A wing borrowed from a seed

The most famous aeroplane of the years before the First World War was not shaped like a dove at all. Ignaz Etrich, known as Igo, born on Christmas Day 1879 near Trautenau in Bohemia, was the son of a spinning-mill owner who bought gliders after Otto Lilienthal’s death. Inspired by a paper on the flying seed of the tropical climbing plant Zanonia, he and Franz Xaver Wels built a seed-shaped flying wing; German Wikipedia records the Etrich-Wels glider making the first manned flight of a flying wing on 2 October 1907, with Wels standing up because there was no seat.

The dove takes off

In Vienna Etrich built a first powered machine in the Prater, nicknamed the Praterspatz, then moved to the new airfield at Wiener Neustadt in 1909. The Etrich II, with a fuselage and tail behind the Zanonia wing, flew on 6 April 1910. Etrich hurt his back in an early crash, so his mechanic Karl Illner did the test flying, and in October 1910 Illner won the prize for the first flight from Vienna to Horn and back. The design was so stable that instructors at Wiener Neustadt told pupils in trouble simply to let go of the controls.

Copied by everyone

The Taube made other people rich. Etrich licensed it to Lohner in Austria and to Edmund Rumpler in Germany, but the German patent office would not grant a patent, and Rumpler soon sold it as his own design and stopped paying royalties. When war broke out Etrich abandoned his lawsuit and released the design; more than 40 firms built versions. An Italian Taube dropped the world’s first aerial bomb over Libya on 1 November 1911, and Taubes scouted the Russian advance before Tannenberg in 1914.

Liebau, the Luft-Limousine and Ernst Heinkel

On 28 February 1912 Etrich founded his own factory, the Etrich-Flieger-Werke, at Liebau in Prussian Silesia. There he designed the Luft-Limousine, which flew on 7 May 1912 and is described as the first military monoplane with an enclosed cabin. His design office was led by a young Ernst Heinkel. Etrich then moved to Brandenburg, founding the Brandenburgische Flugzeugwerke; in May 1914 the Austrian financier Camillo Castiglioni bought it, kept Heinkel, and turned it into Hansa-Brandenburg, by 1915 Germany’s largest aircraft maker.

Back to the spinning mills

After the war Etrich went home to Trautenau, now in Czechoslovakia, and in 1929 built a 40 hp Sport-Taube. The authorities suspected it of being built for smuggling and impounded it, and Etrich gave up aviation for textile machinery. He joined the Sudeten German Party and, in November 1938, the Nazi party, and in 1945 was expropriated and expelled. He died in Salzburg in 1967. The only surviving Etrich-built Taube hangs in the Technical Museum in Vienna, and Austria put him on a 25-euro coin in 2007.

Fabrieken

• Prater workshop · Rotunde, Vienna — Etrich’s laboratory from 1907
• Wiener Neustadt hangars · Wiener Neustadt, Lower Austria — Two hangars at Austria-Hungary’s first airfield, 1909
• Etrich-Flieger-Werke · Liebau, Silesia (now Lubawka, Poland) — Founded 28 February 1912

Mensen

• Igo Etrich · founder and designer (1879–1967)
• Franz Xaver Wels · partner and glider pilot — Split with Etrich over monoplane versus biplane
• Karl Illner · test pilot — Won the Vienna–Horn–Vienna prize, October 1910
• Ernst Heinkel · head of design at Liebau — Followed Etrich to Brandenburg and stayed with Hansa-Brandenburg
• Camillo Castiglioni · financier — Bought the Brandenburg company in May 1914

Records en primeurs

• First manned flight of a flying wing, the Etrich-Wels glider, 2 October 1907
• First aerial bomb dropped in war, from an Italian Taube over Ain Zara, Libya, 1 November 1911
• First military monoplane with an enclosed cabin, the Luft-Limousine, 1912
• First crossing of the Riesengebirge by a Taube, 24 August 1913