Robert Gsell

Robert Gsell on his hydro plan, 1913

Robert Gsell (* 1889 in St. Gallen ; † 1946 ) was a Swiss aviation pioneer .

Gsell began his aviation career as a balloon pilot. With the advent of airplanes, he became interested in it too. To learn to fly, he went to France to Louis Blériot , where he received his pilot's license. In the summer semester of 1912 he enrolled to study mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Aachen . At the same time, Professor Reissner, who was working there, made him the offer to fly into his aircraft, which was just under construction, and which, as Reissner's duck, soon caught the attention of experts. It was a duck-shaped monoplane; H. with rear wing and in front, attached to a boom, tail unit. The 70 HP Argus engine installed behind the pilot drove a pressure screw. As a special feature, Reissner had used the corrugated light metal sheet supplied by his colleague, Prof. Hugo Junkers , as the supporting surface instead of the usual fabric covering of the grand piano . However, this did not yet have the later sinusoidal wave cross-section, but an angular zigzag shape. The aircraft can thus be regarded as the first all-metal aircraft. Robert Gsell made the first flight on June 1, 1912 at the parade ground in Aachen-Brand. After many more flights, which occasionally ended with smaller breaks, Lucian Hild, who was planned to be Gsell's successor, crashed on January 27, 1913 and suffered fatal injuries. However, the aircraft was rebuilt and further testing moved to Berlin-Johannisthal . Gsell, who had previously flown for Hermann Dorner , used this time to fly during this test and to work as a flight instructor. On August 3, 1912, the duck was ready to fly again and a little later Gsell was able to meet the requirements of the German pilot's license. The good reputation he had acquired as a single flyer had prompted Prince Sigismund of Prussia to win Gsell over to the initial test of a monoplane he had designed himself, which he was able to successfully complete, even if at the end there was a break through no fault of his own. At that time he was a pilot on three different projects at the same time. After finishing duck flying, he looked for a new job. He found her as a pilot at Flugzeugbau Friedrichshafen GmbH , where he joined on November 1, 1912. With a Flugzeugbau Friedrichshafen FF-1 he succeeded on September 2, 1913, with three passengers, a long-term flight world record of three hours 11 minutes. He took part in numerous air sports events, so u. a. at the Lake Constance seaplane competition in 1913, which he finished second.

He then went to the German Research Institute for Aviation , where he headed the department for aviation instruments. In this function, he took part in a record flight on board a Junkers F 13 in 1919 .

In 1927 he was appointed to the ETH Zurich as a lecturer for aviation, from 1939 he was titular professor there until his death in 1946. In addition, he was senior expert at the Swiss Federal Aviation Office.

literature

• G. Schmitt, W. Schwipps: Pioneers of early aviation. Gondrom Verlag, Bindlach 1995, ISBN 3-8112-1189-7 .