Hellmuth Hirth
Hellmuth Hirth (* 24. April 1886 in Heilbronn , † 1. July 1938 in Carlsbad ) was an aviation pioneer , aircraft - and aircraft engines konstrukteur .
He used the invention of his father Albert Hirth of a radial spur toothing ( Hirth toothing ) for propellers and made them popular. Together with Herrmann Mahle, he founded the Hellmuth Hirth experimental building, which was later taken over entirely by the Mahle brothers Herrmann and Ernst Mahle and at the start of the Mahle Group . Hirth himself concentrated with his company on aircraft and aircraft engine construction.
Life
Hellmuth Hirth was Albert Hirth's oldest son and was born on April 24, 1886 in Heilbronn. According to the father's motto "My boys should be allowed to catch young devils in the open field if they feel like it" Hellmuth dealt with everything that was "in" back then. The “jack of all trades” drove a motorcycle at the age of twelve and an automobile at thirteen . At the same time he gave adults driving lessons and drove their vehicles. Hellmuth's freedom and his practical disposition were probably to blame that he had difficulties in school.
Apprenticeship as a mechanic
He completed an apprenticeship as a mechanic and at the age of seventeen he went to the USA. There he took a position at the Singer sewing machine factory and, thanks to his suggestions for improvement, quickly brought it to the foreman. Unsatisfied with this work, he took a mechanic's position at a New York auto repair shop and became a Christie car racing driver. After a detour into the Brazilian jungle, where he went hunting, he made improvements to the phonograph rollers in Thomas Alva Edison's laboratory .
Head of his father's branch of Fortuna in Great Britain
In 1904 Hirth returned to Germany, attended the building trade school in Stuttgart and in 1908 took over the management of his father's Fortuna-Werke branch in Great Britain. During this time there was a key experience that was to determine the future path of the young Hirth's life. By chance he came across Otto Lilienthal's famous book “The flight of birds as the basis of the art of flying”. From then on it was clear to him, supported by his father's aviation ambitions, that he would become an aviator.
Construction of an airplane
Through his father's mediation, he worked for a short time as a foreman for the aviation pioneer August Euler in Darmstadt. However, since he had difficulties with his Voisin flying machine, Hirth returned to Stuttgart to build a Blériot machine himself . Because the engine was too weak, it couldn't get out of the air, which is why Hirth went to Vienna to fly with the Etrich Taube at Illner's . After just four flights he had mastered the machine so that Edmund Rumpler , who had taken over the German representation of Etrich aircraft , hired him as chief pilot.
Pilot license
On March 11, 1911, Hellmuth Hirth acquired the German pilot's license No. 79. Hirth is one of the old eagles , the flight pioneers who had passed their pilot's examination before August 1, 1914 in accordance with the provisions of the German Aviation Association in Germany. In the same year he won the Upper Rhine reliability flight , where he defeated the old master Emile Jeannin , and was the winner of the Kathreiner Prize on the overland flight from Munich to Berlin. He set the world record in altitude with a passenger of 2,475 meters and took one of the top places in the Schwabenflug. Hirth reported the anecdote about one of these flights: “I flew over a place while a fair was being held, one of the sensations of which was a menagerie with wild animals. Suddenly a couple of women saw me and shouted: "A plane is coming". The bystanders understood what might be closer to them 'A tiger is coming!' and with the addition of 'Save yourself' everything chased up and mixed up. "
Senior engineer at Rumpler
Although Rumpler soon made chief engineer Hirth chief engineer, in 1912 he went to the Albatros works in Johannisthal near Berlin as technical director . A few months later he hired the aircraft designer Ernst Heinkel as design manager for the Albatros Flugzeugwerke .
In 1912 Hellmuth Hirth emerged victorious from almost all major flights: for example the 2nd Oberrheinische Rundflug and the Süddeutsche Flug. He was the only participant to master the Berlin – Breslau – Vienna race over a distance of 600 km (June 6 to 12, 1912). Then he increased the world record in altitude to 4,420 meters.
He owed the successes that Hellmuth Hirth achieved to his precise knowledge of aircraft engines. In a conversation with Kaiser Wilhelm II on the occasion of the award of the Crown Order IV class on June 25, 1912 , he said “... that the nation that developed the best aircraft engine would automatically build the best aircraft.” The years 1913 and 1914 brought further German and international successes and records. In addition, Hirth was busy building a giant airplane with which he wanted to cross the Atlantic. But the beginning of the First World War thwarted all plans. In the Boelcke Jagdstaffel Hirth rose to lieutenant in a very short time and received the Iron Cross, 2nd class.
