The DFS Sperber Junior ( en, Hawk Junior) was a competition
sailplane
A glider or sailplane is a type of glider aircraft used in the leisure activity and sport of gliding (also called soaring). This unpowered aircraft can use naturally occurring currents of rising air in the atmosphere to gain altitude. Sailplan ...
designed for
Hanna Reitsch and built in
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
in 1936.
Design and development
The Sperber Junior, was designed as a development of the
Rhönsperber for Hanna Reitsch by
Hans Jacobs. It had much in common with his other Rhönsperber development, the
Sperber Senior, though the latter was intended for large pilots. Reitsch's small and light frame allowed a narrower
cockpit
A cockpit or flight deck is the area, usually near the front of an aircraft or spacecraft, from which a Pilot in command, pilot controls the aircraft.
The cockpit of an aircraft contains flight instruments on an instrument panel, and the ...
than in the Senior in a revised, more slender forward
fuselage
The fuselage (; from the French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds crew, passengers, or cargo. In single-engine aircraft, it will usually contain an engine as well, although in some amphibious aircraft t ...
, a tight fit for her and too small for her contemporaries. This increased the fuselage length, though the span was less. A different
airfoil
An airfoil (American English) or aerofoil (British English) is the cross-sectional shape of an object whose motion through a gas is capable of generating significant lift, such as a wing, a sail, or the blades of propeller, rotor, or turbine.
...
section, the same as on the Rhönsperber, was used and the
gull wing was more pronounced with
airbrakes on the inner wing.
[
It was a ]shoulder wing
A monoplane is a fixed-wing aircraft configuration with a single mainplane, in contrast to a biplane or other types of multiplane (aeronautics), multiplanes, which have multiple planes.
A monoplane has inherently the highest efficiency and lowe ...
aircraft with a double straight tapered gull wing, built around two spars and fabric covered apart from the leading edge
The leading edge of an airfoil surface such as a wing is its foremost edge and is therefore the part which first meets the oncoming air.Crane, Dale: ''Dictionary of Aeronautical Terms, third edition'', page 305. Aviation Supplies & Academics, ...
from the front spar forward and the wing roots, which were plywood
Plywood is a material manufactured from thin layers or "plies" of wood veneer that are glued together with adjacent layers having their wood grain rotated up to 90 degrees to one another. It is an engineered wood from the family of manufactured ...
skinned. The wing roots were carefully faired into the fuselage
The fuselage (; from the French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds crew, passengers, or cargo. In single-engine aircraft, it will usually contain an engine as well, although in some amphibious aircraft t ...
. The inner panels, filling about one third of the span had only slight taper, the sweep entirely on the trailing edge; the inner parts of them carried about 10° of dihedral but they flattened outboard. Spoiler
Spoiler is a security vulnerability on modern computer central processing units that use speculative execution. It exploits side-effects of speculative execution to improve the efficiency of Rowhammer and other related memory and cache attacks. Ac ...
s were mounted on the bend, behind the front spar and opening above the wing. The outer panels had no dihedral but were strongly tapered, swept mostly on the trailing edge with a taper ratio of 0.42. Ailerons occupied the whole of the outer panels' trailing edges.[
The Junior had a completely ply covered fuselage with a narrow ]ovoid
An oval () is a closed curve in a plane which resembles the outline of an egg. The term is not very specific, but in some areas (projective geometry, technical drawing, etc.) it is given a more precise definition, which may include either one or ...
cross section which tapered progressively to the tail. The cockpit was just ahead of the wing, under a largely ply fairing smoothly integrated into the nose and fuselage; its only transparencies were portholes in its slightly concave sides. The cockpit fairing was removable for access; aft, it blended immediately into the fuselage line without the long fairing of the Sperber Senior. A tapered, round tipped and largely fabric covered horizontal tail was mounted on top of the fuselage, far enough forward to place the trailing edges of its elevators at the rudder
A rudder is a primary control surface used to steer a ship, boat, submarine, hovercraft, aircraft, or other vehicle that moves through a fluid medium (generally aircraft, air or watercraft, water). On an aircraft the rudder is used primarily to ...
hinge line. The latter was mounted on a narrow ply covered fin
A fin is a thin component or appendage attached to a larger body or structure. Fins typically function as foils that produce lift or thrust, or provide the ability to steer or stabilize motion while traveling in water, air, or other fluids. Fin ...
, carefully faired into the fuselage and extending below it to form a tail bumper. The mostly fabric covered rudder was full, curved and slightly pointed, likewise extending below the fuselage. A short skid from just behind the nose to beyond mid-chord completed 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 ...
.[
]
Operational history
As a woman Reitsch had serious problems with her admission into the 1936 German National Competitions on the Wasserkuppe
The is a mountain within the German state of Hesse. It is a large plateau formation at an elevation of and is the highest peak in the Rhön Mountains. Great advances in sailplane development took place on the mountain during the interwar peri ...
but managed fifth place. In May 1937 she was one of a group of five pilots who soared from Salzburg
Salzburg (, ; literally "Salt-Castle"; bar, Soizbuag, label=Bavarian language, Austro-Bavarian) is the List of cities and towns in Austria, fourth-largest city in Austria. In 2020, it had a population of 156,872.
The town is on the site of the ...
across the Alps
The Alps () ; german: Alpen ; it, Alpi ; rm, Alps ; sl, Alpe . are the highest and most extensive mountain range system that lies entirely in Europe, stretching approximately across seven Alpine countries (from west to east): France, Sw ...
for 100 miles into Italy.[Reitsch, H., 1955, The Sky My Kingdom, London: Biddles Limited, Guildford and King's Lynn, ] After that she became more absorbed in military testing and the Junior was lost in World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
.
Specifications
References
{{DFS aircraft
1930s German sailplanes
DFS aircraft
Shoulder-wing aircraft
Aircraft first flown in 1936
Gull-wing aircraft