Flying Man: Hugo Junkers and the Dream of Aviation PDF
Preview Flying Man: Hugo Junkers and the Dream of Aviation
FLYING MAN Number Twenty | Centennial of Flight | Roger D. Launius, General Editor Professor Hugo Junkers in 1922. Technikmuseum Hugo Junkers, Dessau, 2013. (From author’s collection) FLYING MAN Hugo Junkers and the Dream of Aviation Richard Byers Texas A&M University Press College Station Copyright © 2016 by Richard Byers All rights reserved First edition This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper). Binding materials have been chosen for durability. Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Byers, Richard, 1971– author. Title: Flying man : Hugo Junkers and the dream of aviation / Richard Byers. Other titles: Centennial of flight series ; no. 20. Description: First edition. | College Station : Texas A&M University Press, [2016] | Series: Centennial of flight ; number twenty | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016024063| ISBN 9781623494643 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781623494650 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Junkers, Hugo, 1859–1935. | Junkers Flugzeug- und -Motorenwerke AG—History. | Junkers-Flugzeugwerk AG—History. | Junkers Motorenbau GmbH—History. | Aeronautical engineers—Germany—Biography. | Junkers airplanes—History. | Aircraft industry—Germany—Dessau (Dessau)—History—20th century. | Germany—Politics and government—1918–1933. Classification: LCC TL540.J8 B94 2016 | DDC 338.7/62913334092 [B]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016024063 CONTENTS PREFACE Dessau: The City in Green vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1 The War Years, 1914–1918 11 CHAPTER 2 The Russian Affair, 1918–1924 37 CHAPTER 3 Diverging Paths, 1921–1926 67 CHAPTER 4 On the Edge, 1927–1932 123 CHAPTER 5 Twilight and Eclipse, 1932–1935 165 NOTES 185 231 BIBLIOGRAPHY 235 INDEX Gallery follows page 102. PREFACE Dessau: The City in Green Dessau, Germany, known to locals as the “city in green,” lies two hours south of Berlin by train. Travel to the city from the “old West” means passing through the bones of the Cold War borderlands, still distinctly obvious due to the architectural differences and the train stations—spotlessly clean and modern in the “old West” but decrepit and graffiti-covered in the “former East.” The city received a face-lift after reunification, but remains as it has been for centuries—a quiet, beautiful place. Dessau is also architecturally renowned, having been home to many in the modernist Bauhaus movement in the 1920s. Small enough to walk across in half a day, but large enough to act as regional center in an otherwise rural region, it sports a mixture of Cold War-era “Ostalgic” reminders, such as a Russian restaurant, and newer additions including a post-reunification industrial park like the ones found in most modern urban areas today, which encloses the former Junkers corporate headquarters and airfield. On these grounds is the hangar-sized Technikmuseum Hugo Junkers, a museum staffed by wel- coming volunteers and former employees that celebrates the career and achievements of Professor Hugo Junkers. The Museum displays several rusting East German Air Force fighters and helicopters, as well as the broken, skeletal traces of the Junkers Corporation’s research facilities, vii viii PREFACE including a weathered portion of its concrete wind tunnel. Behind the wind tunnel is an abandoned research building, its open windows and damaged roof attesting to the decades since its last use. Hardly an aus- picious backdrop, but it was here, one hundred years ago, that the es- sential features of modern aviation first took shape. Working with his design teams in Dessau, and later in Munich, Pro- fessor Hugo Junkers (1859–1935) combined extensive knowledge of aerodynamics, structural engineering, and combustion engine design to produce the Junkers J-1, the world’s first all-metal airplane, which flew in April 1915. By 1917, his later designs were in service for Germany’s air force, flying close support and ground-attack missions over the western front trenches. Two years later in 1919, with the war over and Allied bans on military production in place, Junkers’s ambitions produced arguably his most important aircraft: the F-13, a luxury passenger and freight carrier with a fully enclosed cabin that also possessed cutting- edge performance and rugged durability. The F-13 went on to lead the way across much of the global air route network over the next decade. As his F-13 fleet crisscrossed the globe, Junkers created even more amaz- ing designs, such as the Ju-52 transport plane, which carried German soldiers and equipment during World War II and still flies today, and futuristic concepts like the R-1 and J-1000, massive multie ngine, multi- level aircraft designed to carry hundreds of passengers across the world’s largest oceans—the intellectual and spiritual ancestors of today’s long- haul passenger and freight carriers. Today, Hugo Junkers is a member of the International Aerospace Hall of Fame in San Diego, and not much else; beyond Dessau and his adopted state of Sachsen-Anhalt, where he was recognized as a local hero alongside Johann Sebastian Bach and other famous sons during the 800th anniversary celebrations in 2012, he remains outside wider public consciousness. Virtually none of the tens of millions of air pas- sengers that travel every year know his story. Yet it was his dream, the dream of a global, interconnected network of fast, safe, and reliable air travel that has been realized in the twenty-first century. Although he saw his achievements through the bifocal lenses of business opportunities and technological innovation, like many of his industry contemporaries he also held higher, almost messianic aspirations for his aircraft. Part PREFACE ix Thomas Edison, part Richard Branson, Hugo Junkers envisaged afford- able, open-sky air travel as both a key component of global prosperity and human progress, and also a means of conquering distance and open- ing up opportunities for greater interaction and collaboration between cultures and societies—a benevolent deus ex machina. A century after the first short flight of the Junkers J-1, his vision has been realized, and we are all the better for it. It is time his story was told and his achieve- ments recognized outside Dessau, and this account represents a small part of his far larger legacy.
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