The Etrich Taube, also known by the names of the various later manufacturers who built versions of the type, such as the Rumpler Taube, was a pre-World War I monoplane aircraft. It was the first military aeroplane to be mass-produced in Germany.
The Taube was very popular prior to the First World War, and it was also used by the air forces of Italy and Austria-Hungary. Even the Royal Naval Air Service operated at least one Taube in 1912. On 1 November 1911, Giulio Gavotti, an Italian aviator, dropped the world's first aerial bomb from his Taube monoplane over the Ain Zara oasis in Libya.[1] Once the war began, it quickly proved inadequate as a warplane and was soon replaced by other designs.
Design and development
The Etrich-Wels glider prototype, with Igo Etrich in the cockpit
The Taube was designed in 1909 by Igo Etrich of Austria-Hungary, and first flew in 1910. It was licensed for serial production by Lohner-Werke in Austria and by Edmund Rumpler in Germany, now called the Etrich-Rumpler-Taube.[2][3] Rumpler soon changed the name to Rumpler-Taube, and stopped paying royalties to Etrich, who subsequently abandoned his patent.
Despite its name (Taube means "dove"), the Taube's unique wing form was not modeled after a dove, but was copied from the seeds of Alsomitra macrocarpa, which may glide long distances from their parent tree. Similar wing shapes were also used by Karl Jatho and Frederick Handley Page.[citation needed] Etrich had tried to build a flying wing aircraft based on the Zanonia wing shape, but the more conventional Taube type, with tail surfaces, was much more successful.
Etrich adopted the format of crosswind-capable main landing gear that Louis Blériot had used on his Blériot XI cross-channel monoplane for better ground handling. The wing has three spars and was braced by a cable-braced steel tube truss (called a "bridge", or Brücke in German) under each wing: at the outer end the uprights of this structure were lengthened to rise above the upper wing surfaces, to form kingposts to carry bracing and warping wires for the enlarged wingtips. A small landing wheel was sometimes mounted on the lower end of this kingpost, to protect it for landings and to help guard against ground loops.[4]
Later Taube-type aircraft from other manufacturers replaced the Bleriot type main gear with a simpler V-strut main gear design, and also omitted the underwing "bridge" structure to reduce drag.
Like many contemporary aircraft, especially monoplanes, the Taube used wing warping rather than ailerons for lateral (roll) control, and also warped the rear half of the stabilizer to function as the elevator. Only the vertical, twinned triangular rudder surfaces were usually hinged.
Operational history
Design drawing of Taube from 1911
In civilian use, the Taube was used by pilots to win the Munich-Berlin Kathreiner prize. On 8 December 1911, Gino Linnekogel and Suvelick Johannisthal achieved a two-man endurance record for flying a Taube 4 hours and 35 minutes over Germany.[5][6]
The design provided for very stable flight, which made it extremely suitable for observation. The translucent wings made it difficult for ground observers to detect a Taube at an altitude above 400 meters.[7] The first hostile engagement was by an Italian Taube in 1911 in Libya, its pilot using pistols and dropping 2kg (4.4lb) grenades during the Battle of Ain Zara. The Taube was also used for bombing in the Balkans in 1912–13, and in late 1914 when German 3kg (6.6lb) bomblets and propaganda leaflets were dropped over Paris. Taube spotter planes detected the advancing Imperial Russian Army in East Prussia during the World War I Battle of Tannenberg.
Front page of the New York Times Mid-Week Pictorial, 1 January 1917, captioned "A German Fighting Monoplane Flying Very Near the Ground Photographed from Directly Underneath."
World War I
While initially there were two Taube aircraft assigned to Imperial German units stationed at Qingdao, China, only one was available at the start of the war due to an accident. The Rumpler Taube piloted by Lieutenant Gunther Plüschow had to face the attacking Japanese, who had with them a total of eight aircraft. On 2 October 1914, Plüschow's Taube attacked the Japanese warships blockading Tsingtao with two small bombs, but failed to score any hits. On 7 November 1914, shortly before the fall of Qingdao, Plüschow was ordered to fly top secret documents to Shanghai, but was forced to make an emergency landing at Lianyungang in Jiangsu, where he was interned by a local Chinese force. Plüschow was rescued by local Chinese civilians under the direction of an American missionary, and successfully reached his destination at Shanghai with his top secret documents, after giving the engine to one of the Chinese civilians who rescued him.
Poor rudder and lateral control made the Taube difficult and slow to turn. The aeroplane proved to be a very easy target for the faster and more agile Allied Scouts of the early part of World War I, and just six months into the war, the Taube had been removed from front line service to be used to train new pilots. Many future German aces would learn to fly in a Rumpler Taube.
Variants
Due to the lack of licence fees, 14 companies built a large number of variations of the initial design, making it difficult for historians to determine the exact manufacturer based on historical photographs. An incomplete list is shown below. The most common version was the Rumpler Taube with two seats.
