage glider, the Mg I . In 1933, after his release, he took over the flight control and was field commander until he left the flying group in 1937. In 1934 he passed his C-examination with the Mg IV , which arose from the modifications of the Mg I.

In those years he began to build a motor machine ( Mg III ), which could not be completed until 1937. Musger had been designing a new two-seater since 1935, the Mg 9 , the statics of which Eduard Walzl from Akaflieg Graz helped to calculate. With this machine numerous Austrian long-term flight records were set, with a Mg 9a by Toni Kahlbacher as flight instructor on 5th / 6th. September 1938 with 23 h and 41 min and on 8/10. September 1938 with 40 hours and 41 minutes two world records in the two-seater.

In 1937 Musger designed a C-school machine for the Austrian Aero Club (ÖAeC) under the designation Mg 12 / 12a , which went in small series together with the Mg 9a . In December 1937 he got a position as a designer and structural engineer at Wiener Neustädter Flughafen Betriebsgesellschaft mbH. During the war, Musger was partly in Berlin in the Reich Aviation Ministry , where he worked on the development of the control of cargo gliders.

Puch 250 SG with the shell frame based on the patent by Erwin Musger and Alfred Oswald

In 1948, due to the calculation and construction of a patented shell frame for motorcycles, he got a job at Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG in Graz, which then included motorcycles and mopeds with this shell frame in its production program from 1950 to 1972 , a sensational innovation in motorcycle construction at the time.

In his spare time, Musger and structural engineer Leopold Hager further developed the Mg 9a to the Mg 19 , which was built in series by the Josef Oberlerchner company in Spittal / Drau . A total of 45 of these aircraft were built between 1951 and 1961.

From 1957 to 1961 Musger worked for the Innocenti company in Milan, where he was active in the two-wheeler and four-wheeler sector, and from 1961 to 1971 again at Puch . The single-seat power sailing machine Mg 23 was built in 1954 , which also went into series production at Oberlerchner and was manufactured until 1966. Before and after the Second World War, Musger realized more construction designs than any other Austrian aircraft manufacturer.

In 1955 he received the gold badge of honor, and in 1976 the gold medal of honor of the Austrian Aero Club.

literature

• Reinhard Keimel :  Musger, Erwin. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , p. 630 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Two-seat performance aircraft "Mg 9" , in: Flugsport 1936, p. 406
• From tubular to shell frames , construction trends in motorcycle construction
• Great success in the Geneva Salon in: Südost-Tagespost, Graz, January 13, 1952
• J. Zopp: Austrian gliders on the rise! , in: austroflug 4/1959
• H. Zoffmann: Erwin Musger - an Austrian aviation pioneer , in: austroflug 12/1972, p. 18; austroflug 1/1973, p. 15; austroflug 2/1973, p. 14
• Reinhard Keimel : Ing. Erwin Musger, Flugzeug- u. Vehicle designer from Austria , in: Blätter für Technikgeschichte, Issue 48, 1987, pp. 7-106
• F. Ehn: The motorcycle constructions . In: Blätter für Technikgeschichte, Heft 48, 1987, pp. 107–128

Web links

• Pictures , etc. a. von Musgerflugzeugen, from the Aviaticum Aviation Museum in Wr. Neustadt