Hanno Fischer

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Hanno Fischer in the RW-3 cockpit, 1950s

Hanno Fischer (born November 15, 1924 in Wünschelburg ) is a German aircraft designer. He is one of the early, independent aviation technicians of the young Federal Republic of Germany , who developed and flew one of the first powered aircraft in Germany after the Second World War. The field of ground-effect use in aircraft has been fundamentally researched by Hanno Fischer since the mid-1970s and has been largely brought to series production and commercial usability.

Life

Hanno Fischer grew up first in Heiligenbeil in East Prussia and later in Braunau in the Sudetenland . At the age of 14, Fischer completed a course as a model making teacher at the Hoher Meißner model building school. Hanno Fischer completed his first flight on a SG 38 in 1938. After graduating from high school, Fischer volunteered for the Air Force in 1943. After a year and a half of training, Fischer joined the IV. Group of JG3 "Udet" on a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 on the Eastern Front in early 1945 . Fischer returned from captivity in 1948 and married. Hanno Fischer moved with his wife Erika to Westhoven near Cologne, where he opened a liquor store. At the same time, Fischer completed a mechanical engineering distance learning course, which he completed in 1951.

Fischer-Boretzki (1951–1954)

With the release of motorless gliding in Germany, Hanno Fischer began designing the first aircraft with Toni Boretzki in 1951. The FiBo 2 was officially a single-seat glider, but it already had a lockable propeller at the stern, which could be driven by a motor via a long-distance shaft that would later find space in the luggage compartment. As early as 1952, at a time when powered flight was still banned in Germany, Hanno Fischer received his first patent for a glider with an auxiliary engine built into the fuselage. Even before the first flight of FiBo 2, Hanno Fischer installed the DKW engine of his motorcycle in the luggage compartment and completed the first flight with this engine on today's A4 motorway between Gremberg and Rodenkirchener Rheinbrücke in early 1953 . This flight by Hanno Fischer was probably the first powered flight of an aircraft built in Germany after the war.

Rhine-West flight (1954-1958)

Hanno Fischer in his RW-3 , May 2019

In 1954, Hanno Fischer and his new partner Bernhard Schulze-Wilmert began developing a new, more powerful motor glider that was also to be suitable as a touring aircraft. In 1954, both founded Rhein-West-Flug Fischer & Co in Cologne-Porz . When the allied military authorities lifted the construction ban for powered aircraft in Germany in 1955, the detailed construction of the RWF RW-3 by Fischer had already been completed. The prototype was built at Gomolzig Flugzeugbau in Wuppertal. For series production, Fischer and Schulze-Wilmert were looking for a licensee, which they found in Rhein-Flugzeugbau , which was founded in Krefeld in 1956 by the former Focke-Wulf production manager Willi Käther . With his Rhein-West-Flug, Hanno Fischer supported the establishment of series production at Rhein-Flugzeugbau until 1958 and then took over the technical management at Rhein-Flugzeugbau.

Rhine aircraft construction (1958–1989)

Under his leadership, Rhein-Flugzeugbau built the STOL RFB RF-1 aircraft , the experimental Rhein-Flugzeugbau Sirius II motor glider and the two jacketed screw-driven RFB Fanliner and RFB Fantrainer . In the 1960s, Fischer participated in the Leichtflugtechnik Union (LFU) together with Bölkow and Pützer in the development of the first all-plastic motorized aircraft, the LFU 205 . Due to the extensive basic research in the context of this project, Rhein-Flugzeugbau was one of the few globally recognized aircraft construction companies with experience in the use of composite materials in aircraft construction in the mid-1960s.

When Alexander Lippisch returned to Germany from the USA in the mid-1960s, the ground-effect vehicles developed in the USA caught the attention of the Federal Ministry of Defense. Lippisch intended to build a new test vehicle for this technology in Germany. Instead of the flying boats made of wood in the USA, the new test vehicle was to be made of plastic. Lippisch became aware of the composite material experience at Rhein-Flugzeugbau, which finally took over the structural engineering of the test vehicle under the direction of Hanno Fischer. Lippisch worked as a consultant at RFB, while the Ministry of Defense commissioned Rhein-Flugzeugbau with the construction of the test vehicle RFB X.113 . Alexander Lippisch died during the construction of the following, larger offshore test vehicle , the RFB X.114 . Hanno Fischer continued the development work on the ground-effect vehicle alone. When the X.114 was destroyed during testing on the Baltic Sea in 1978, the Ministry of Defense lost interest in this technology. This also ended the work in the field of ground effects at Rhein-Flugzeugbau.

