120 years ago: Aviation Pioneer Otto Lilienthal crashes
August 9, 2016
In a way, Otto Lilienthal gave wings to mankind, and not without making the ultimate sacrifice. On August 9, 1896, he crashed and died. But why?
Image: picture-alliance/Mary Evans Picture Librar
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Human flight: One man's sacrifice
Otto Lilienthal was the first person to successfully fly a glider. 2016 marks the 125th anniversary of his flight, and the Otto Lilienthal Museum in northeastern Germany has already posted his historical photos online.
Image: Regis, A. & Co./otto-lilienthal-museum
Sky sailing
Photographs, drawings, letters, and patents from flight pioneer Otto Lilienthal can now be viewed online as part of the digitalized collection of the museum named after him in the small northeastern German town of Anklam. Among the objects is the first-ever glider from 1894, which was eventually produced and sold commercially. It was known as a "Normalsegelapparat," or "normal sailing apparatus."
Image: Getty Images/Hulton Archive
Lifelong project
Otto Lilienthal was born in 1848 in Anklam, near the Baltic Sea. As a boy, he and his brother Gustav would experiment with flying objects. It would be many years, however, until they would have success - namely, 1891.
Image: picture-alliance/Mary Evans Picture Librar
Human flight
After years of theoretical exercises, Otto Lilienthal became the first human to fly a glider in 1891 - covering the modest distance of 25 meters (82 feet). What seemed like a small step would become a huge leap: Just 70 years later, the first human flew all the way to outer space, albeit with quite a different vehicle.
Image: picture-alliance/akg
Practice makes (almost) perfect
Otto Lilienthal undertook over 1,000 flights in his career. He constantly made improvements to his glider - and it paid off. His longest flight took him over 80 meters.
Image: Krajewski, Alex/Otto-Lilienthal-Museum
A hill of his own
Finding a suitable hill was a prerequisite for Lilienthal's flights and proved to be a challenge. In 1894, he decided to solve the problem once and for all and built his own hill at the site of a former brickyard. The hill, located in the Berlin district of Steglitz-Zehlendorf, witnessed numerous flight attempts by the pioneer and still exists today.
Gliders for sale
Starting in 1894, anyone could purchase a glider like Lilienthal's for the hefty sum of 500 Marks (around $7,000 today). Lilienthal produced the gliders in his factory in Berlin. One of the nine known buyers was Irish physician George Francis Fitzgerald, who purchased his own glider in March 1895.
Image: picture-alliance/ZB
Double the adventure
In addition to his standard glider, Lilienthal also developed two double-decker models. They had a wingspan of 5.5 to 7 meters (18 to 23 feet) and a surface area of 25 square meters (270 square feet).
Image: Neuhauss, Richard/otto-lilienthal-museum
Sacrifice for science
On August 9, 1896, Lilienthal crashed during a flight from Gollenberg mountain in Havelland in northeastern Germany. He died the following day at the University Clinic in Berlin. The pioneer had jump-started the development of human flight, which was pursued by others in the years after his death. Lilienthal's tombstone reads: "Sacrifices must be made."
Image: Regis, A. & Co./otto-lilienthal-museum
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Lilienthal was the first man to describe the physical laws at work in aviation - be it the flying by birds or airplanes. He validated his theories in numerous flights. It is perhaps ironic, thus, that he broke those laws and crashed to his death just northeast of Berlin 120 years ago. But today, we know well what led to the crash, and let it be known it was not a faulty construction.
"Lilienthal should not have flown on the day of his crash," said Andreas Dillman, head of the Institute of Aerodynamics and Flow Technology of the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The weather on August 9, 1896 wasn't feasible for his glider, and it was most likely an error by the pilot that brought him down.
Image: Krajewski, Alex/Otto-Lilienthal-Museum
The Lilienthal glider was well prepared to fly in calm winds or with moderate headwind but not in more complicated windy conditions, such as those on the day of the crash.
It appears that an upwind lifted the nose of the glider, causing an aerodynamic stall of the wing. "If this happens too sharply, the plane will get out of control," Dillmann said.
Dillmann and his colleagues from the DLR have studied a remake of the original Lilienthal glider. At their headquarters in Göttingen, they conducted tests to determine the threshold of controlling the plane. The plane was also tested in a wind tunnel across the Dutch border in Marknesse, as well as in Braunschweig using computer simulation.
It turns out the plane was perfectly robust. "From the perspective of aerodynamics, it was an absolutely clean construction," Dillmann says.
Simulation of Lilienthal's flight in the Dutch windtunnelImage: picture-alliance/dpa/DLR
"Lilienthal knew what was of the essence," said Rolf Henke, of the DLR executive board.
"It is amazing what a good plane he built 100 years ago - without any of the means we have today; he simply knew what was important for flying."
Before ever building a glider, Lilienthal had studied bird flight and discovered the advantages of a curved wing. To this day, airplanes are constructed using the lift-to-drag ratio that he helped develop. "Lilienthal was the first aviation researcher, and we remain his heirs," Henke concluded.
At the age of 48, Otto crashed during a flight from Göllenberg near Stölln in Brandenburg. A day later, he died of his injuries at Berlin's university hospital. The epitaph on his headstone reads: "Sacrifices must be made."
