Fritz Loose

Fritz Loose (1930)

Fritz Loose (born January 25, 1897 in Brüx , Bohemia , Austria-Hungary , † December 24, 1982 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German aviation pioneer who became known through records and his work for Junkers.

Live and act

After graduating from a community school, he was trained as a technician on the Königshöhe in Teplitz . In the First World War he took part in the Navy as a volunteer . a. participated in the Skagerrak Battle on the cruiser Lützow . At the beginning of 1917 he was transferred to the Second Sea Aviation Department. There a practical training took place in the sea flight station Wilhelmshaven on a 3-shaft Friedrichshafen double-decker with 150-HP-Benz-engine. Finally, Loose was deployed as a station pilot at the bomb school for observers on the Baltic Sea . In the spring of 1918 he was assigned to a front-line pilot at the North Sea air station in Helgoland , then to List on Sylt , where he flew sea reconnaissance until the end of the war and received the gold seaplane badge.

After his discharge from military service, Loose was with the Voluntary North Sea Aviation Department to support the minesweeping associations in the North Sea . At the end of September 1920, however, a general flight ban was imposed by the Allies and the aircraft were destroyed. In 1920 he got a job in Dresden in the motor vehicle department at the police headquarters. In his spare time he worked on the construction of the first glider of the flight technology association in the workshops of the TH Dresden . This was called "pork belly" and was a single-handled double-decker. Fritz Loose soon became a flight attendant at this club and participated in the beginnings of gliding in Germany. Loose received the glider pilot's license with the number 23, issued on June 17, 1922.

So far, Loose had only flown aircraft made of wood and canvas. The landing of Junkers pilot Wilhelm Zimmermann in 1922 with the all-metal Junkers F 13 aircraft on the Elbe inspired him to apply to the air traffic department at Junkers.

Pilot at Junkers

In January 1923, Loose received practical and extensive training as a pilot in the Junkers headquarters and passed the flight test to obtain the civilian pilot's license in Berlin . His first cross-country flight was in a Junkers F 13 with a Mercedes 160 hp six-cylinder from Dessau to Berlin. He worked as a test pilot on behalf of the Reichswehr and transferred machines from Junkers to the clients. In Stockholm he received the Swedish pilot's license. Further flights led to İzmir and Spain . He took part in the transport of the wounded for the Spanish Red Cross on the Morocco front during the war against the Rifkabylen .

After the merger (1926) of Junkers-Luftverkehr and the Deutsche Luftreederei Aero Lloyd to form Deutsche Luft Hansa , Loose remained a factory pilot with Junkers. Demonstrations, overpasses, flights in and record flights of various types were among his tasks. He also flew personally as chief pilot Professor Junkers in the F 13 management aircraft with the registration number D-282 (until 1929).

Transatlantic flight

Encouraged by Charles Lindbergh's crossing of the Atlantic in a west-east direction, Fritz Loose, together with Hermann Köhl and Freiherr von Hünefeld, started with the Junkers W 33 " Bremen " and with the "Europa" with Cornelius Edzard , Johann Risticz and the journalist Knickerbocker to the much more difficult one East-West Passage. Due to the weather conditions and technical problems, the flight of the specially equipped Junkers W 33 had to be canceled. On April 12, 1928, the Köhl crew, von Hünefeld and James C. Fitzmaurice, who had boarded in Ireland, set out on the successful crossing of the Atlantic after 37 hours of flight time. Another attempt on October 4, 1927 with a three-engine Junkers G 24 (D-1230) float plane ended in the Azores with a propeller broken.

Far East

In 1928 three Junkers aircraft were transferred to China . The Junkers W 33 were transported by ship to Shanghai , while Loose and his fitters traveled with the Trans-Siberian Railway and by ship. The transfer flight with a machine according to German and French general staff maps led to Luoyang in the province of Henan, 1000 km away, without a weather report . Officer pilots from the local military governor were briefed and trained there. The other two planes have since been shipped to the Philippines , otherwise they would have been confiscated by the Chiang Kai-shek troops.

