M.Simons The World's Vintage Sailplanes 1908-45

THE GRUNAU BABY

  Nobody knows how many Grunau Babies were built. They were mass-produced in Germany and several other countries as well as being favorites with amateur builders. The type became familiar in almost every part of the world where ДальшеMore>>> gliding is practised. The first emerged from Edmund Schneider’s factory in Grunau, Silesia, in 1931. The design was Schneider’s. The idea was to produce a cheap sailplane for less-experienced pilots. Experience gained with earlier training gliders such as the Pruefling and Falke was incorporated. It had a single-spar wing of constant chord except for the elliptical tips. The aerofoil section was the Goettingen 535, running out to a thin, symmetrical form at the tip with several degrees of washout to ensure safe stalling characteristics. The ailerons were without differential gearing and the gap between them and the wing was sealed by a strip of fabric glued along the hinge line. A strut ran from the main spar to the fuselage main frame. The fuselage was a plywood box of hexagonal cross section with an open cockpit and a wooden skid mounted on rubber blocks. The tailplane was strut-braced. There were six of the new type at the 1932 Rhoen meeting. Soon afterward drawings were being sold. Twenty-two were built in 1932 by Edmund Schneider alone.
  In 1933 there was a major redesign, resulting in the Grunau Baby 2. By extending the span to 13.5 metres, an improvement in performance was gained without much penalty in increased weight or cost. The cockpit was enlarged and the fuselage pylon reshaped to establish an outline that did not alter significantly for twenty years. The GB 2 immediately became famous. On April 3rd and 4th 1933, Kurt Schmidt hovered over the dunes in East Prussia for more than 36 hours to establish a world duration record which stood, officially, until 1949.
  By 1933 the manufacturers were claiming that every three days another GB left the workshops. Examples were soon flying in Argentina, Ireland, Holland, Romania and Switzerland, while amateur constructors everywhere were hard at work. At the 1934 Rhoen, no less than 33 Grunau Babies appeared, being easily the most numerous type present.
  Wolf Hirth adopted the GB at his gliding school and here made many demonstration flights, including aerobatics. He used a GB to explore the Moazagotl Wave. Eric Collins, the first British Silver ‘C’ pilot, was killed trying to do an outside loop in a Grunau Baby at a display by Cobham's Air Circus, and for some years it seemed that if a glider was required to attempt something unusual it would necessarily be a Grunau Baby. Accidents, thanks to the GB's docility and robust design, were comparatively few.
  The Grunau Baby 2A had greatly improved ailerons of longer, narrower planform, and adopted a semi-enclosed canopy with a windscreen. Others were fitted with fully enclosed canopies and the need for glide path control for landings led to many being modified retrospectively by the addition of lift spoilers on the upper surfaces of the wing. Schneider also produced a motorised version.
  The first Grunau Baby to be fitted with full airbrakes was the Grunau Baby 2B, and whatever numbers of the earlier versions were built, the combined total must have been surpassed many times by production of this model. The Grunau Baby 2B became the backbone of the massive Nationalsozialistiche Fliegerkorps (NSFK) pilot training programme. According to official figures, during the war years from 1940 to the end of 1944, 4104 were produced. These sailplanes were built under licence throughout Germany and in the occupied countries and there was some production in Sweden and Switzerland. After the war, in spite of the widespread destruction, there remained hundreds of Grunau Baby 2Bs in NSFK hangars all over Europe. A few were salvaged and used by the British service gliding clubs, and a few more were ‘exported' in one way or another.
  In Czechoslovakia, Spain and Sweden, production began again. In France, the Nord 1300 sailplane was the Grunau Baby 2B, in England the EON Baby was a stronger, heavier version. It had a landing wheel instead of the drop-off wheeled dolly customary in Germany. The original manufacturer, Edmund Schneider, who had been forced to leave Silesia, salvaged drawings of the Grunau Baby and when he set up a glider manufacturing business again in Australia, the first product was the Grunau Baby 3A, which had a landing wheel and an improved cockpit and canopy. Another type, also called the Grunau Baby 3, was manufactured in Germany by Alexander Schleicher at Poppenhausen. This version differed a good deal from Schneider's earlier design, having a different wing attachment system and a strengthened but rather less elegant fuselage.
  The Grunau Baby 3B, designed by Schneider in Australia, was really a new type, with different wing planform and aerofoil, a new fuselage with enclosed cockpit and entirely different shape. Even the tail unit was redesigned. The end of the development came with the Grunau Baby 4, a few of which were built in Australian in the 'fifties.
  The influence of this design on other sailplanes was considerable. In England the Slingsby Kirby Kite was in effect a Grunau Baby 2A with a streamlined fuselage and ‘gull’ wing, the Cambridge 1 and 2 were streamlined fuselage GBs without the ‘gull’ form. In post-war years the famous Slingsby Type 21 which become the standard two-seat trainer in England, was little more than an enlarged Grunau Baby, similar in performance and handling, to facilitate the pilot’s eventual transition to solo flying.

