Funny How Things Work Out

It started out innocently enough.  An urgent email from Hungary (Gabor Fekes) and Germany (Bernd Diekmann) via France (Francis Humblet) requesting information about the possibility of a German-built 2-place Prüfling glider at the American Motorless Aviation glider school on Cape Cod in 1928-9.

I had never heard of such a glider at Cape Cod.  A single-place Prüfling, yes, but not a 2-place.  I didn’t even know there was such an animal.

The Prüfling was a German, what we call a “secondary” glider.  It was designed Alexander Lippisch and was built at the German government’s flight research center, the Rhön-Rossitten Gesellschaft to allow new glider pilots to transfer into after they learned the basics on a Zögling “primary” glider.  The Prüfling, which means “student” or “examinee” in German, was but the 2nd step to actually soaring a glider.  It was in actuality, a low performance training glider.

The question arose as to whether it might be the one that Ralph Barnaby flew at Cape Cod in 1929 and then in 1930 when he dropped from the US Navy Zeppelin Los Angeles.  Nope.  After some digging, I did locate two profile shots of the glider under the dirigible.  I also located a picture of Barnaby and the other students at Cape Cod in front of the Prüfling.  So that ruled this one out as the 2-place.

As I did more digging, the fellow in Germany (Bernd) sent me a clipping of a modified Prüfling in Wichita, Kansas.  It seemed that American glider designer and builder Harland Ross had designed and built new, tapered wings for his brother’s Prüfling.  I forwarded that to a contact of mine in Wichita and am still awaiting a reply.

The gliders got all over.  I have not looked it up, but I know that there was at least one Prüling even in Southern California, and that it flew at the legendary Arvin meet(s).

Anyway, this missive from Europe opened a whole different world to me.  For one, it was the catalyst for my re-launch of this blog.  I realized that since Soaring magazine discontinued my monthly glider history column, that I really missed the digging.

For another, it got me thinking a lot about a glider which I had never really thought about before.  How many were in the US?  Were any 2-place (Bernd insists at least one was and that it went to Cape Cod, and he says he has the shipping manifest, he says, to prove it).

In just a couple of days, I have gone from only a couple of Prüfling photograph to a dozen or more.  None show a 2-place.  My search even led me to the photo at the head of this column.  I do not know who the gentleman is, nor where the photo was taken, but it is a nice shot of a Prüfling.

This has even blossomed into other German gliders in the US in the 30s.  I found a picture of a Professor at Cape Cod.  This has gotten me back into old familiar territory, the gliders that Gus Haller sold and built as part of Haller-Hirth Sailplanes, in Pittsburgh.  Haller imported kits from the Kassel Flugzeugbau (Kassel aircraft factory) and sold them as Haller-Hirth Hawk (a Professor), Haller-Hirth Junior Hawk (a Kassel 20), or as Haller-Hirth Sparrow (Zögling primary).

So what is going to happen next?  I guess I will keep digging and maybe, just maybe, I’ll find that elusive 2-place.  It is all just fascinating to me.

The photo at the bottom of this column is a Prüfling in Belgium.

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Ralph Barnaby and the American Motorless Aviation Corp.

Ralph Barnaby and the American Motorless Aviation Corp.

The photo comes from the South Wellfleet, MA website (<http://southwellfleet.wordpress.com/2012/10/29/south-wellfleet-glider-school/&gt;), on the “South Wellfleet Glider School” page:

The photo which accompanies this entry is a real find.  It depicts the glider gang at the American Motorless Aviation Corp. (AMA), on Cape Cod at South Wellfleet, Massachustts.

What is significant is that it appears to depict Navy Lt. Ralph S. Barnaby, who was a student there in 1929, he is the 3rd from the left.

Why is this important, you ask.  It is important because the AMA was the first glider school in the US.  It was founded by J C Penney, Jr, and staffed by top German glider pilots.  Gliding had taken hold in Germany shortly after the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles, after World War I, prohibited the Germans from having motorized aircraft.  The Germans had become quite proficient at gliding and soaring in the intervening years, while Americans only began to  notice gliding after Lindbergh flew the Atlantic.

Barnaby is significant because in 1929, he became the 1st American to break Orville Wright’s 1911 distance record in a glider.  Barnaby did it at Cape Cod, at this school, and in the glider depicted.

In 1930, Barnaby pioneered dropping an aircraft from a Zeppelin, the US Navy Airship Los Angeles, when he mounted a German Prüfling secondary glider beneath the giant dirigible and dropped from it.  The purpose was and experiment to find an efficient method to get a crewman from the Zeppelin to the ground in order to direct docking.  The Nave ultimately decided to use a power plane.  This glider was the same one he used at Cape Cod and is depicted in the photo.

Barnaby is also important because in 1936, he convinced the Navy to experiment with using gliders for primary flight training.  As with using gliders beneath airships, this training experiment was short lived. During the early part of World War II, Barnaby again convinced the Navy to train with gliders.  The purpose was to fly gliders into combat as the Army did.  When they realized that the island hopping strategy would not facilitate cargo gliders, the Navy canceled this program too.

It has been theorized that Barnaby would have become an Admiral if he had not been tied to the gliders.  He did, however, become a Captain.

All through these years, as well as after the war, Barnaby became a spark plug behind the Soaring Society of America.  As a result, is a member of the Soaring Hall of Fame and the National Soaring Museum (NSM) hosts an annual lecture by notables in the soaring world, and named it after Barnaby.

In addition, in 1981, the NSM dedicated Landmark of Soaring #1 and located it at Truro, on  Cape Cod.

Barnby died in 1986 at the age of 93.

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