Flight captain

On March 1, 1930, Fritz Loose was appointed captain of the Junkers Flugzeugwerke. He was entrusted by the Aero Club of Germany with a Junkers A 50 for the inspection flight of the Europe sightseeing flight in 1930 . The competition management refused to allow him to take part in the actual 10,000 kilometer sightseeing flight because he had already flown the route and thus had an advantage. Loose then went on a trip to the USA to take part in the National Air Races in Chicago on an aircraft from the Italian Savoia Marchetti works .

In 1931 Loose was employed as a pilot in the Junkers Aircraft Division (Jfa). In this role, one in was England approved autogyro Cierva autogyro-C-19 Mk III presented on behalf of Deutsche Lufthansa Fritz Loose at many air shows and caused a sensation. In total, he flew this machine for about 30 hours and covered around 4500 km. It was the forerunner of today's helicopters . In the aviation promotion Die Deutsche Jugend by Hajo Folkerts , the son-in-law of Prof. Junkers, he took over the management of the 6-seater Junkers F 13 from A. Grundke and by 1933 had 12,000 take-offs and landings on over 70 temporary airfields with over 80,000 Children and adolescents.

In 1933 Loose became a training officer and flight instructor at the German Air Sports Association in Dresden. From 1934 to 1938 he built a mission flight service for the Lutheran Church (ALC) with a converted Junkers F 13 in New Guinea . After returning to Germany in 1939, Fritz Loose was a single-flyer and flight operations manager at the Junkers factories in Dessau, Bernburg and Leipzig, which have since been nationalized. There he flew about 1000 Junkers Ju 88s .

post war period

After the war, Loose spent with relatives in the Ore Mountains and fled to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1952. In 1955 Fritz Loose came to Bonn-Hangelar and took over the position of airfield manager, which he held until 1968. He acquired the newly introduced private driver's license for pilots again. He was also an honorary officer for air traffic control and a member of the examination board for powered flight of the regional council in Düsseldorf . When he retired, he moved to Freiburg im Breisgau, where he died on December 24, 1982.

Records

• 1927, March 21: Record flight with a Junkers W 33 together with Karl Schnäbele with 500 kg payload after 22 hours, 11 minutes, 45 seconds and 2735 km
• 1927, March 30th: World peak performance: solo flight in a Junkers W33 seaplane with 500 kg payload between Dessau and Elster for 14 hours, covered 1700 km and doubled the previous records of an American and Italian.
• 1927, July: As a test for an Atlantic test, the test pilots Johann Risticz and Cornelius Edzard set the long-term flight world record of 52 hours with the Junkers W33, while Fritz Loose and Hermann Köhl had to make an emergency landing on the second W 33 due to engine failure.

literature

• Michael Hofbauer, Dieter Leder, Peter Schmelzle: The world of the high-flyers - 75 years of North Atlantic flight east-west. Deutsche Post AG, 2003.
• Fred W. Hotson: THE BREMEN . Nara, ISBN 3-925671-22-6 .
• Fritz Loose: On water, on land and in the air. Zuerl, Steinebach-Wörthsee, ISBN 3-87500-076-5 .
• Günter Schmitt, Thomas Hofmann, Angelika Hofmann: Junkers and his planes. 2nd edition, Transpress, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-344-00192-2 .
  • Günter Schmitt, Thomas Hofmann, Angelika Hofmann: Hugo Junkers and his planes. Motorbuch, Stuttgart 1986, ISBN 3-613-01111-5 .
• Werner Schulz:  Loose, Fritz. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 15, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-428-00196-6 , p. 156 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Detlef Siegfried : The Fliegerblick intellectuals, radicalism and aircraft production at Junkers 1914 to 1934. Dietz, Bonn 2001, ISBN 3-8012-4118-1 .

Web links

• Page about Junkers