Hugo Junkers and the J 1
Hugo Junkers built the first all metal airplane, the J1
Hugo Junkers was something of an aviation visionary, anticipating future develpments in several areas in the early days of aviation, but he came into conflict with Hitler
A German engineer named Hugo Junkers built the first practical all metal aircraft. He wanted to use aluminum, knowing that it was light and strong, but WWI shortages forced him to use thin corrugated iron on the exterior, and steel tubing on the interior. Despite this unwonted modification, the J 1 flew. The year was 1915, and the wooden biplane design ruled the sky. Some people laughed at his “tin contraption”, but he was a man ahead of his time. At a time when most still believed that Dirigibles and Zeppelins were the air passenger carriers of the future he wanted to build metal passenger planes and start airlines. Unlike Louis Bleriot’s monoplane of 6 years earlier, the J 1’s wings were fully cantilevered and needed no exterior cables to hold them up. He once had 42 men stand on one of his wings to prove its strength.
Unfortunately for him, Germany was in a World War, and the government wanted military planes designed and built. His passenger planes were pressed into military service, and proved very serviceable for numerous tasks carrying freight and passengers, and pulling gliders aloft for the German military. His planes continued to improve, and after the war it seemed that his fortune would be made. The planes he built flew in both military and civilian roles in Germany from WWI until well after WWII.
However, his politics were soon out of tune with the Nazis who were coming to power. The new regime wanted control of his factories, his patents, and his airlines, and being the Nazis, they applied pressure, and took them. Had peace prevailed, or a less crazed government taken power he might have happily lived out his remaining years (he was already old having been born in 1856). Oddly enough, his politics were unswervingly Nationalist and Socialist, but he seems to have collided with those calling themselves those two things at every turn. Unlike so many in Germany he wasn’t fooled by their rhetoric and posturing.
He was eventually forced to give up control of his businesses to the government, and work for them designing military aircraft. Left to himself he had visions of great metal passenger planes, and he envisioned a flying wing design as his ideal airplane, a design that would eventually be made to fly. In many ways he was before his time, but his worst problem was being out of step with Hitler's goose stepping Nazis but unwilling to emigrate. He died in 1935 at the age of 76.
His name would also be associated with the Ju (Junker) 87 “Stuka” dive bomber which was such an integral part of Hitler’s blitzkrieg tactics, but he was dead before it was designed, it was just built in the factory that used to be his. Those listed here are just a few of Hugo Junkers’ achievements (and trails) since he was already a highly successful engineer and inventor before applying his talents to aircraft at the age of 56.
