A friend of Göring

Škoda-Kauba existed because of one man’s connections. Otto Kauba, an Austrian engineer, had an idea for a flying bomb, and his personal friendship with Hermann Göring led to a joint venture with the giant Škoda Works in occupied Czechoslovakia. The Škoda-Kauba Flugzeugbau opened in Prague in 1942, and Kauba’s fertile, unconventional mind went to work.

Strange little testbeds

Its first products were piloted testbeds for the flying bomb’s control system: the tailless V1A with elevons on trailing booms, which crashed on its first flight, the V1, which flew after a fashion, and the swept-wing V2. When the flying bomb was dropped, parts were cannibalised into ever stranger prototypes, among them a twin-boom pusher later modified to test controls for a Blohm & Voss fighter. Kauba also designed the P14, an interceptor built around a huge Lorin ramjet, cancelled in 1944.

The SK 257 and the end

The one conventional success was the V4 fighter trainer, very fast for its 240 hp. The RLM ordered an enlarged SK 257 with an Argus As 410, and four prototypes performed well, but production was given to the nearby Avia factory, quality failed Luftwaffe inspections and the order was cancelled after five production aircraft. The company ended with the liberation of Prague in 1945. Kauba went home to Austria and designed its first post-war type to fly, the OK-15.

工場

• Prague works · Prague — Opened 1942

人々

• Otto Kauba · founder, designer — Later designed the Austrian OK-15
• Eugen Sänger · engineer — Developed the ramjet unit behind the P14