The Bäumer B II Sausewind ("Whizzing Wind" or "Restless Person") was a light sports tandem two-seat, open cockpit,

wooden Wood is a structural tissue/material found as xylem in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulosic fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin t ...

cantilever A cantilever is a rigid structural element that extends horizontally and is unsupported at one end. Typically it extends from a flat vertical surface such as a wall, to which it must be firmly attached. Like other structural elements, a cantilev ...

monoplane A monoplane is a fixed-wing aircraft configuration with a single mainplane, in contrast to a biplane or other types of multiplanes, which have multiple wings. A monoplane has inherently the highest efficiency and lowest drag of any wing con ...

. It was built by

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

aviation Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. ''Aircraft'' include fixed-wing and rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as lighter-than-air aircraft such as h ...

company Bäumer Aero GmbH, based at

Hamburg Airport Hamburg Airport () , is a major international airport in Hamburg, the second-largest city in Germany. Since November 2016 the airport has been named after the former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt. It is located north of the city centre in t ...

. It was the first aircraft made in Germany to be designed for aerodynamic performance.

Design and development

The Sausewind's development was triggered when the newspaper '' BZ am Mittag'' announced the ''B.Z. Preis der Lüfte'' ("''B.Z.'' Prize of the Skies") as part of the 1925 ''Deutschland-Rundflug'' ("Round-Germany Flight"), which offered prize money of 100,000

Reichsmarks The (; Currency sign, sign: ℛ︁ℳ︁; abbreviation: RM) was the currency of German Reich, Germany from 1924 until the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945, and in the Bizone, American, British and French occupied zones of Germany, until 20 June 19 ...

for the winner. The twin brothers

Siegfried and Walter Günter Siegfried Günter (8 December 1899 – 20 June 1969) and Walter Günter (8 December 1899 – 21 September 1937) were German twin brothers and pioneering aircraft designers. Walter was responsible for the world's first rocket-powered and ...

designed the B II at Bäumer Aero GmbH. The Sausewind was the first aircraft to make use of

elliptical wing An elliptical wing is a wing planform whose leading and trailing edges each approximate two segments of an ellipse. It is not to be confused with annular wings, which may be elliptically shaped. Relatively few aircraft have adopted the elliptic ...

and tail units, which offered aerodynamic advantages over the rectangular

wing A wing is a type of fin that produces both Lift (force), lift and drag while moving through air. Wings are defined by two shape characteristics, an airfoil section and a planform (aeronautics), planform. Wing efficiency is expressed as lift-to-d ...

s that were common at the time. To reduce air resistance all control cables and control levers were installed internally. The

undercarriage Undercarriage is the part of a moving vehicle that is underneath the main body of the vehicle. The term originally applied to this part of a horse-drawn carriage, and usage has since broadened to include: *The landing gear of an aircraft. *The ch ...

used split

axle An axle or axletree is a central shaft for a rotation, rotating wheel and axle, wheel or gear. On wheeled vehicles, the axle may be fixed to the wheels, rotating with them, or fixed to the vehicle, with the wheels rotating around the axle. In ...

s to reduce drag compared with a continuous axle.

Operational history

On 31 May 1925, the B II took off from

Berlin-Tempelhof Tempelhof () is a locality of Berlin within the borough of Tempelhof-Schöneberg. It is the location of the former Tempelhof Airport, one of the earliest commercial airports in the world. The former airport and surroundings are now a park called ...

for the Round-Germany Flight. The flight time (including several emergency landings) for the distance of was 91 hours and 12 minutes over five two-day stages. The Sausewind took second place in Group B for aircraft with a maximum of . It received a prize of 15,000 Reichsmarks. At the Otto Lilienthal Competition from June 15 to July 23, 1925, the B II won the competition for the highest speed at an altitude of , reaching , maximum altitude, climbing to , and best climb rate, achieving .

Loss

The B II “Sausewind” was lost in a crash landing on September 19, 1925.

Specifications

References

*Hallion, Richard P.
Airplanes that Transformed Aviation
. ''Air & Space''. 9 May 2008. Retrieved 12 February 2010.

. ''

Flight Flight or flying is the motion (physics), motion of an Physical object, object through an atmosphere, or through the vacuum of Outer space, space, without contacting any planetary surface. This can be achieved by generating aerodynamic lift ass ...

'', 28 May 1925. pp. 317–326. {{DEFAULTSORT:Baumer Sausewind 1920s German sport aircraft Low-wing aircraft Single-engined tractor aircraft Aircraft first flown in 1925