I met Kranich OY-XWL first time in 2018 at EKGL, the North Zealand Gliding Club of Denmark. The club celebrated its 75th anniversary, and DaSK, The Danish Vintage Gliding Club, came with several vintage gliders. Guests could win a flight in one of them, and luck was on my side that day.
The interest was huge; I patiently waited for my turn.
The Kranich had very elegant, bird-like wings, and looked gorgeous in the air:
I flew together with Klaus Degner, and during our flight Klaus told me lots of interesting facts and stories about this glider, and about Kranich in general. Klaus had the first flight in his life in exactly the same type of Kranich, in the age of 13. Since then, passion for flying never left Klaus; he’s had a gear number of years as a private and a commercial pilot, something that many of us would only dream of.
I think it was first time, I flew a vintage glider, and it was an unforgettable experience:
The story of this aircraft fascinated me, and after we landed, I told Klaus I wanted to learn more about this beautiful bird.
Klaus got me into contact with Johannes Lyng, the man who, together with other members of DaSK, managed to get this glider to Denmark, and to restore it to the airworthy condition. Johannes was kind to lend me a very precious archive that only exists in a hard copy of photos, together with mostly in German letters and documents.
Kranich (English: Crane) was designed by Hans Jacobs, a German designer and glider pilot, in 1935 when he worked for the Deutsche Forschungsantalt für Segelflug, the German Institute for Gliding Research. Though the fuselage was built of wood, Kranich was a relatively heavy aeroplane. With its seagull-like wings and a 22.68 m2 wing area, this glider was difficult to move on the ground. However, in the air it had excellent performance – with the glide ratio of 23.6:1 it was quite impressive for that time.
The two-seater version was the most widely built glider in Germany during 1935-39. In 1942, the Swedish Air Force ordered 35 Kranichs for training purposes, and they were built in Norrköping by the Swedish manufacturer AB Flygplan. These gliders got a military designation Flygplan Se 103. Kranich was also built in Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Spain. It is estimated that around 2,000 were built, and very few are left today.
DaSK, The Danish Vintage Gliding Club, long dreamed of having Kranich in its fleet, but Kranich is hardly ever for sale. The club had a Swedish built one, but after trying to sample it in 2006, the members had to acknowledge that the project would be economically unmanageable. It was a sad conclusion, but soon an unbelievable thing happened: there was a crashed Kranich for sale in Hilden, Germany.
When Johannes Lyng, Frank Drinhaus, and Niels Ebbe Gjørup, all from DaSK, arrived to Hilden in April 2007 to inspect the glider, they discovered an extraordinary Kranich.
It was built in 1943 by the Czech Ing. J. Mráz aircraft factory – in their Slovak branch in Nitra that was established to support the significantly increased production volumes during the WWII. The main type manufactured was the German glider Kranich, designed for training of the Luftwaffe pilots. “Our” Kranich got the serial number 1000, and was delivered to the Hitler Youth’ flight school in Gaissau, located by the lake Constance near Altenrhein aerodrome on the border with Switzerland, where it served as a trainer.
In 1945, when the WWII was about to come to an end, that part of Germany was occupied by the Allied Forces. The Nazi would normally destroy their aircraft before leaving, but the gliders in Gaissau were probably forgotten. Adolphe Gehriger, an aviation enthusiast from Switzerland, oftentimes visited a restaurant in the area, called Shiffli. There he heard from some French officers about the gliders left in a hangar in Gaissau. He quickly worked out a plan. A legend has it, on a dark night Adolphe Gehriger crossed the Rhine in a rowing boat together with some comrades. They visited the occupied German side where they negotiated the price for buying some of the gliders with a French officer. The officer took them to the aerodrome in Gaissau where Gehriger and his friends chose around 15-20 gliders – Baby, SG, Meise, Weihe, and Kranich among others. The deal was settled, and a week later all those gliders were transported over the boarder to Switzerland in a truck. Customs papers were filled in, that later triggered diplomatic entanglements of a high scale between France and Switzerland, because the French officer had no legal authority to sell the aeroplanes.
