Fritz Simon

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Fritz Simon (born July 21, 1904 in Wittenberg , Germany ; † October 6, 1931 in Cobequid Bay , Canada ) was a pilot and captain of Lufthansa . He is one of the 196 Lufthansa employees who had a fatal accident while doing their job. The traditional Lufthansa aircraft Ju 52 / 3m D-AQUI bore its name when it was commissioned.

career

After attending commercial secondary school, Simon joined Junkers as a volunteer in 1923. He worked for Junkers Luftverkehr and was taken over by the newly founded Lufthansa in 1926. In 1930 he was assigned as the second Lufthansa pilot to serve on the mail pre-excursion from the express steamer Bremen , as Jobst von Studnitz was supposed to take over the service on the new Europe . As of July 14, he made ten flights. The flights planned for October had to be canceled because the Heinkel HE 12 on- board machine was not operational. From May 10, 1931, he carried out the season's flights with his new radio operator Rudolf Wagenknecht . After seven successful flights, there was an accident when taking off for Southampton on July 4th and the aircraft was damaged, which had to be given to the manufacturer for repair. On August 18th, Simon / Wagenknecht were able to take off again from the Bremen and successfully carried out the advance flights on the following trips.

Deadly accident

On October 5, 1931, the Heinkel HE 12 D-1717 took off from the express steamer Bremen already 2500 km from New York on its 18th flight of the season. She wanted to reach her destination New York with a stopover in Sydney (Nova Scotia) , as the machine of the sister ship Europa had already done in September. The plane landed in front of Glace Bay after a 9.5 hour flight, but then flew on to Sydney, just 25 km away. During the four-hour break there, the radio operator Wagenknecht is said to have worked almost continuously on the engine. Shortly after midnight, the plane took off on its onward flight to New York. About 300 km southwest of Sydney, the plane crashed over Cobequid Bay . The machine was found the next day at low tide. From the remains it was concluded that Simon had tried to land with an engine failure and that he was probably mistaking the mudflats for the water surface. The pilot's body was found three days later. Rudolf Wagenknecht's body could not be found.

This remained the only serious accident until the catapult flights of high-speed steamers ended in 1935.

Lufthansa named the Junkers Ju 52 serial number 4077 D-ANOP after Simon in 1935 , which was sold to Norway the following year . In 1936 the Junkers Ju 52 WNr. 5555 D-AGOO his name. After an eventful fate, this machine with the registration D-CDLH (unofficial: D-AQUI) belongs to the Deutsche Lufthansa Berlin-Stiftung . On October 30, 2008, it was the last aircraft to take off from Berlin-Tempelhof Airport before it was officially closed.

Web links

literature

  • Jörg-M. Hörmann: Flugbuch Atlantik, German catapult flights 1927–1939. Klasing, 2007, ISBN 3-7688-1973-6 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ REG Davies: Lufthansa: An Airline and Its Aircraft . 1st edition. Paladwr Press, Rockville 1991, ISBN 0-9626483-3-7 , pp. 44 .
personal data
SURNAME Simon, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pilot and flight captain of the German Lufthansa
DATE OF BIRTH July 21, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Wittenberg
DATE OF DEATH October 6, 1931
Place of death Cobequid Bay , Canada