This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations .(December 2012) |
Grunau Baby | |
---|---|
Grunau Baby III | |
Role | Sailplane |
Manufacturer | Schneider, Slingsby, Elliotts of Newbury, Nord, NV Vliegtuigbouw, Laminação Nacional de Metais, (later Companhia Aeronáutica Paulista, Brazil) |
Designer | Edmund Schneider |
Introduction | 1931 |
Number built | ca. 6000 |
The Schneider Grunau Baby was a single-seat sailplane first built in Germany in 1931, with some 6,000 examples constructed in some 20 countries. It was relatively easy to build from plans, it flew well, and the aircraft was strong enough to handle mild aerobatics and the occasional hard landing. When the Baby first appeared, it was accepted wisdom that the pilot should feel as much unimpeded airflow as possible, to better sense rising and falling currents of air and temperature changes etc.
It was designed by Edmund Schneider with the assistance of Wolf Hirth and Hugo Kromer as a smaller version of Schneider's ESG 31 of the previous year, incorporating an elliptical wing design based on work done by Akaflieg Darmstadt. It was named after Grunau, the town where Schneider's factory was located, now Jeżów Sudecki in Poland. The first 14 inner ribs were of the Göttingen 535 shape with the outer ribs gradually changing up to the last 22nd rib, having a bi-convex and symmetrical shape with a slight reduction in the angle of incidence. The tips and leading edges of the wings up to the main spar were covered with plywood. The tail unit was built of plywood. The intention was to create an aircraft suitable both for training and for cross-country soaring. Typical for its day, it was a high-wing braced monoplane with a fuselage of hexagonal cross-section and an open cockpit. The Baby was an instant success, and was enthusiastically promoted by gliding champion Wolf Hirth. An extensive redesign was undertaken in 1932 following the fatal crash of an unrelated Schneider design, which resulted in the Baby II. This version and the definitive Baby IIb that followed were adopted as standard sailplane trainers for the German Air Sports Association (later the National Socialist Flyers Corps).
During 1941, 30 GB gliders were built by Laminação Nacional de Metais, later Companhia Aeronáutica Paulista in Brazil, under the name "Alcatraz". Following World War II, series production restarted in Germany in 1956. The Baby was also built in France (as the Nord 1300) and the United Kingdom (as the Elliotts Baby EoN and the Slingsby T5 - Slingsby also used it as the basis for a number of their own designs). Edmund Schneider emigrated to Australia, where he developed the Baby design into his Baby 3 and Baby 4, which had enclosed cockpits.
Data fromThe World's Sailplanes:Die Segelflugzeuge der Welt:Les Planeurs du Monde [4]
General characteristics
Performance
Aircraft of comparable role, configuration, and era
Related lists
The Göppingen Gö 4 or Goevier is a German sailplane of the late 1930s used for training pilots. Its most notable features include side-by-side seating and dual controls, making the plane ideal for use as a trainer. It boasted average performance, compared to other gliders of the day, and was advertised as making the process of learning to fly sailplanes easier.
The Schleicher K 8 is a single-seat glider designed by Rudolf Kaiser and built by the Alexander Schleicher company of Germany.
The Akaflieg Stuttgart fs24, nicknamed Phönix, was a glider designed and built in West Germany from 1951.
The Schneider ES-59 Arrow is a sailplane designed and manufactured in Adelaide, South Australia in the early 1960s. The Arrow was manufactured with a one-piece wing of 13.23 metres span. It was the first Australian-built sailplane to compete in the World Gliding Championships, 1963 in Argentina. The Arrow has wood/fabric wings and tail and a wood fuselage. It has a fixed main wheel and a nose skid.
The Slingsby T.21 is an open-cockpit, side-by-side two-seat glider, built by Slingsby Sailplanes Ltd and first flown in 1944. It was widely used by the Royal Air Force, Sri Lanka Air Force and by civilian gliding clubs.
The Slingsby Type 42 Eagle was a two-seat glider designed in England from 1952.
The Slingsby T.6/T.23 Kirby Kite was a single-seat sport glider produced from 1935, by Fred Slingsby in Kirbymoorside, Yorkshire.
The Slingsby T.8 Kirby Tutor was a single-seat sport glider produced from 1937, by Fred Slingsby in Kirbymoorside, Yorkshire.
The Standard Austria was a single-seat aerobatic glider that was originally designed and built in Austria from 1959 but production was moved in 1962 to Schempp-Hirth in Germany.
The Slingsby T.25 Gull 4 is a British glider designed and built by Slingsby that first flew in 1947.
The Scheibe Bergfalke is a German glider designed by Egon Scheibe as a post-World War II development of the Akaflieg München Mü13 produced before and during the war.
The Slingsby Type 34 Sky is a high performance single seat competition sailplane built in the United Kingdom. It was successful in major events, particularly in the World Gliding Championships of 1952.
The Slingsby T.30 Prefect is a 1948 British modernisation of the 1932 single-seat Grunau Baby glider. About 53 were built for civil and military training purposes.
The Slingsby Type 45 Swallow was designed as a club sailplane of reasonable performance and price. One of the most successful of Slingsby's gliders in sales terms, over 100 had been built when production was ended by a 1968 factory fire.
The Slingsby T.13 Petrel was a British single-seat competition glider built by Slingsby Sailplanes just before World War II.
The Slingsby T.50 Skylark 4 was a British single seat competition glider built by Slingsby Sailplanes in the early 1960s. It sold in numbers and had success at national, though not world level competition.
The Schneider ES-52 Kookaburra is an Australian two-seat training sailplane of the 1950s and 1960s. It was designed by Edmund Schneider, the designer of the Grunau Baby, who had emigrated to Adelaide, South Australia following the end of the Second World War.
The Reinhard Cumulus is a West German high-wing, strut-braced single-seat, glider that was designed by Gerhard Reinhard for amateur construction.
The IS-2 was an intermediate training glider designed by Iosif Şilimon and built in Romania in the 1950s at the URMV-3 factory at Brașov.
The IS-4 was a high performance glider designed by Iosif Şilimon and built in Romania in the late 1950s at the URMV-3 factory at Braşov.