Richard Dietrich

Richard Dietrich

Richard Josef Dietrich (* 28. March 1894 in Mannheim ; † 28. December 1945 in the NKVD special camp Fünfeichen in Neubrandenburg ) was a German aircraft - designer and entrepreneur .

Life

Dietrich DP I “Sperber” in 1922 in L'Aéronautique

Dietrich was born on March 28, 1894 in Mannheim, the son of a furniture manufacturer. He attended elementary school in his hometown and then switched to grammar school, which he completed in 1900 with the Untersekunda . At the age of 18 he began pilot training in Bruno Hanuschke's flight school in Johannisthal in October 1912 , where he damaged the aircraft on the first solo flight in December and gained his first experience with aircraft construction during the subsequent repair. His next flight on January 13, 1913 also ended in a crash landing and again Dietrich and his flight instructor had to repair the device. In addition, Hanuschke and his student who worked as a volunteer built a new aircraft, and Dietrich also acquired initial knowledge of the design. The aircraft flew successfully for the first time in October of that year. Since his flight training had been neglected in the construction, Dietrich undertook subsequent to the flight school of Hans Grade in Bork, now Borkheide , and acquired on 8 November 1913, combining ticket . He belonged to the so-called Old Eagles , the 817 aviation pioneers who passed the pilot's exam even before the outbreak of the First World War . For his first flight after completing his training, which was his 21st overall, he received the ℳ 1000 hour premium from the national flight donation , with which he bought his own aircraft from Grade and was the first to fly over his home town of Mannheim on March 29, 1914. In the following time he also gave flight demonstrations there. During World War I he served as a war volunteer in various aviation departments on the Western Front and in Romania . After the end of the war he worked as a test pilot in the Rhemag aircraft engine plant . In a backyard workshop in Mannheim, he constructed a replica of the Fokker D.VII fighter aircraft , which was known as the DP I Sperber and which took off on its first flight on May 5, 1922 (the day the Allied construction ban was lifted).

In 1922 Dietrich founded Richard Dietrich Flugzeugbau GmbH in Mannheim . 1923 arose from this and the Belgian Anatole Gobiet belonging Motorenwerken A. Gobiet & Co. in Kassel and Rotenburg an der Fulda , the Dietrich-Gobiet aircraft . In the first time, mainly decommissioned war planes, such as. B. the Fokker D.VII , converted for civil use. Among them was the successful DP IIa Bussard , which was used as a training and aerobatic aircraft and of which around 60 were built. After a few accidents involving DP IIa and DP VIIa as well as a dispute with Gobiet and other employees, the company later dissolved at short notice. In his memoirs, the company's chief pilot, Antonius Raab , wrote that Dietrich had “discovered his sympathies for the Nazi party” in 1925 and tried to boot out the not “purely Aryan” Kurt Katzenstein and Gobiet, who would have brought him money and fame. In 1942 Dietrich himself wrote in his book Im Flug over half a century that “the Jews” had destroyed his company.

In 1927 Dietrich founded the less successful Dietrich Flugzeugwerke AG, which only existed for one year . He later went to MIAG Mühlenbau & Industrie AG in Braunschweig , which also had an aircraft construction department, and designed the MD 12 sports double-decker there in 1933 . He was arrested by the Soviet occupying forces in Vienna in April 1945 . He was later declared missing and in 1950 declared dead. As it turned out later, he died on December 28, 1945 in special camp No. 9 Fünfeichen of the Soviet secret service NKVD and was buried in a mass grave.

literature

• Richard Dietrich: In flight for over half a century . Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 1942.
• Rolf Nagel, Thorsten Bauer: Kassel and the aviation industry since 1923 . Bernecker, Melsungen 2015, ISBN 978-3-87064-147-4 .

Web links

Commons : Richard Dietrich  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Dietrich Gobiet Flugzeugwerke at histaviation

Individual evidence

1. ^ Antonius Raab : Raab flies. Memories of an aviation pioneer. Konkret-Literatur-Verlag, Hamburg 1984, ISBN 3-922144-32-2 , p. 67.
2. ↑ Heinz-Dieter Schneider: Dietrich relies on the tried and tested. Between aerobatics and bankruptcy. In: Flieger-Revue. Vol. 57, No. 8, August 2009, ISSN  0001-9445 , pp. 58-61.