Karl-Heinz Bringer

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Karl-Heinz Bringer (born June 16, 1908 in Elstertrebnitz , † January 2, 1999 in Saint-Marcel , France ) was a German rocket engineer.

Life

Germany

From 1919 to 1927 he attended secondary school in Zeitz . After graduating from high school, he wanted to become a graduate engineer and matriculated in Gdansk . However, the bankruptcy of his father's grain business forced him to drop out in 1929. From 1930 to 1932 he then did an apprenticeship as a locksmith. In the meantime, he qualified as an engineer in Leipzig after work and on Sundays. He then worked in various companies.

Shortly before the outbreak of World War II , he was drafted into the Wehrmacht on August 15, 1939 and used in Poland. Through a friend he was able to get his transfer to the Peenemünde Army Research Center on September 27, 1940 . In the drive technology department, he qualified as group leader for fluid drives.

In 1942 he applied for a patent for the concept of a gas generator which Wernher von Braun proposed for installation in the A4 .

After the end of the war, he first went to the English Ministry of Supply Establishment, Cuxhaven (MOSEC) in English-occupied Trauen . Among other things, he was involved in Operation Backfire , in which three A4 rockets were launched in Cuxhaven in October 1945 .

France

In 1946, a group of over 30 engineers and other employees of Wernher von Braun entered into a contract with French authorities to continue their work on hypergolic fluid thrusters with 40 t thrust at the Laboratoire de recherches balistiques et aéro-dynamiques (LRBA) in France . They wanted to use Bringer's gas generator for this. In September 1946, Bringer also switched to the LRBA, first in Riegel am Kaiserstuhl , then from May 1947 in Vernon, France, in a provisional settlement that was called "Buschdorf" by the German rocket engineers.

The rocket with 40 t thrust designed by the German engineers did not go into production. The French state shifted its interests to the Veronique sounding rocket with only 4 tons of thrust. For this purpose, Bringer designed an engine based on his experience from Peenemünde that burned kerosene with nitric acid . The Veronique was successfully launched for the first time on August 2, 1950.

Bringer's engine has been continuously developed:

  • Veronique AGI (from 1959): also with 4 t thrust, but with turpentine instead of kerosene as fuel
  • Veronique 61 (from 1964): 6 t thrust
  • Vesta (from 1964): 16 t thrust
  • Vexin (in Diamant A, from 1965): 28 t, used to launch the first French satellite, Astérix
  • Valois (Diamant B, from 1970): 35 t

While working on the Europe launcher , Bringer and his team returned to the 40-tonne engine. Here they developed the Viking engine from 1968, which developed a thrust of 55 t during the first test on April 8, 1971. It was used in various configurations in Ariane 1 to 4.

In 1971, the civilian developments, and thus also the Viking engine, were spun off from the state-owned LRBA and transferred to the Société européenne de propulsion (SEP), with which Bringer also got a new employer. In 1973 Bringer retired and served as a consultant for the SEP until 1976.

The Viking engine he designed was produced in 1250 copies and used between 1979 and 2003 in the first and second stages of Ariane 1 to 4. A license version of this engine is still being built in India today under the name Vikas.

Bringer took the first name Henri and received French citizenship. For his developments he received a flat-rate premium from the French state.

Honors

On September 26, 2010, a street in Saint-Marcel was named after Karl-Heinz Bringer.

Individual evidence

  1. Comment la France a recrute des savants de Hitler. (No longer available online.) May 20, 1999, archived from the original on February 21, 2011 ; Retrieved on July 17, 2011 (French): "Naturalisé sous le nom d'Henri Bringer, ce dernier recevra des" récompenses forfaitaires "au titre de ses inventions, qui demeurent propriété de l'État français."

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