Raoul Stoisavljevic

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Raoul Stoisavljevic in front of his Hansa-Brandenburg DI , September 1917

Raoul Stoisavljevic (born July 29, 1887 in Innsbruck , † September 2, 1930 at Krottenkopf near Garmisch-Partenkirchen ) was an Austrian fighter pilot and aviation pioneer.

Life

Raoul Stoisavljevic was born in Innsbruck as the son of the professional officer Miloš Stoisavljevic, who had been transferred from Agram to Innsbruck, and the Tyrolean Adelheid Hohenauer. His older sister Mileva  became a painter and enamel artist. He graduated from the Theresian Military Academy  in Wiener Neustadt and received the diploma of an airplane pilot in 1913 and that of a field pilot in 1914. During the First World War he was used as a fighter pilot, particularly on the German Western Front and the Isonzo Front, and achieved twelve aerial victories . He became a Russian prisoner of war, from which he was able to escape. In the last year of the war he was shot down by an English plane and seriously injured, so that he spent the last months of the war in command of the flight officer school in Wiener Neustadt.

After the end of the war he tried to set up a private flight service between Vienna and Budapest , but this was not possible due to the Treaty of Saint-Germain . Retired from military service, he returned to Innsbruck, where the construction of an airport was being planned. On behalf of Österreichische Luftverkehrs AG (ÖLAG), he tested the landing options in the Innsbruck area. When Innsbruck Airport was opened in Reichenau in 1925 , Stoisavljevic became deputy to the airport director, Alfred Eccher. He also represented the southern German Aero Lloyd, which operated the Innsbruck - Munich route and, from 1926, the ÖLAG for the Vienna - Salzburg - Innsbruck route. From 1925 to 1927 he carried out numerous high-altitude transport flights, on which he supplied mountain huts with food, construction and heating material, which were dropped from a height of five to eight meters. In 1927 he became a commercial pilot with the ÖLAG and covered more than 200,000 flight kilometers on scheduled services.

On September 2, 1930, Raoul Stoisavljevic had an accident with a Junkers F 13  on a postal flight from Innsbruck to Zurich in thick fog at the Krottenkopf near Garmisch-Partenkirchen. It was only two days later that his body was found next to the burned-out plane. On September 10, 1930, he was buried in Innsbruck's Westfriedhof with great public sympathy  .

Awards

For his military achievements, Stoisavljevic was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Leopold with war decorations and swords, the Knight's Cross of the Order of the Iron Crown with war decorations and swords, the silver and gold medal of bravery for officers, the medal for wounded and the Iron Cross I and II class excellent.

Commemoration

On the occasion of the first day of his death, the city of Innsbruck erected a memorial stone at Reichenau Airport in 1931, which was erected on the glider flight site in Kranebitten in 1964 after the airport was relocated and renovated in 1987.

In 1935, the ÖLAG christened its first Junkers Ju 52 / 3m  with the registration OE-LAK under the name Raoul Stoisavljevic .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ memorial Raoul Stoisavljevic. In:  Tiroler Anzeiger , September 8, 1930, p. 12 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / maintenance / tan
  2. ↑ Aviation pioneer will not be forgotten. In: Innsbrucker Stadtnachrichten, No. 4, April 1987, p. 9 ( digitized version )
personal data
SURNAME Stoisavljevic, Raoul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian fighter pilot and aviation pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH July 29, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH innsbruck
DATE OF DEATH September 2, 1930
Place of death Krottenkopf near Garmisch-Partenkirchen