Fischer flight mechanics (since 1979)

Hanno Fischer took over the rights to the development and founded his engineering office Fischer Flugmechanik in 1979 , in which he continued the basic research in the field of ground effects. In ten years of work at Fischer Flugmechanik , FF Airfish was created , which was ready for series production at the end of the 1980s. The so-called WIGs (Wing in Ground) designed by Hanno Fischer included the two-seater sports boat FF Airfish AF-3 , the eight-seater taxi boat Airfish AF-8 , and the test vehicle for the hoverwing technology FF Hoverwing HW2VT . In the meantime, Hanno Fischer has sold licenses for the series production of the twenty- seat FF Hoverwing HW20 and the eighty- seat FF Hoverwing HW50 to Asia.

further activities

In old age, Fischer advises the newly founded company Fanjet Aviation , with which the Schorndorf entrepreneur Andreas Sattler is trying to further develop the jacket-screw-driven Fantrainer developed by Fischer and bring it back onto the market.

He is also still active as a pilot. In the spring of 2017, he landed with an RW-3 he had developed after an engine failure in a grain field, whereby he and the machine remained intact.

Services

  • 15 realized aircraft and boat designs 1951–2011
  • presumably Construction and flight of the first motor-powered aircraft in the Federal Republic, FiBo 2 , 1953
  • Co-development of the world's first all-plastic airplane, LFU 205 , 1964–1968
  • Development of the jacketed screw drive, 1968
  • Basic research into the effect of the ground effect on aircraft Airfish, 1979–1989
  • Development of the Whisper Fan Drive and Turkish Saber Blade, 1990
  • First ground-effect vehicle ready for series production, FF Airfish AF-3 , 1990
  • Basic development of hoverwing technology, Hoverwing HW2VT , 1998
  • More than 60 years of development activity in the field of aviation and ground-effect vehicles
  • more than 30 patents in aerospace and ground effects

Hanno Fischer's patents (selection)

  • Glider with internal auxiliary engine , DE937744C from December 16, 1952
  • Motorized airplane with T-tail , DE1034037B from September 5, 1956
  • Airplane with a propeller in a ring jacket , DE1096761 from October 16, 1958
  • Improvement of the efficiency of a drive screw rotating in a tunnel , DE1219807B from July 23, 1962
  • Airplane, in particular motorized glider with propeller drive, DE1506089A1 from October 7, 1966, DE1781112A1 from August 26, 1968
  • Drive unit for land, air and water vehicles , especially aircraft , DE1923862A1 from May 9, 1969
  • Glider with retractable propeller or drive unit with jacketed screw, DE2445013C3 from September 20, 1974
  • Variable geometry for swimmers in hydrofoils or seaplanes, DE2508205A1 from February 26, 1975
  • High-speed hovercraft with additional buoyancy through deflection flaps for the thrust flow under the vehicle , DE2540847A1 from September 13, 1979
  • Light wings for surface gliders with damping of wave effects , DE2547945A1 of October 27, 1975
  • IC-driven shrouded propeller , DE2625111A1 from June 4, 1976
  • Sound reduction device for ducted fan , DE2636056A1 of August 11, 1976
  • Configuration of propellers to decrease noise of and cyclic loads on the blades , DE3605086A1 of February 18, 1986
  • Air propeller for aircraft (Turkish saber) , DE3801353C1 from January 19, 1988
  • Ram-wing boat , DE4010877A1 of 4 April 1990, DE19637544 of 14 September 1996 DE59701418 of 12 September 1997

Developments by Hanno Fischer

Aircraft developments

  • Fischer-Boretzki FiBo 2 , single-seat motor glider from 1952, unique item
  • RWF RW-3 , two-seater light aircraft of the Rhein-Westflug from 1955, license production by RFB
  • RFB RF-1 , six-seat STOL aircraft from 1961, one-off
  • LFU 205 , test aircraft for testing plastics in aircraft construction with Bölkow, Pützer
  • RFB Sirius , motor glider for testing jacketed screws and rotary engines from 1968, two test vehicles
  • RFB Fanliner , two-seater sports and touring aircraft from 1973, two prototypes
  • Rhein-Flugzeugbau Fantrainer , two-seater military trainer from 1977, two prototypes
  • RFB Fantrainer FT-400/600 , further development of the ATI for Thailand from 1984, four prototypes, 42 production aircraft

Flying boat developments

  • RFB X.113 , test vehicle for ground effect studies, single item
  • RFB X.114 , test vehicle for deep sea studies of the ground effect, single item

Ground effect vehicles, wing-in-ground (TIG)

Unrealized drafts

Other developments

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sabine Winkler: Mönchengladbach: A pilot's soul never comes to rest. Retrieved May 7, 2017 .
  2. ↑ exhibitions. Retrieved May 7, 2017 .
  3. ↑ Rhein-Flugzeugbau: Where are we headed? In: Aerokurier, April 1973
  4. ↑ Flying ship for the Bundeswehr , In: Der Spiegel, May 23, 1977
  5. ↑ Tim Cole: License to Fly , in: Popular Mechanics, July 1989
  6. ^ Two high-flyers from Willich , Annette Westhoff, In: Welt am Sonntag, May 19, 2002
  7. ↑ Jürgen Schelling: Alternative aircraft propulsion: The nozzle goes with jacket screw , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 24, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Fischer, Hanno
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German aircraft designer
DATE OF BIRTH November 15, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Wünschelburg