  Technical data:
   Grunau Baby 1: Span. 12.87 m. Wing area. 14.5 sq m. Aspect ratio. 11.4. Empty weight. 100 kg. Flying weight. 166 kg. Wing loading. 11.4 kg/sq m. Aerofoil. Goettingen 535. Best glide ratio. 1:17.
   Grunau Baby 2B: Span. 13.57 m. Wing area. 14.2 sq m. Aspect ratio, 13. Empty weight. 160 kg. Flying weight. 250 kg. Best glide ratio. 1 : 17 at 55 km/h. Maximum permitted speed. 150 km h.

M.Hardy. Gliders & Sailplanes of the world

Grunau Baby

  One of the classic training sailplane designs, the Grunau Baby occupies much the same sort of place in gliding history as types like the Tiger Moth and Avro 504 do in the annals of powered flight instruction. It was the type in which many prewar and wartime pilots learnt their basic skills, and in which many prewar holders of the Silver C gained their certificates. By 1930 interest in gliding was already widespread in Germany, and pilots had begun to explore the techniques of soaring and the use of thermals to make long cross-country flights. There was a need for a glider which would be suitable both for training and high performance cross-country flying, and to meet this need Wolf Hirth and Edmund Schneider designed and built the Grunau Baby, which made its first flight in 1932; it took its name from the town of Grunau just south of Berlin where it was built. This single-seater was of simple wood and fabric construction with a high strut-braced wing, a plywood fuselage of hexagonal cross-section and an open cockpit ahead of the wing leading edge. In its initial form the Baby's span was 42ft 2 1/2 in but two years later the Baby 2 was produced with the wing span increased to 44ft 6 1/4in. This was followed by the Baby 2A and 2B in which the rectangular cross-section fuselage was strengthened with double layers of diagonal plywood; there was now a windscreen to protect the pilot. About 80 Mk 1s and around 700 Mk 2A and 2B variants were built by Grunau Riesengebirge, and the Baby was built under licence in a number of other European countries, production eventually totalling several thousand. Among the licensees were Slingsby, who built 15 at their Kirkbymoorside works from 1935 as the T 5 Baby 2, and some others were also built by amateur constructors from BGA-supplied plans. The Slingsby-built ones had no air brakes whereas Elliott's version, known as the Type 8 Baby Eon, had spoilers in the wing upper surfaces. The Baby Eon was an improved version of the Baby 2B, and had an enclosed cockpit canopy; instead of the German-built Baby's single main landing skid, the Elliott version had a rubber-mounted ash main skid with a single main wheel of fixed centre, plus a tail skid. It was also available with an open cockpit as well as an enclosed 'bubble' canopy; an elevator trimmer and a belly hook for higher winch launching were offered as optional extras. Production of the Baby Eon began in 1948 and 47 were built altogether, plus several more from Elliott factory-supplied kits. An improved variant of the Baby Eon, incorporating a new tailplane and mass-balanced elevators, first flew in 1956 while another improved postwar variant was the Grunau Baby 3, which had several modifications over the earlier Mk 2, including an enclosed cockpit. When Edmund Schneider, the Baby's co-creator and manufacturer, moved to Australia after the war and formed his own company there at the invitation of the Gliding Federation of Australia, he produced the final improved version, the Grunau Baby 4. In Finland in 1949 Mr Pentti Alanne and Mr Vilho Swahn fitted a Grunau Baby with a French Poinsard engine in the nose, and a landing gear similar to a Piper Cub's.


Data: Baby 2B
Span : 44 ft 6 1/4 in
Length: 19 ft 11 3/4 in
Wing area: 152.9 sqft
Aspect ratio: 13.0
Empty weight: 375 lb
Max weight: 551 Ib
Max speed: 93 mph
Min sinking speed: 2.8 ft/sec at 34 mph
Best glide ratio: 17:1 at 37.5 mph