Siegfried and Walter Günter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Siegfried and Walter Günter | |
|---|---|
| Occupation | German aircraft designers |
Siegfried Günter (8 December 1899 - 20 June 1969) and Walter Günter (8 December 1899 - 21 September 1937) were German twin brothers and aircraft designers.
Contents |
[edit] First World War
Both served in the First World War, where they were captured by the British Army and each became a Prisoner of War.
[edit] Education and early career
After the war Siegfried studied engineering at the technical university of Hannover. His talents were first recognised by Paul Bäumer who was impressed by the performance of a sailplane they had built with their friends Walter Mertens and Werner Meyer-Cassel and were flying at Wasserkuppe. Bäumer offered all four men a job with his company Bäumer Aero in Berlin. There they began designing motor gliders and then increasingly fast sports planes, including one in which Bäumer himself was killed in a crash in 1928.
[edit] At Heinkel
On 16 January 1931, Ernst Heinkel recruited the Siegfried Günter to work for his Heinkel company in Rostock, and Walter joined the company on 31 July 1931.[1] There they were to design some of the most important and famous designs associated with the company, including the Heinkel He 51, He 70 and the He 111. During this time Walter was killed in a car accident on 21 September 1937.[2]
[edit] After World War II
After the Second World War Siegfried worked in Berlin in the car shop of his father-in-law. In the late 1940s he voluntarily joined the services of the Soviet Union where he worked on Russian aircraft designs. Rumours circulated that Siegfried had, during the Cold War, been involved in the design of the Soviet MiG-15 fighter aircraft. Siegfried himself always denied this. In July 1954 he returned to the East Germany.[3]
In 1957 he went to West Germany, where he again joined the Heinkel works. He was involved in the construction of the EWR VJ 101, the world's first supersonic V/STOL-aircraft and the V/STOL transportation aircraft VC 400. Both designs ended up as prototypes and never saw serial production.[4]
Siegfried died in Berlin on 20 June 1969.[5]
[edit] Notes
[edit] Sources
- Regnat, Karl-Heinz. Black Cross Volume 4: Heinkel He 111. Midland publishers. 2004. ISBN 978-1-85780-184-2
