KRONFELD ON GLIDING AND SOARING.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

TEN YEARS OF COMPETITION & EXPERIENCE 55
holidays of 1911 and 1912, the hilltop became the home of
eager building and flying activity. How enthusiastic they
were may be gathered from the fact that nearly thirty
gliding planes of different types were built. The first of
these, which were spanned with linen sheets, carried out
from the Wasserkuppe flights of from six hundred to a
thousand feet long. As early as in 1912 Hans Gutermuth
flew a distance of nearly three thousand feet and remained
in the air for one minute and fifty-two seconds.
When criticizing these results, we must not forget that
it was not easy to find young people of that age who were
ready and willing to take up such earnest work and face
all the hardships it involves or who possessed the necessary
patience and staying power. The reason that so little is
known about this labour of love on the Wasserkuppe may
be due to the fact that five out of the ten comrades who took
part in it found an airman's death on the battle-field.
But their tradition of comradeship and of mutual assistance
in scientific and technical work was taken over by the
Academic Flying Group of Darmstadt, which has played a
part of the greatest moment in the development of soaring
flight.
The activities on the Wasserkuppe that eyrie on the
Rhon form the finest memorial to these young pioneers.
THE ROUSSEAU OF FLYING
At the Jubilee prizegiving after the tenth great Rhon
Flying Competition a man stood with the successful
pilots who was destined to take no large sums of money
home with him, to receive no silver badge or cup.
He was greatly surprised to receive anything at all, for
he was not a pilot. And yet he was presented with a
special honorary prize! A hat! Yes! A fine, new
broad-brimmed hat ! ! But the hat itself was not the
essential thing. What really mattered was its ribbon band,
which bore the legend " For the next ten years."
And so his old hat was superseded, and high time too.
That old hat, so runs the saga, Father Ursinus of the Rhon
first placed upon his head in the year 1920, swearing that