Rudolf Cramer von Clausbruch (pilot)

Rudolf Cramer von Clausbruch (born September 19, 1900 (1899 according to family) in Hamburg , † September 1, 1979 in Rio de Janeiro ) was a German and Brazilian pilot . He flew the first passenger aircraft registered in Brazil, the Dornier Wal P-BAAA Atlantico .

Life

Rudolf Cramer von Clausbruch was a son of Maximilian Cramer von Clausbruch and his wife Else, née Rimpau. He was the nephew of the officer Rudolf Cramer von Clausbruch .

Rudolf Cramer von Clausbruch was married three times. He had 2 daughters with his first wife. His second marriage was with the 1930 Berlin beauty queen Dorit Nitykowski , with whom he had a son. The marriage was divorced in 1937. His third marriage to Margarethe Werner, who was born in Rio de Janeiro, had at least one daughter.

Cramer von Clausbruch joined the air force in 1917 during the First World War . In 1923 he became a pilot with Junkers Luftverkehr , in 1924 with Deutsche Aero-Lloyd and in 1926 he was taken over by Lufthansa and used on the Stettin - Kalmar - Stockholm route served by Dornier Walen . At the end of the year he was posted to the subsidiary Condor Syndikat in Brazil .

The general manager of this subsidiary, Fritz W. Hammer , had already carried out a demonstration flight with two Dornier whales from Colombia through Central America, across the Caribbean to Cuba and as far as Florida in 1925 . One of these whales, D-1012 Atlantico , was delivered to Montevideo by ship after being overhauled in Germany . Hammer had flown with him to Buenos Aires , where he had taken the former Chancellor, Hans Luther , on board and then flown to Rio de Janeiro in November , where the politician was supposed to support him in obtaining a license.

1927-1931

Cramer von Clausbruch, who had just arrived, was the pilot of the Atlantico on January 1, 1927 , which flew the Brazilian Minister of Transport, Victor Konder, and other personalities to Florianópolis and convinced them to grant the Germans a commercial flight concession on January 26th. The first scheduled flight from Rio de Janeiro to Porto Alegre (two days) took place on the 27th with the Atlantico and Cramer von Clausbruch as pilots.

On June 10, 1927, at the instigation of the Brazilian government, the first Brazilian airline, Viacao Aérea Rio-Grandense ( Varig ), was founded. The Condor Syndicate brought its aircraft and almost all of its staff into the new company: Cramer von Clausbruch became chief pilot of the Varig and carried out its first passenger and mail flight for this company on June 18.

The Condor Syndicate was replaced by another new Brazilian company, Syndicato Condor , in 1927/1928 , which continued to be dominated by the Germans. Cramer von Clausbruch was the chief pilot of this company. On March 22, 1930, together with Fritz Hammer, he carried out the first post transport to the express steamer Cap Arcona going to Europe with the Dornier Wal P-BAMA Jangadeiro in order to shorten the delivery times. The express steamers of Hamburg Süd stopped shortly before the island of Fernando de Noronha and the whales landed near the ship, which then took the mail bags that had been flown on board with a cutter . Cramer von Clausbruch acquired a great deal of experience with the sea area there, in which Lufthansa also made stopovers on regular mail flights over the South Atlantic from 1934 and then stationed one of its catapult ships .

In April 1931, Cramer von Clausbruch replaced the American Schildhauer as 2nd pilot on the airship Dornier Do X , which continued the flight from the Canary Islands via Villa Cisneros and Boloma to the Bissagos Archipelago on May 1, 1931 and on May 30 at the Cape Verden arrived. On June 4th, after many unsuccessful attempts in front of Porto Praia, the start to Fernando de Noronha and then on to Natal (Brazil) was successful . The airship reached Rio de Janeiro on June 20, 1931 along the coast. For the Do X's stage flight, which followed from August 5 to 27, 1931, along the coast, over the Antilles and as far as New York , Cramer von Clausbruch became the first pilot of the flight ship under the new commander Fritz Hammer .

After 1933

In November 1933 he took part in Lufthansa’s second series of tests for the planned mail traffic across the South Atlantic as leader of the 8-ton whale monsoon , which he also transported from Germany to West Africa. He was considered a low-level flight specialist who made use of the ground effect . He was regularly involved as a pilot or copilot on the first mail flights in 1934 (at least six Atlantic crossings ). In 1935, 1937 and 1938 there was a return flight as the second pilot.

In 1937 Rudolf Cramer von Clausbruch had covered more than 1 million miles in 10 years with Syndicato Condor in their Brazilian liner service alone. In 1939 he flew again over the South Atlantic. This time as copilot on the four-engine floatplane Blohm & Voss Ha 139 Nordwind from Recife to Bathurst . He went to Germany to accept the four-engine Focke-Wulf Fw 200 that had been ordered there, two of which had been ordered by Syndicato Condor. He took part in the transfer of the first plane as a passenger. He transferred the second machine, D-ASBK Holstein , from July 27 to 29, 1939 from Frankfurt via Seville , Bathurst and Natal to Rio de Janeiro.

After Brazil declared war on Germany in 1942, he was imprisoned for a year and a half. Since he was no longer allowed to work as a pilot, his third father-in-law bought him a farm.

In 1958 Rudolf Cramer von Clausbruch lived in Brazil.

literature

• Friedrich-Wilhelm Frhr. von Buddenbrock: "Atlantico" "Pacifico". Apprenticeship in overseas mail. GFW-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1965.
• James W. Graue, John Duggan: Deutsche Lufthansa. South Atlantic Airmail Service 1934-1939. Zeppelin Study Group, Ickenham 2000, ISBN 0-9514114-5-4 ( Zeppelinpost Handbook 4).
• Jörg-Michael Hormann , Evelyn Zegenhagen: German aviation pioneers. 1900-1950. Delius Klasing, Bielefeld 2008, ISBN 978-3-7688-2484-2 .
• Jörg-M. Hormann: Flight log Atlantic. German catapult flights 1927–1939. Delius Klasing, Bielefeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-7688-1973-2 .
• Maarten Michiel van der Mey: Dornier Wal. "A light coming over the sea". LoGisma editore, Vicchio Florenz 2005, ISBN 88-87621-51-9 , English.

Web links

• Photo and short biography (Portuguese)