Jeannin Stahltaube, Deutsches Technikmuseum, BerlinJeannin StahltaubeLine drawing of Albatros Doppeltaube from Aero and Hydro magazine
Two units were ordered by Chinese revolutionaries to fight Imperial Qing China, but when they reached Shanghai in December 1911 with other Taube airplanes ordered by Imperial German forces stationed in China, the Qing dynasty had already been overthrown and the airplanes were not used in battle.
The Technisches Museum Wien has the only remaining Etrich-built Taube, which has a four-cylinder engine.[12]
Other original Taubes exist, such as one in Norway, which was the last original Taube to fly under its own power, in 1922.
The Owl's Head Transportation Museum in Owls Head, Maine, US has a reproduction which has been flying since 1990, using a 200hp (150kW)Ranger L-440 inline-6 air-cooled engine.[13]
Albatros Flugzeugwerke GmbH was a German aircraft manufacturer best known for supplying the German Luftstreitkräfte during World War I.
This is a list of aviation-related events from 1914.
Wing warping was an early system for lateral (roll) control of a fixed-wing aircraft. The technique, used and patented by the Wright brothers, consisted of a system of pulleys and cables to twist the trailing edges of the wings in opposite directions. In many respects, this approach is similar to that used to trim the performance of a paper airplane by curling the paper at the back of its wings.
The Deutsche Luftstreitkräfte —known before October 1916 as Die Fliegertruppen des deutschen Kaiserreiches —was the air arm of the Imperial German Army. In English-language sources it is usually referred to as the Imperial German Air Service, although that is not a literal translation of either name. German naval aviators of the Marine-Fliegerabteilung were an integral part of the Imperial German Navy. Both military branches operated aeroplanes, observation balloons and airships.
The Taube was first constructed in 1909-1910 by Austrian Igo Etrich and later developed into a two-seater military aircraft in 1912. Many Taubes were built under licence by a wide array of manufacturers but most were produced by the Rumpler Flugzeugwerke. By 1912 the design had evolved to a 2-seater reconnaissance aircraft for military use
Ignaz "Igo" Etrich was an Austrian flight pioneer, pilot and fixed-wing aircraft developer.
The Austro-Hungarian Aviation Troops or Imperial and Royal Aviation Troops were the air force of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the empire's demise in 1918; it saw combat on both the Eastern Front and Italian Front during World War I.
The Rumpler 6B was a German single-engine floatplane fighter with a biplane wing structure, designed and built by Rumpler Flugzeugwerke, in Berlin Johannisthal and introduced in 1916.
The Farman III, also known as the Henry Farman 1909 biplane, was an early French aircraft designed and built by Henry Farman in 1909. Its design was widely imitated, so much so that aircraft of similar layout were generally referred to as being of the "Farman" type.
Etrich Flugzeugwerke (EFW) was a short-lived aircraft manufacturer founded by Igo Etrich.
The Rumpler B.I was a military reconnaissance aircraft produced in Germany during World War I.
Rumpler-Luftfahrzeugbau GmbH, Rumpler-Werke, usually known simply as Rumpler was a German aircraft and automobile manufacturer founded in Berlin by Austrian engineer Edmund Rumpler in 1909 as Rumpler Luftfahrzeugbau. The firm originally manufactured copies of the Etrich Taube monoplane under the Rumpler Taube trademark, but turned to building reconnaissance biplanes of its own design through the course of the First World War, in addition to a smaller number of fighters and bombers.
The Argus As I was a four-cylinder, water-cooled, aircraft engine produced in Germany by Argus Motoren from 1911 until about 1913.
Edmund Elias Rumpler was an Austrian automobile and aircraft designer.
The Nieuport IV was a French-built sporting, training and reconnaissance monoplane of the early 1910s.
The Etrich Sport-Taube was a one-off, single engine, one seat monoplane, built in Czechoslovakia in 1929.
The Luft-Limousine or Luftlimousine, also known as Etrich VIII Luft-Limousine, was a single engine monoplane built by the Etrich company in Silesia in 1912.
Herris, Jack (2013). Gotha Aircraft of WWI: A Centennial Perspective on Great War Airplanes. Great War Aviation Centennial Series. Vol.6. Charleston, South Carolina: Aeronaut Books. ISBN978-1-935881-14-8.
Herris, Jack (2014). Rumpler Aircraft of WWI: A Centennial Perspective on Great War Airplanes. Great War Aviation Centennial Series. Vol.11. n.p.: Aeronaut Books. ISBN978-1-935881-21-6.
Mikesh, Robert and Shorzoe Abe. (1990) Japanese Aircraft 1910–1941. London: Putnam. ISBN0-85177-840-2
Neulen, Hans Werner (November 1999). "Les aigles isoles du Kaiser" [The Kaiser's Isolated Eagles]. Avions: Toute l'Aéronautique et Son Histoire (in French) (80): 24–31. ISSN1243-8650.
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