Walter Kroeger

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fritz Wilhelm Walter Kröger (born March 22, 1912 in Warnemünde ; † March 6, 1991 in Dresden ) was a German aircraft engineer and aviation pioneer.

life and career

Walter Kröger attended the secondary school in Rostock until 1930 . He studied at the Technical University in Munich and passed the state examination to become a master flight engineer at the DVL Berlin-Adlershof .

From 1939 to 1942 he worked as a development pilot at Arado Flugzeugwerke in Brandenburg an der Havel . At Arado he was assigned the aeronautical and engineering handling of all flight tests with certain aircraft types , especially the Ar 80 aircraft equipped with Fowler . As part of the sample testing of training and fighter aircraft ( Ar 96 and Ar 197 ), in addition to the aerobatic and orbit inclination tests, he carried out a detailed systematic spin test. The testing of the Arado remote control weapons on the Me 110 as well as the participation in the series entry operations of various training, fighter and bomb aircraft ( Ar 79 , Ar 96, Ar 68 , Ar 197, Me 110, Ju 88 ) were part of his area of ​​responsibility.

From June 1940 to mid-1942, Kröger was given the task of developing the aeronautical development of the destroyer Ar 240 A and B with Fowler and traveling ailerons, and later the all-terrain transporter Ar 232 A , also equipped with a Fowler flap and traveling aileron. The extreme design, especially of the first-mentioned aircraft type, for the state of development at that time, the particularly difficult questions of flight characteristics and the many technical innovations made demands on his technical and flying skills.

At the beginning of 1943, Kröger was given the management of the flight testing department. During this time the Ar 234 jet bomber was tested . He also made the maiden flight of a prototype of the Ar 232 V1 military transport aircraft . In 1945 parts of the Arado test department were relocated from Warnemünde to Kaltenkirchen , and Walter Kröger worked there until 1950. He then moved to the research and development department of the Warnow shipyard in Warnemünde as a designer . There he mainly developed lifeboats made of light metal , which were patented for the GDR , the USSR , West Germany and Great Britain .

In 1956 he was appointed to the Dresden University of Technology and received a teaching position at the Aviation Faculty.

After being dismissed from the research center for aircraft construction at VEB Flugzeugwerke Dresden (FWD) in 1957 , he worked as head of flight testing in a central position in the construction of aircraft 152 . In this role he was responsible for setting up the program for the ground and flight tests of the 152.

The test program he worked out lasted from January to December 1959. The project was under considerable time pressure, against which Kröger was unable or unwilling to successfully defend himself. Kröger had the necessary experience for a test flight operation, but could not prevail against Brunolf Baade , possibly because - in contrast to most of the Dresden aircraft manufacturers - he did not come from Junkers but from Arado. Instead of systematically testing the new aircraft, Baade took a flight to the Leipzig trade fair to impress Nikita Khrushchev , who was known for making spontaneous decisions , and persuade the Soviet Union to buy the 152. Kröger was informed about this plan, but asked until March 5th to think about it. However, the flight took place on March 4, 1959, without consulting Kröger. The order for this flight, in which the first prototype crashed and the crew was killed, bears his signature. A flight over the Leipziger Messe is not planned. The program actually flown deviated from the flight assignment.

After the aircraft construction in the GDR was stopped, Kröger continued to work in the successor institutions of the Dresden aircraft factory. From 1963 to 1977 he worked in research for the Institute for Lightweight Construction and Economic Use of Materials (IfL) in Dresden- Klotzsche in the field of lightweight facades.

Walter Kröger was married from 1942 until the end of his life. He had a son, born in 1944, and two daughters, born in 1949 and 1954.

literature

Holger Lorenz : The causes of the crash of the GDR jet "Baade 152". Marienberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-931770-93-8 .

Additional information

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Structure plan , printed in: Holger Lorenz : The causes of the crash of the GDR jet "Baade 152". Marienberg 2011, p. 17
  2. ↑ Holger Lorenz: The variant I of the GDR jet "Baade 152" . Marienberg 2010, p. 96
  3. ↑ Holger Lorenz: The causes of the crash of the GDR jet "Baade 152". Marienberg 2011, p. 40
  4. ↑ Holger Lorenz: The causes of the crash of the GDR jet "Baade 152". Marienberg 2011, p. 50 ff.
  5. ↑ Holger Lorenz: The causes of the crash of the GDR jet "Baade 152". Marienberg 2011, p. 45
personal data
SURNAME Kroger, Walter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kröger, Fritz Wilhelm Walter (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German aircraft engineer
DATE OF BIRTH March 22, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Warnemünde
DATE OF DEATH March 6, 1991
Place of death Dresden