Two works pilots start a company

Raab-Katzenstein was founded in Kassel on 16 November 1925 by two former works pilots of the collapsed Dietrich aircraft company, Antonius Raab and Kurt Katzenstein, who took over much of Dietrich’s skilled staff. Production manager Erich Gammelin organised batch production from stock, and series building began in early 1926 with the Kl.1 Schwalbe aerobatic biplane. By 1927 the firm employed 200 people and had built more than 100 aircraft, while its repair shop became a preferred contractor for the insurer Allianz.

Stunts, skywriters and a rocket duck

RaKa lived on publicity. Katzenstein ran flying schools at Kassel-Waldau, Cologne and Bonn-Hangelar, where Gerhard Fieseler taught and became a star stunt pilot; the RK 26 Tigerschwalbe aerobatic biplane was built for him. The company tested illuminated night-advertising aircraft, bought five S.E.5a skywriters from Britain for Henkel in 1929, and for Fritz von Opel built a rocket-powered canard, whose flights drew wide press coverage. The RK 25 for an Essen club was, per German Wikipedia, the first aircraft to use the light alloy Elektron to save weight.

Bankruptcy in Krefeld

The costly RK 27 airship of 1929 drained the firm. A planned American takeover died in the October 1929 crash, the house bank collapsed in November and the state refused subsidies. Moved to Krefeld and reborn as Rheinische Luftfahrt-Industrie in April 1930, it stopped paying wages that July. Fieseler bought a sailplane factory and founded his own company. The RK 26 lived on, licence-built in Sweden by ASJA as the Air Force’s SK 10, and in 1932 Antonius Raab was convicted of embezzlement and fraud.

Factories

• Körnerstraße works · Kassel — On the Deutsche Werke site, provided by Anatole Gobiet
• Kassel-Waldau airfield · Kassel — Flying school and flight operations until 1930
• Bockum airfield · Krefeld — Final base from April 1930

People

• Antonius Raab · co-founder and managing director — Convicted of embezzlement and fraud in 1932
• Kurt Katzenstein · co-founder, head of flight operations — Left management in November 1929
• Gerhard Fieseler · flight instructor and stunt pilot — Later founded Fieseler Flugzeugbau
• Paul John Hall · head of design office 1926–1928

Records and firsts

• RK 25: first use of Elektron alloy in aircraft construction, per German Wikipedia