Paul Klages

Paul Klages (born January 29, 1899 in Stettenhofen , † February 2, 1959 in Munich ) was a German aircraft designer.

Life

Until 1945

Klages studied at the Technical University of Hanover , where he during his thesis of Arthur Pröll of the Institute for, the head of aerodynamics and flight technology was supervised. After graduating, he got a job at Focke-Wulf-Flugzeugbau AG in Bremen , where his first job was to look after the A 16 airliner . Klages stayed in Bremen until 1927 and then switched to Albatros Flugzeugwerke , but only stayed there for a short time due to the tense economic situation in the aviation sector and switched to the shipbuilding sectorHamburg Shipbuilding Research Institute for the calculation and construction of ship propellers .

Henrich Focke offered him a job in his design office when Focke-Wulf's financial situation began to ease due to a major order placed by Luft Hansa at the end of 1927 for the delivery of several A 17 “Möve” commercial aircraft . Klages returned to Focke-Wulf in 1928 and was initially hired as a group leader alongside Wilhelm Bansemir. His first own construction in the same year was the reconnaissance aircraft K 23 "Buchfink" , designed as a biplane. However, almost completed, it was completely destroyed in a major night fire in the workshop of Focke-Wulf on September 11, 1929. But his next design, the S 24 “Kiebitz” sports plane , was built in a small series, a success. Since no funds were earmarked for such a model by the factory management, Klages developed the aircraft together with the designer Wohlberg in his spare time. Gerd Achgelis won the German aerobatic championship in 1931 with an S 24c . The next designs from Klage's pen were the three-seat passenger aircraft A 33 "Sperber" and the modern, fast touring aircraft A 43 "Falke" , but both were unsuccessful. His best-known Focke-Wulf design, the Fw 44 “Stieglitz” training aircraft , for which he used the “Kiebitz” as a base, was created under his new supervisor Kurt Tank , who was discontinued in 1931 under pressure from the Reich Aviation Ministry . The statement that can be found again and again in the literature that Tank then actively participated in the subsequent aircraft designs by Focke-Wulf is not correct, because as the technical director of the design department he was only responsible for the organization and distribution of tasks. The "Stieglitz" was one of the standard training aircraft of the Luftwaffe and nearly two thousand copies were built. As the last draft that he put on paper for Focke-Wulf together with Andreas von Faehlmann, Klages created the twin-engine Fw 58 “Weihe” training aircraft , of which more than 1,650 were built.

After Henrich Focke left his company in 1933 under pressure from Kurt Tank, Klages also took the next opportunity and took over the position of chief designer at AGO Flugzeugwerke in Oschersleben on April 1, 1935 . Seven projects were worked on there under his leadership, of which only the AGO Ao 192 touring aircraft was built in small numbers. When there were no major successes, the AGO development department was closed on April 1, 1939. Their former employees were then supposed to be taken over by Messerschmitt , but Klages and his closest employees managed to move to Focke, Achgelis & Co GmbH, which had been set up by Henrich Focke , where a mock-up of the Fa 269 convertible aircraft was built based on his ideas . Another technically demanding design was the Fa 330 "Wagtail" helicopter , for which Klages received the " Dr. Fritz Todt Prize in Steel" on March 3, 1944 . In 1944, he was briefly involved in the development of the Me 163 rocket aircraft by order . Another instruction called him back to Focke-Wulf at the end of 1944, where he dealt with problems in the pressurized cabin of the Ta 152 H high altitude hunter . On February 1, 1945, Klages was promoted to chief engineer. He experienced the end of the war in Bad Eilsen , where he worked as a gardener and thus (for the time being) was able to evade the access of Allied “specialist hunters”.

After 1945

After the end of the war, both the Western Allies and the Soviet Union began increasingly to employ German experts for their respective military development programs, some of which were compulsory. Klages tried to escape this by fleeing to Argentina in 1947, which he succeeded in the following year after being arrested at the Danish border and subsequently handed over to the British occupation forces and imprisoned for several months in Neuengamme . He reached Buenos Aires on May 17, 1948 and was appointed personal assistant to Kurt Tank, who was now working there on military projects for Argentina's President Juan Perón . Klages subsequently participated in around 20 aircraft concepts , of which the I.Ae.27 "Pulqui I" , the I.Ae.33 "Pulqui II" and the I.Ae.35 "Huanquero" were the most successful.

In 1956, Paul Klages went to Spain at Willy Messerschmitt's request and participated in Seville as his representative and head of a development group in the construction of the HA-200 jet trainer . In the summer of 1957, Klages returned to Germany and settled near Munich to continue working for Messerschmitt as head of construction.

literature

• René Scheer: AGO aircraft works. From the lattice hull to the Me 262 . Dr. Ziethen, Oschersleben 2014, ISBN 978-3-86289-078-1 , pp. 40 ff .
• René Scheer: Paul Klages: In the shadow of Kurt Tanks . In: Aviation Classics . No. 6/2015 . Motor Presse, Stuttgart, p. 54-57 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Reinhold Thiel: Focke-Wulf aircraft construction . Hauschild, Bremen 2011, ISBN 978-3-89757-489-2 , pp. 41 .
2. ↑ Manfred Griehl: Focke-Wulf since 1925 . Motorbuch, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-613-03006-0 , p. 49 .