Udet U 11

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Udet U 11 condor
Udet U 11 Condor Les Ailes February 11,1926.jpg
Type: Airliner
Design country:

German EmpireGerman Empire German Empire

Manufacturer:

Udet Flugzeugbau GmbH

First flight:

January 19, 1926

Number of pieces:

1

The U 11 “Kondor” was the largest aircraft manufactured by Udet Flugzeugbau and the company's only metal aircraft .

history

The only machine was built from 1924 on behalf of the South German Aero Lloyd, who wanted to fly over the Alps with it. The starting point was the U 1 sports monoplane.

In terms of design, the "Kondor" was a four-engine shoulder -wing monoplane with an all-metal hull, wooden wings and an open cockpit for two people. In the bow there was an open stand for the navigator . Four individual Sh-12 - radial engines were in nacelles under the wings. The motors each propelled a propeller via an expansion coupling and hollow long-distance shafts, which was located behind the trailing edge of the wing. This arrangement brought the inner propellers dangerously close to the passenger windows and the fuselage door, which later resulted in a fatal accident for a fitter. In this arrangement, the propeller tips were only 15 cm away from the hull.

The machine with the serial number 243 was completed in December 1925 and brought from the Ramersdorf construction site to the Oberschleißheim airfield . The first flight took place on January 19, 1926 with the test pilot Harry Rother at the wheel, although the aircraft showed an extreme tail-heaviness during roll tests, in which, among other things, the tail spur tore off. In order to compensate for the tail-heaviness, the horizontal stabilizer was enlarged and a new test flight started on January 28, 1926. After a few other changes, the machine was transferred to Berlin on March 28, 1926, as Aero Lloyd had become part of Deutsche Luft Hansa and was presented to the press on March 29 in Tempelhof . On April 8th she received the registration D-828. In 1927 the German Aviation School was supposed to take over the machine, but refused to pay more than half the invoice amount for the machine. During the transfer to Staaken , the deployed pilot (Rother had allegedly refused to fly for financial reasons) crash-landed, which led to the loss of the machine. Overall, it turned out to be too heavy or underpowered; a contemporary report describes the machine as a "faulty construction". This was also due to the aircraft engine power limited to 400 hp by the victorious powers. Only one machine was built like this; it did not go into regular use.

With the construction of the “Kondor”, the Udet company ventured into new technological territory. The failure of the type with the construction costs of 850,000 Reichsmarks was one reason for the decline of the company, whose founder Udet had already left the company in spring 1925.

It has not been proven whether the “Kondor” was ever officially used by Luft Hansa , whose first four-engine aircraft it was, until it was written off in 1928 .

Technical specifications

Three-sided view
Parameter Data
crew 3
Passengers 8th
span 22.0 m
length 16.0 m
height 4.00 m
Wing area 70 m²
Wing extension 6.9
Empty mass 3327 kg
Takeoff mass 4327 kg
drive four air-cooled 9-cylinder radial engines Sh-12 with 75 kW (102 PS) each
Top speed 150 km / h
Cruising speed 130 km / h
Landing speed 115 km / h
Climb performance 1.6 m / s
Service ceiling 3200 m
Range 500 km

See also

Web links

Commons : Udet U 11 Kondor  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

swell

  • Report on the flight tests, Deutsches Museum / Munich

Individual evidence

  1. FlugRevue October 2011, pp. 92–95, Udet U 11 Kondor - Annoying hereditary burden