Ewald Rohlfs
Ewald Rohlfs ( born March 23, 1911 in Gdansk, † July 29, 1984 in Bremen ) was a German test pilot and test pilot. Appointed in 1944 to the captain, he was after the war, a member of the Traditionsgemeinschaft Old Eagle ( TgAA ).
Life
His name is closely associated with the development of the helicopter in Germany. The designer Henrich Focke had chosen him to fly in the helicopter he built Focke- Wulf Fw 61 and tested. Rohlfs, which had occurred at the company on May 1, 1935 so led on June 26, 1936 the first flight, which, however, only lasted 28 seconds. Rohlfs was already over an hour in the air a year later and managed a distance of 16.4 km. In June 1937, he took with the two now existing helicopters all world records after Germany, with 1 hour 20 min duration, 2440 m altitude, 122.5 km / h speed and 80.6 km distance in a closed circuit. Even before that, on 10 May 1937 he had turned off the engine in an altitude of 400 m and was still landed safely in autorotation, by which he had proved the function of this important institution. When Focke soon afterwards separated from his old company and a new founded ( Focke- Achgelis ), Rohlfs stayed behind and was then preoccupied with the flying and testing the Fw 190. He also belonged to the factory Schutzstaffel, initially later Fw 190 The other test flights with the Fw 61 in the new company took with the Fw 187, then Carl Bode and Hanna Reitsch.
After the war, Rohlfs was with Focke 1954-1957 in Brazil at the local center of aviation (Centro tecnico de Aeronautica ), where a helicopter should also be developed. Then they both went to Borgward in Bremen, where they were active in the development of the helicopter project I Hummingbird. The first flight so could Rohlfs on July 1, 1958 to perform. The testing retreated to the length so that it no longer came to the desired pattern approval because the company went bankrupt. Rohlfs now changed to Henschel in Kassel, where he became chief pilot and operations manager. In 1977 he retired and returned to Bremen, where he spent the last years of his life.