Karl Feucht

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Karl Feucht (1925)
The polar pilots of 1924: Omdal, Riiser-Larsen, Amundsen, Dietrichson, Feucht and Ellsworth (from left to right)

Karl Feucht (born December 24, 1893 in Heimerdingen , † June 30, 1954 in Friedrichshafen ) was a German aircraft mechanic and polar pilot. In 1925 he was a mechanic on board one of the two flying boats with which the polar explorers Roald Amundsen and Lincoln Ellsworth tried in vain to reach the North Pole by air.

Life

Karl Feucht was born in 1893 as the son of the farmer Christian Feucht (1856–1929) and his wife Wilhelmine (1863–1954). He learned the metalworking trade in Stuttgart and, on the intercession of his older brother Wilhelm, got a job at the Zeppelin works in Staaken near Berlin. During the First World War he worked as a mechanic on Zeppelin airships over France and England. After the war he worked for Claude Dornier in Friedrichshafen and Rorschach and finally in Pisa .

In 1925 Roald Amundsen bought two whale flying boats from Dornier for an expedition from Spitzbergen to the North Pole . Karl Feucht was one of two factory mechanics who were supposed to assemble the aircraft in Ny-Ålesund , which were dismantled for transport . A few days before the planned take-off, Amundsen asked Feucht to accompany him in one of the aircraft, the N 25 . The expedition team now consisted of the military pilots Leif Dietrichson and Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen , the expedition leaders Roald Amundsen and Lincoln Ellsworth, and the mechanics Karl Feucht and Oskar Omdal . The planes took off on the afternoon of May 21st. In the fog that was soon to come, they drifted a little to the west, so that they had not yet reached the North Pole when Feucht discovered that half of the gasoline had been used up. While one was looking for a landing site where a precise position determination should take place, the rear engine of the N 25 failed and Riiser-Larsen landed hastily in an open water channel at 87 ° 43 ′ north latitude and 10 ° 20 ′ 1 ″ west longitude, about 250 km from the North Pole. After days of hard work, they managed to pull the machine out of the water and onto the ice on May 25th. In the meantime the three occupants of the damaged N 24 came over. The flying boat had a leak and one of the two engines was - as Feucht discovered - seized. Starting with just one engine was out of the question. But Feucht succeeded in making the N 25 airworthy again. In three weeks of work, the men leveled a runway on the ice and the six of them returned to Spitsbergen on board the N 25 .

Karl Feucht returned to his work in the Dornier works . He died in 1954 and was buried in Heimerdingen.

Familiar

Karl Feucht's wife Maria died in 1945. The couple had three children, sons Richard and Wilhelm and daughter Gertrud.

literature

  • Herbert Hoffmann: Karl Feucht - aviation pioneer and polar pilot from Heimerdingen . In: Dijou . No. 9, 6/2012, p. 10 ( PDF ; 5.31 MB).

Web links

Commons : Karl Feucht  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Hoffmann: Karl Feucht - Aviation pioneer and polar pilot from Heimerdingen , 2012.
  2. ^ Schmid: Karl Feucht (1893-1954) , Fram Museum
  3. ↑ Roald Amundsen: The hunt for the North Pole . Ullstein, Berlin 1926, p. 26.
  4. ↑ Roald Amundsen: The hunt for the North Pole . Ullstein, Berlin 1926, p. 38.
  5. ↑ A report Karl Feucht 1930 . In: Dijou . No. 9, 6/2012, p. 11.
personal data
SURNAME Moist, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German aircraft mechanic and polar aviator
DATE OF BIRTH December 24, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Heimerdingen
DATE OF DEATH June 30, 1954
Place of death Friedrichshafen