Friedrich Witte (engineer)

Friedrich Witte (born February 23, 1900 in Hanover ; † December 25, 1977 in Bückeburg ) was a German railway engineer and most recently Vice President of the Federal Railway Central Office . The narrow smoke deflectors on steam locomotives named after him have become known .

Career

Friedrich Witte, son of a gatekeeper from Göttingen, was already interested in steam locomotives in his youth. From 1919 to 1923 he studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Hanover . From 1921 he was assistant at the chair for general mechanical engineering and steam engines. From 1926 he was employed by the Reichsbahndirektion Hannover . Later he moved to the Reichsbahn Central Office in Berlin, where he became a scientific assistant to the head of department for the design of steam and oil locomotives, Richard Paul Wagner . Wagner initially promoted the publishing activities of the young engineer Witte. Later, however, they came into conflict as Witte began to develop his own ideas. Witte was transferred and in 1934 became head of the machine office in Berlin Potsdamer Bahnhof. After three years, he was promoted to head of department for the mechanical equipment of railway systems at the Reichsbahnbaudirektion. From this position, too, he continued to interfere in the German steam locomotive development and was also able to make important contacts, including the general construction inspector Albert Speer . After Speer's appointment as Reich Minister for Armaments and Munitions on February 8, 1942, he reorganized the procurement of locomotives for the Reichsbahn. In October 1942 Witte succeeded Wagner as head of the steam locomotive design department at the Central Railway Office.

Act

Museum locomotive class 52 in war version with smoke deflectors of the Witte type

Witte's first important task as head of construction was to derive the war series 52 from the series 50 during ongoing production. His task was in particular to represent the interests of the Reichsbahn to Gerhard Degenkolb , the power-conscious, but inexperienced head of the responsible "Main Committee for Rail Vehicles" in the Reich Ministry for Armaments and Ammunition . For the first time in a locomotive for a German state railway, extensive use was made of the material and labor-saving welding of the parts instead of the rivet connection in the 52 series, especially for the boiler and frame. In order to save even more steel under the material shortage of wartime conditions, the smoke deflectors were initially omitted from the war locomotives. Due to the smoke that was not derived from the driver's cab, the line visibility of the locomotive staff deteriorated. Witte then had smaller, less material and manufacturing-intensive smoke deflectors than the Wagner type wind deflectors attached directly to the smoke chamber.

As early as 1937, Friedrich Witte was aiming for a boiler with a combustion chamber and a 1'C1 ' wheel arrangement when designing the 23 series , but this was persistently rejected by Richard Paul Wagner, who was the head of design at the time . However, the German manufacturers already had experience in the construction of combustion chambers for locomotive boilers intended for export.

In March 1945, the employees of the Reichsbahn-Zentralamt withdrew from Berlin to avoid the impending lockdown. They made makeshift arrangements in the Göttingen RAW . The files that could still be saved were transferred to several freight cars. At the Reichsbahn in West Germany, Friedrich Witte took over the management of the locomotive construction and purchasing department in 1948, which was newly established in Minden . He continued to lead the procurement of new steam locomotives. The German Federal Railroad , founded in 1949, had the greatest need for passenger locomotives as a replacement for the Prussian P8 . Here Friedrich Witte implemented the design of a 1'C1 'h2 locomotive with a combustion chamber, which he had already planned in 1937. As early as 1950, based on a design by Berliner Maschinenbau AG formerly L. Schwartzkopff from around 1940, the DB class 23 was built as the first new locomotive .

In 1957 he was appointed Vice President of the Federal Railroad Central Office in Minden. Witte retired in 1965. When he retired, he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit.

Friedrich Witte also designed a push-pull vehicle for shunting yards and a method for fireless parking of steam locomotives under full boiler pressure.

• Steam locomotives based on Friedrich Witte's building principles
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  DB class 23

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  DB class 82

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  DB class 66

Works

Friedrich Witte collaborated on the following books:

• Guide to Steam Locomotive Service . Transport Science Teaching Aid Society , Frankfurt am Main 1957.
• The small locomotive in shunting service at the Deutsche Reichsbahn stations . Transport science teaching aids company at the Deutsche Reichsbahn, Leipzig 1932.

literature

• Erich Preuß, Reiner Preuß: Lexicon inventors and inventions: Railway . 1st edition. transpress, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-344-00053-5 .
• Jürgen-Ulrich Ebel, Thorsten Reichert: New steam locomotives . In: Eisenbahn-Journal . Special edition 4/2006. Publishing group Bahn, Fürstenfeldbruck 2006, ISBN 3-89610-164-1 .
• Chronicle of the Railway Volume 2: 1945 to the new millennium . Heel Verlag, Königswinter 2006, ISBN 3-89880-548-4 .
• Alfred Gottwaldt: From the end of a long road . In: Railway history . No. 57 . German Society for Railway History, 2013, ISSN  1611-6283 , p. 22-29 .
• Alfred Gottwaldt: Witte's new locomotives. The last steam locomotives of the Deutsche Bundesbahn and their creators 1949 to 1977 . EK-Verlag, Freiburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-88255-772-5 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jürgen-Ulrich Ebel: Friedrich Witte and the arduous way to the "new building principles" of the DB. In: Railway courier. 6/2000, No. 333, p. 36ff.
2. ↑ Chronicle of the Railway. Volume 1, Heel Verlag, Königswinter 2005, ISBN 3-89880-413-5 , p. 258 ff.
3. ^ Alfred Gottwaldt: Wittes new construction locomotives. The last steam locomotives of the Deutsche Bundesbahn and their creators 1949 to 1977. EK-Verlag, Freiburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-88255-772-5 , p. 163.