Udet aircraft construction
The Udet Flugzeugbau GmbH was founded in the summer of 1921 in Munich with funds from the American financier William Pohl from the famous fighter pilot Ernst Udet founded. Other partners were Hans Henry Herrmann and Erich Scheuermann . It dealt primarily with light sports and commercial aircraft , since the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty had to be complied with.
history
The first model built was the single-seater U 1 with a 22 kW two-cylinder Haacke engine designed by Hans Henry Herrmann in the winter of 1921/22 . Although the fuselage was designed with two seats, only one seat was installed due to the weak engine. The first flight took place in May 1922. The further developed U 2, which was ready for series production in the winter of 1922, was already designed with two seats. It had a wingspan of 8.9 m, was about 6 m long and was powered by the same Haacke engine as the U 1. At least four machines of this type were built. On January 1, 1923, Herrmann officially became chief designer at Udet in Ramersdorf .
With the U 4 , a two-seater model was created which retained the design features of the U 2, but was now equipped with a five- cylinder Siemens Sh 4 radial engine with 40 kW. From this machine, the U 10 emerged from the U 6 . The U 6, developed in the summer of 1923, had the same dimensions as the U 4, but was equipped with a 62 kW Siemens Sh 5 engine, a roll bar over the front seat and an aerodynamically rounded vertical stabilizer.
Some aviation successes were achieved with the following U 10, so it won class B in the BZ flight in 1925. This series was again equipped with the Sh-4 engine, but the wingspan was increased to 10.5 m been. A U 10a was also tested with light metal floats. A total of 10 machines of this type were sold.
The high-decker U 5 turned out to be too inefficient, but some of the larger and more powerful U 8 were also used in regular service. The U 8b version was the first aircraft in Germany to be equipped with a slat . The ultra-light U 7 "Kolibri" with a half-liter Douglas engine, 10 m wingspan and only 250 kg takeoff weight became famous for its success on the Wasserkuppe in 1924. Only two U 7s were built.
The best-known model, however, was the U 12 "Flamingo", which took off on its maiden flight on April 7, 1925 and was not only built in Germany, but also in Austria, Hungary and the Baltic States. The largest model was the four-engine U 11 “Kondor” with a metal fuselage, while the wings were made of wood. For this purpose, the company broke new technological ground, as only Junkers , Dornier and Rohrbach built metal aircraft in Germany at that time .
The failure of the “Condor” was one reason that the Udet company ran into financial difficulties. The last prototype for the sea flight competition in 1926 was the U 13 float plane , which, however, had problems taking off and turned out to be completely unsuitable. Udet had already left the company in 1925 due to contacts with the military by Hans Pohl (William Pohl's brother) and the associated change of course. He was followed by Erich Scheuermann at the end of February 1926, whereupon Hans Herrmann temporarily took over the company. On August 24, 1926, the company was finally liquidated and the estate was taken over by the Reich government .
In 1926 the remnants of Udet Flugzeugbau GmbH were merged with Messerschmitt Flugzeugbau and Bayerische Flugzeugwerke was founded in Augsburg , which continued to build the U 12 as the BFW U 12 in several versions.
swell
- Report on the flight tests of the Udet U11 , Deutsches Museum , Munich
Remarks
- ↑ Ernst Udet - a war hero builds airplanes . In: FliegerRevue, February 2011, pp. 56–58.