Nevertheless, the gliders were saved from the destruction, and played a significant role in the renewal of the post-war gliding sport in Switzerland. Adolphe Gehriger throughout his life (1916 – 1981) was a well-known figure in aviation. He organised the second world gliding championship in 1948, held in Samedan, Switzerland. He was a president of the International Gliding Commission (FAI, or Fédération Aéronautique Internationale), and a diploma named in honour of Adolphe Gehriger is awarded annually by FAI for eminent services to international gliding. Gehriger himself was awarded the FAI’s Lilienthal medal (the highest soaring award in the world) #15 in 1961, handed over by the King Constantine of Greece.
I couldn’t find any decent public photos of Gehriger (GDPR!), so I contacted the FAI, and they kindly sent me some photos of Adolphe Gehriger from their archive, with the permission to publish in my blog:
The Kranich #1000 was among those saved by Adolphe Gehriger in 1945. The aircraft changed owners during the years, in Switzerland and Germany, it was even exhibited in a museum in Köln. In 2004 this glider crashed on landing. As a result of the hard contact with the ground, the front cockpit was destroyed, causing the aircraft to roll around on its back, cracking its tail. To get the passenger out of the back seat, the rescuers had to carve a huge hole in the bottom of the aircraft. Both the pilot and the passenger survived, but the glider was left in a very poor condition, though the wings wasn’t damaged much.
Three years later the aircraft was put on sale. Despite the dreadful state and enormous work required for restoration, this Kranich was a rare chance. DaSK would loved to buy it, but an estimated 100,000 dkk (in 2007 money) for the restoration work done by volunteers was unbearable. Johannes Lyng, the chairman of DaSK, spoke to Niels Sundberg, director of the Sun-Air Aviation Group. Niels Sundberg has been a pilot himself, a member of DaSK, owner of a vintage glider, and he generously agreed to help financing the purchase of Kranich. Therefore, today one can see the logo of Sun-Air on the OY-XWL rudder:
The glider was transported from Hilden in Germany to Billund in Denmark. This is how the fuselage looked like at that time (photo from the DaSK archive):
Members of DaSK were grateful to get this Kranich though the work load was enormous. Fortunately, all documentation was in place, inclusive the original drawings (photo from the DaSK archive):
Kranich #1000 was test assembled several times, and the work continued during 2007 – 2011.
On the photo below (from Føniks Posten 2011 #42, photo from November 2008) from left to right: Jørgen, Erik, Ove, Arne, and Svend Aage.
On the 11th June 2011, after 4 years of restoration work, it could be test flown in Flensburg, Germany.
Everything went perfect, and it was one of the happiest days in the club’s history.
Today, the OY-XWL can be seen in Arnborg EKBH where this glider has its home in the DaSK vintage hangar. Any member of DaSK can book and fly it, assuming all necessary qualifications are in place.
And Johannes Lyng, together with many other members of DaSK, working now on other interesting projects (photo by Bjarne Mortensen):
*****
Sources of information, I used to write this blogpost:
DaSK members’ magazine Føniks Posten: 2007 issues No. 34, 35; 2008 issue No. 37; 2009 issue No. 39; 2010 issue No. 40; 2011 issue No. 42; 2012 Issue No. 44; 2013 issues No. 46, 47
Wikipedia, and other scarce resources on the internet
I want to thank the following people and organisations who helped this blogpost to be written:
Klaus Degner for the flights in OY-XWL, and for sharing the stories about this aircraft that sparked my interest to find out more,
Johannes Lyng for sharing the precious documentation with me,
Bjarne Mortensen for the pictures,
Per Engaard and Bjarne Mortensen who sent me their Føniks Posten magazines, and to
FAI for providing the photos of Adolphe Gehriger.
Disclaimer: As Adolphe Gehriger and his companions agreed to kept the details of this story secret till the rest of their lives, it helped to create many legends. E.g. in some sources I read that Gehriger was nicknamed “Pirate” for this operation of saving the gliders from destruction, in other – that the nickname came from his sailing adventures. The amount of saved gliders varied from source to source. The gliders were flown to Switzerland by night, and so on. I didn’t do any research to confirm or disapprove anything, but I used my own common sense.
Johannes Lyng and Niels Ebbe Gjørup used several years to collect the information about OY-XWL, and I highly recommend to read all Føniks Posten volumes I mentioned above – there are more exciting details and interesting stories related to the OY-XWL, the remarkable people who owned this aircraft, and the history of gliding sport around the WWII. I also highly recommend a flight in OY-XWL.