Lothar Sieber
Lothar Sieber (born April 7, 1922 in Dresden , † March 1, 1945 near Stetten am kalten Markt - Nusplingen ) was a pilot in the German Air Force in World War II . In 1944 he was taken over as a test pilot by the Bachem company in Waldsee and carried out the first manned vertical take-off of a rocket aircraft in history with the Bachem Ba 349 Natter , in which he lost his life.
Life
Sieber wanted to be a pilot even as a child. He began his training on January 17, 1940 at the FFS (A / B) 122 flying school in Gutenfeld and the FFS (B) 38 in Schippenbeil . In January 1941 he was awarded "excellent". Sieber was extremely talented and easily got along with a wide variety of aircraft types during war missions. Among other things, he flew an Italian transporter and captured Soviet and American bombers such as the Tupolev TB-3 or the Boeing B-17 . Sieber was promoted to lieutenant for his services and held his first command from April 24, 1942. On February 11, 1943, he was demoted to a simple aviator by a field court in Minsk because of an offense against guards involving alcohol. He received after intervention by Hermann Goering six weeks intensified arrest .
In August 1944 Sieber freed 23 comrades trapped under fire at KG 200 in the Ukraine with an Arado Ar 232 combat zone transporter during a life-threatening low-level flight operation behind enemy lines. For this he received a letter of appreciation from the then leader of the KG 200, Major Werner Baumbach , who was himself a very successful fighter pilot, and the Iron Cross First Class. After further flying successes, Otto Skorzeny , head of the SS hunting associations, suggested him for the German Cross in Gold . Lothar Sieber remained the pilot of an Arado Ar 232 until he became a test pilot at the Bachem company ( Bachem Werke GmbH ) in Waldsee in December 1944 .
On March 1, 1945, the 22-year-old carried out the first manned flight on the vertical take-off rocket aircraft Bachem Ba-349 Natter and was killed in the process. He had been assured that his demotion would be lifted after the test flight and that he would be promoted to first lieutenant . This rank was then also awarded to him posthumously . Shortly before the start, Sieber became engaged to the Air Force helper Gertrud Nauditt.
The flight
The Ba-349 was a manned rocket aircraft that was supposed to reach an altitude of 10 to 15 km within a few minutes in order to fight the Allied bomber groups. The pilot and the essential parts of the aircraft should slide to the ground after the parachute operation .
After Lothar Sieber got to know the Natter project better at the beginning of December 1944, he was inspired by the rocket technology and was firmly convinced of its success during the trials. He had full confidence in the inventor and chief designer Erich Bachem and, just like the designer himself, fevered with every attempt to start a test machine. In addition to various successful, automatically controlled starts of various test machines, he was also present when the Natter M33 exploded in midair on February 26, 1945. Despite all the enthusiasm for the project and all trust in Bachem, he recognized the not inconsiderable risk that the start entailed and put his will on paper the day before the start.
On March 1, 1945 Sieber boarded the device at the launch pad on the Ochsenkopf of the Heuberg military training area for the first manned start of the Natter project. Before taking off, he insisted on not using the already successfully tested automatic Askania flight attitude control system (manufacturer: Askania-Werke Berlin-Reinickendorf), but on controlling the machine by hand using the rudder. Before take-off, Sieber was instructed to fly half a roll at a time in case the machine should lie on its side. The start went perfectly. According to eyewitnesses, Sieber also flew the agreed role when the aircraft tilted. After the Schmidding solid launch rocket was dropped , it was observed that the canopy of the machine had come off and fell to the ground. The adder then disappeared into a blanket of cloud. According to eyewitnesses, the engine was still firing. A short time later, the machine shot straight down from the clouds and buried itself at high speed in the ground. The flight only lasted around 55 seconds. The ground crew waited in vain for a parachute with the pilot. The crash site was about 7 km away near Nusplingen, a district of Stetten am kalten Markt. A 5 m deep impact crater, half a left arm and half a left leg were found there, otherwise only the smallest body parts. A 14 cm long skull bone was later excavated.
The reconstruction of the unsuccessful test start resulted in an average speed of around 800 km / h. A hood hinge that was too weakly dimensioned was given as the official cause of the accident. The actual cause, however, was a jammed Schmidding start-up rocket, which Sieber was supposed to shake off with violent flight maneuvers according to a radio command. The hood was thrown off by Sieber because he wanted to get out to save himself with the parachute, which is said to have been prohibited by radio. Instead, Sieber should stabilize the machine again with the braking parachute. This failed, however, as the braking parachute in the stern could not be opened because of the jammed start aid rocket. Sieber probably lost his bearings in the low-lying clouds. This made the plane supine and flatter. The pilot mistakenly interpreted the increase in speed as a descent and evidently pulled on the oars, which made the situation worse and ultimately led to an irreversible dive. He was still trying to escape from the cabin, but failed because of the extreme flight speed. Only the left extremities protruded from the machine after it was found when it was hit and were severed on impact. The rest of his body was shattered as the machine drifted underground.
After the accident, the real cause of the accident should be covered up in order to avoid an otherwise overhaul of the construction. Even pictures are said to have been retouched to conceal the fact that the adder was equipped with a FUG-16 radio.
The adder was planned as a missile interceptor plane that was to be flown by only briefly trained pilots. Because of the war situation, the first manned launch was poorly prepared and, in the truest sense of the word, a suicide mission. After Sieber's death, other unmanned take-offs were carried out on the Heuberg. These were mainly used to test the simplified wooden launch vehicle, which should also have been used as a launch site when the adder was deployed as part of "Operation Krokus" . The approaching end of the war and the advance of the Allied troops, however, led to an abrupt end to the entire Natter project.
The remains of Lothar Sieber were buried with military honors on March 3, 1945 in the Stetten cemetery on the kalten Markt . His original single grave was included in a redesign of the graves of the war dead in 2005.
In 1998/99, excavations took place at the Lothar Sieber crash site, during which the remains of one of the Schmidding start-up missiles were found. This was proof that an auxiliary missile had not properly detached from the fuselage of the M23 machine. The original parts of the M23 that were found during the excavations can be viewed in the military history collection Stetten am kalten Markt on the Heuberg camp site. There is also a replica of the M23 experimental machine, with which Sieber was killed.
See also
literature
- Horst Lommel: The world's first manned rocket launch - Natter secret operation , Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart, 2nd edition 1998, ISBN 3-613-01862-4 .
- Horst Lommel: Secret Projects of German Military Aviation 1939–1945. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart, 2013, ISBN 978-3-613-03609-3
- Horst Lommel: The manned projectile BA 349 "Natter" - the history of technology , 1st edition VDM, Zweibrücken, 2000. ISBN 3-925480-39-0
Web links
- Military history collection Stetten am kalten Markt
- Matthias Schulz: Full throttle into the crater ; SPIEGEL 42/2002
- Lothar Sieber: Who was this man?
Individual evidence
- ↑ Horst Lommel: The first manned rocket launch in the world. Motorbuch Verlag, 2nd edition 1998, ISBN 3-613-01862-4 , p. 90.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Sieber, Lothar |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German air force pilot |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 7, 1922 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Dresden |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 1, 1945 |
| Place of death | Stetten am kalten Markt |