Construction of the giant aircraft Gotha
Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin , who was looking for military aviation options, had meanwhile heard of Hirth's plans for a giant aircraft and managed to get Robert Bosch to release his friend and director Gustav Klein for this task. Heinkel was also won. This group met for a first meeting in September 1914 and commissioned the Stuttgart engineer Baumann - from whom the young Heinkel had acquired his first theoretical knowledge - with the construction, while Klein took over the overall management and Hirth the technical management. And after just six months, the Gotha RI was completed and could be flown in by Hellmuth Hirth.
Development of a two-stroke engine
In addition to his work as a flight instructor for giant aircraft, Hirth also devoted himself to engine construction. He developed a two-stroke engine and registered a patent for a hollow propeller in which the exhaust gases are thrown away through fine nozzles on the back of the propeller blade. After the war, Hellmuth Hirth resumed his design work. As early as 1920, together with Hermann Mahle, he founded the company that would later become Elektronmetall in Stuttgart, which primarily produced engine pistons, aircraft brake wheels, and air and oil filters made of electron - an aluminum-magnesium alloy.
Motors for motorcycles
Hellmuth Hirth designed engines for motorcycles with which the third member of the league, his younger brother Wolf Hirth , hurried from victory to victory and ultimately won the "German Road Championship". Since Hellmuth Hirth was still connected to aviation, he built a light aircraft made entirely of metal, which was named "Spatz". He also had a light air-cooled engine in mind. Then he remembered a patent from his father, which had gone down in technical history as " Hirth spur teeth ". In an engine with a composite crankshaft, closed roller or roller bearings could be used instead of a plain bearing . This improved the efficiency of the motor through higher speeds, the motor was more compact and required less lubricant.
Founding of Hirth-Motoren GmbH
In 1931 Hellmuth Hirth founded Hirth-Motoren GmbH in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen, where the new HM-60 engine with 60 hp was soon created, which quickly became popular throughout Germany. Many other engine designs followed, and on the Germany flight in 1935 the thirty best-placed machines flew with Hirth engines. From 1936 the first jet engines in the world designed by Hans Joachim Pabst von Ohain were built for Heinkel in the Hirth engine factory. With this the vision of "Father Hirth" came true.
Hellmuth Hirth died - less than three years after the death of his father - on July 1, 1938 at the age of 52 from the consequences of a ruptured liver which he sustained in a plane crash during the First World War.
Fonts
- Helmuth Hirth: My flight experiences - 20,000 kilometers in the sea of air. 2nd expanded edition. Dümmlers 1915, 239 p., Numerous illustrations
literature
- L. Heiss: Hirth - father, Hellmuth, Wolf. Verlag Reinhold A. Müller, Stuttgart, 1949
- Gert Behrsing: Hirth, Hellmuth. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-00190-7 , p. 237 ( digitized version ).
- Stefan Blumenthal: Albert Hirth and his sons Hellmuth and Wolf. A Swabian family of inventors. In: Jörg Baldenhofer (Ed.): Swabian inventors and inventors. DRW-Verlag, Stuttgart 1986, ISBN 3-87181-232-3 , pp. 112-121.
- H. Schmolz: Hellmuth Hirth. From scrub pioneer to aviation pioneer and ingenious engine designer. GKN, Neckarwestheim 1991.
- Stefan Blumenthal: Greetings from the air. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-613-01336-3 .
- Günter Schmitt, Werner Schwipps: Pioneers of early aviation. Gondrom Verlag, Bindlach 1995, ISBN 3-8112-1189-7 .
- Peter Wanner: Star pilot and designer. Hellmuth Hirth (1886-1938) . In: Christhard Schrenk , Heilbronn City Archives (ed.): Heilbronner Köpfe. Life pictures from four centuries. Volume 4, Heilbronn 2007 (Small series of publications by the Heilbronn Archives, 52), ISBN 978-3-928990-99-8 , pp. 107–124.
Web links
- Literature by and about Hellmuth Hirth in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ↑ Aviation by Oskar Ursinus - Complete year 1912 as digital full text | Aviation Aviation Aviation Aviation Air Force. Retrieved August 27, 2019 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hirth, Hellmuth |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German designer and aviation pioneer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 24, 1886 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Heilbronn |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 1, 1938 |
| Place of death | Carlsbad |