Wolfgang Liebe (22 June 1911 in

Bad Gandersheim Bad Gandersheim ( Eastphalian: ''Ganderssen'') is a town in southern Lower Saxony, Germany, located in the district of Northeim. , it had a population of 9,492. Bad Gandersheim has many half-timbered houses and is located on the German Timber-F ...

, Germany – 21 October 2005 in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

, Germany) was a German

aerospace engineer Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is si ...

and pioneer in

aerodynamics Aerodynamics, from grc, ἀήρ ''aero'' (air) + grc, δυναμική (dynamics), is the study of the motion of air, particularly when affected by a solid object, such as an airplane wing. It involves topics covered in the field of fluid dyn ...

, specialising in research to avoid stall in airfoils. He introduced the concept of

wing fence Wing fences, also known as boundary layer fences and potential fences are fixed aerodynamic devices attached to aircraft wings. Often seen on swept-wing aircraft, wing fences are flat plates fixed to the upper surfaces parallel to the wing ch ...

s. They obstruct span-wise airflow along the wing, and are widely used specifically in early swept-wing designs. Raised in

Cottbus Cottbus (; Lower Sorbian: ''Chóśebuz'' ; Polish: Chociebuż) is a university city and the second-largest city in Brandenburg, Germany. Situated around southeast of Berlin, on the River Spree, Cottbus is also a major railway junction with exten ...

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 ...

, Liebe attended the University of Danzig, receiving his degree in aircraft engineering in 1936. Very early on he had decided to become an aircraft engineer, having been an intern at the Junkers aircraft factory in Dessau. After university he joined the Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt (DVL, German Research Institute for Aviation) and concentrated on the problem of preventing stall. DVL was one of the foremost aircraft research facilities in Germany at the time. To this end he tried out various devices to increase safety on a

Me 109 The Messerschmitt Bf 109 is a German World War II fighter aircraft that was, along with the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, the backbone of the Luftwaffe's fighter force. The Bf 109 first saw operational service in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War and ...

. These trials led to a patent being granted in 1938: “Device to avoid the spread of flow disturbances”. Starting in 1941 he was working at the aeronautics research institute in Prague-Letňany. After the war he was taken prisoner there and put into a train eastbound. Somehow he ended up in

Belgrade Belgrade ( , ;, ; Names of European cities in different languages: B, names in other languages) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Serbia, largest city in Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers a ...

, Yugoslavia and put in charge of the development of a high performance glider aircraft. In 1951 he was allowed to come back to Germany and got his Ph.D in aircraft engineering from the University of Hannover. The thesis had the title “Reasons and Rules for Stall in Aircraft”.Nachruf auf Professor Dr.-Ing. Wolfgang Liebe, http://www.dglr.de/news/mitteilungen/dglr_2006-2.pdf In 1955 he was appointed Professor at the Technical University in Berlin for “Aerodynamics of Airfoils” and retired in 1976. After retirement he continued research and received the Medal of Honour from the Wessex Institute of Technology in 2004 for "outstanding contributions to aerodynamic science and technology“.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Liebe, Wolfgang 1911 births 2005 deaths German aerospace engineers Aerodynamicists Fluid dynamicists People from Bad Gandersheim Engineers from Lower Saxony