Woldemar Voigt (10 February 1907 – June 1980) was a German aerospace engineer, who was responsible for some of the advanced

swept wing A swept wing is a wing that angles either backward or occasionally forward from its root rather than in a straight sideways direction. Swept wings have been flown since the pioneer days of aviation. Wing sweep at high speeds was first investigate ...

German jet-powered aircraft at the end of

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 ...

Early life

His grandfather was the German physicist

Woldemar Voigt Woldemar Voigt (; 2 September 1850 – 13 December 1919) was a German physicist, who taught at the Georg August University of Göttingen. Voigt eventually went on to head the Mathematical Physics Department at Göttingen and was succeeded in 1 ...

(1850-1919), known for

Voigt notation In mathematics, Voigt notation or Voigt form in multilinear algebra is a way to represent a symmetric tensor by reducing its order. There are a few variants and associated names for this idea: Mandel notation, Mandel–Voigt notation and Nye notat ...

Voigt profile The Voigt profile (named after Woldemar Voigt) is a probability distribution given by a convolution of a Cauchy-Lorentz distribution and a Gaussian distribution. It is often used in analyzing data from spectroscopy or diffraction. Definition ...

and the Voigt effect, and who introduced the term

tensor In mathematics, a tensor is an algebraic object that describes a multilinear relationship between sets of algebraic objects related to a vector space. Tensors may map between different objects such as vectors, scalars, and even other tenso ...

in 1898. He was born in February 1907 in

Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...

; he was the oldest of four brothers. His father was Karl Voigt (1879–1965). He studied at technical high school in

Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it th ...

, in the south of

Hesse Hesse (, , ) or Hessia (, ; german: Hessen ), officially the State of Hessen (german: links=no, Land Hessen), is a States of Germany, state in Germany. Its capital city is Wiesbaden, and the largest urban area is Frankfurt. Two other major histor ...

Career

Klemm

He worked for

Klemm The Klemm Leichtflugzeugbau GmbH ("Klemm Light Aircraft Company") was a German aircraft manufacturer noteworthy for sports and touring planes of the 1930s. The company was founded in Böblingen in 1926 by Dr. Hanns Klemm, who had previously work ...

, designing the

Klemm Kl 35 The Klemm Kl 35 is a German sporting and training aeroplane developed as a successor to the Kl 25. A product of Klemm Leichtflugzeugbau Gmbh it shared the same single-engine, cantilever low-wing configuration as the earlier machine, the major ...

Messerschmitt

He joined

Messerschmitt Messerschmitt AG () was a German share-ownership limited, aircraft manufacturing corporation named after its chief designer Willy Messerschmitt from mid-July 1938 onwards, and known primarily for its World War II fighter aircraft, in partic ...

, in

Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...

, in 1933. He was the project leader for the designs of the

Messerschmitt Me 264 The Messerschmitt Me 264 was a long-range strategic bomber developed during World War II for the German ''Luftwaffe'' as its main strategic bomber. The design was later selected as Messerschmitt's competitor in the ''Reichsluftfahrtministerium' ...

(four-engined bomber),

Messerschmitt Me 328 The Messerschmitt Me 328 was originally designed as a parasite aircraft to protect '' Luftwaffe'' bomber formations during World War II. During its protracted development, a wide variety of other roles were suggested for it. Late in the war, th ...

, and the infamous rocket-engined

Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet The Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet is a rocket-powered interceptor aircraft primarily designed and produced by the German aircraft manufacturer Messerschmitt. It is the only operational rocket-powered fighter aircraft in history as well as th ...

. He oversaw the design of the swept-wing

Messerschmitt P.1101 The Messerschmitt P.1101 was a single-seat, single- jet fighter project of World War II, developed as part of the 15 July 1944 Emergency Fighter Program which sought a second generation of jet fighters for the Third Reich. A prominent feature ...

jet fighter, which was never built (by the Germans), but provided a valued contribution to early American swept-wing jet fighters. From October 1938, Messerschmitt had been looking at designs for jet fighter aircraft. He was head of the Projects Department from 1939.Messerschmitt Me 264 Amerika Bomber
/ref> At Messerschmitt, other designers included Wolfgang Degel. In October 1943, the Messerschmitt design department moved to

Oberammergau Oberammergau is a municipality in the district of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in Bavaria, Germany. The small town on the Ammer River is known for its woodcarvers and woodcarvings, for its NATO School, and around the world for its 380-year tradition of ...

in southern Bavaria, on the Austrian border. The

NATO School The NATO School Oberammergau in southern Germany is NATO's key training facility on the operational level. The School started with two courses in 1953 and now offers over 100 different courses to Alliance members and partners on subjects relate ...

has been on the site since 1953.

Vought

He went to work for the American aircraft company

Vought Vought was the name of several related American aerospace firms. These have included, in the past, Lewis and Vought Corporation, Chance Vought, Vought-Sikorsky, LTV Aerospace (part of Ling-Temco-Vought), Vought Aircraft Companies, and Vought Ai ...

, with one of his first designs being the

Vought F7U Cutlass The Vought F7U Cutlass is a United States Navy carrier-based jet fighter and fighter-bomber of the early Cold War era. It was a tailless aircraft for which aerodynamic data from projects of the German Arado and Messerschmitt companies, obtain ...

, which was developed from German scientists' data on swept-wing jet aircraft.

Personal life

He married Clara Hollerung (born 12 September 1911) in 1935. He died in June 1980 in America, aged 73. He had lived in

Annapolis, Maryland Annapolis ( ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Maryland and the county seat of, and only incorporated city in, Anne Arundel County. Situated on the Chesapeake Bay at the mouth of the Severn River, south of Baltimore and about east o ...

References

External links

Family tree
{{DEFAULTSORT:Voigt, Woldemar 1907 births 1980 deaths German aerospace engineers German emigrants to the United States Messerschmitt people Messerschmitt Me 262 People from Annapolis, Maryland Scientists from Göttingen Vought Engineers from Lower Saxony