Akaflieg Darmstadt

Gliding re-emerged as a sport after the war because the building of powered aircraft was restricted in Germany by the Treaty of Versailles.

Many of the first members had been pilots in the Luftstreitkräfte (Imperial German Air Service), but it was the love of flying rather than militarism or nationalism that motivated them, resulting in a fraternal spirit that has been maintained to this day.

During the Nazi period some Akafliegs retained their autonomy through the patronage of the Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt (DVL), a forerunner of the present-day German Aerospace Center (DLR).

Since the group was formed in 1920 over forty in-house designs have been created, with the D-43 trainer and Soteira pilot escape system being the latest.

Single-seat Hang glider with a parasol monoplane wing and rectangular section aerofoil profiled fuselage.

Bequeathed, unfinished, by Eugen von Lössl after his death on 9 August 1920 to Akaflieg Darmstadt, where it was completed.

This shoulder-winged cantilever monoplane had a conventional cockpit forward of the wing centre section and dual main skids.

This ultralight biplane glider was originally planned as a hang-glider but was completed with a cockpit nacelle and twin main skids.

This single-seat cantilever high winged glider illustrated the incremental progress in aerodynamic knowledge and construction techniques, using rounded sections and smooth skinning to reduce drag and improve performance.

The most impressive performance gain would have come from the (relatively) high aspect ratio long span wings, which at 18.2m were among the biggest up to that time.

Built purely as a flying wind tunnel with a simple rhomboidal section fuselage sitting on a single main skid.

"A cantilever low-winged ultralight aircraft with narrow track trousered fixed undercarriage, smooth plywood skinned fuselage and an all flying tailplane for pitch control.

This single-seat lightweight aircraft, powered by a Blackburne engine, was intended for aerobatics, but with no improvement over the D-11 Mohamed plans for a small production run were abandoned.

The D-15 was designed and built for Ferdinand Schulz, who broke all the contemporary World glidings records whilst flying it.

After the first few promising flights at the Darmstadt airfield the D-18 was transferred to the DLV (Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt—German research establishment for flying) at Berlin.

For the 1930 Europa-Rundflug the D-18 was fitted with an enclosed canopy, but engine problems forced Rudolf Neininger, the pilot, to ditch in the Mediterranean Sea.

An improved D-18 with a German engine, retaining the heavily staggered cantilever, open cockpit, biplane configuration.

The sole D-29, (D-EILE), was built as a flying test-bed for high-lift devices on the wings, with a fixed, spatted, undercarriage, two seats under a long greenhouse canopy and a T-tail.

The long span, high aspect ratio wings with newly devised laminar flow sections, combined with new construction techniques and materials, such as Duralumin and Elektron, gave the D-30 the desired performance.

A projected two-seater similar to the D-30 Cirrus, with a pod and boom fuselage and wings of lower aspect ratio.

Built as a study project for the design and construction of high-performance sail-planes, the first of the series used wooden structure with plywood skin bonded to foam inners which gave a very smooth surface finish.

The genesis of the modern glider is evident in the large canopy over a semi-reclining seat, T-tail and slender rear fuselage.

This large high performance, V-tailed, two-seater, project was cancelled because the individual parts were too big to be built in the available space.

"The D-36 was designed to incorporate all the latest improvements in aerodynamics and construction techniques to produce a high performance glider better than its contemporaries.

A high performance single seater, fitted with a retractable sustainer motor (incapable of take-off), the initial D-37a was modified to the D-37b.

Built almost exclusively of GRP with Balsa wood filler the D-38 was a Standard class sailplane with 15m span wings no flaps, retractable undercarriage and provision for water ballast.

The D-39 was originally designed as a single-seat touring motor-glider with 15m wings and paired Sachs rotary engines driving a folding propeller.

Designed and built to comply with Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI) 15m class rukes, the D-40 includes area-increasing flaps which extend rearwards, hinged at the outboard end of the inner trailing edge at about ¾ span, similar in fashion to a pocket knife.

This two-seater, with side-by-side seating follows contemporaries like the Akaflieg Berlin B13 and Stemme S10 motor-gliders, but is a pure glider with no engine.

Full-scale tests with dummies from static cockpits have been carried out, and a production system is proposed for fitment to the nascent D-43 trainer.