Evening All,
Here are some more photos and a little history of the Otto that I have been able to find, partly with the help of Old Man to whom I wish to extend my thanks for bringing my attention to an article on the use of one of these machines in East Africa in 1914-1915.
Gustav Otto was a Bavarian engineer who established a factory for building aircraft in Munich in the years just before WW1. Unusually for German designers he focussed on pusher machines, and according to contemporary British sources these were copies of Farman designs. In fact this was a little unfair as it would be more accurate to say that he was inspired by the Farman designs as his machines were considerably different in outline and construction. Whereas most contemporary machines were built with wooden frames, Otto used steel. This was a very marked innovation for the time as was his use of elevators rather than wing warping which was common on most contemporary French and British designs. The engine was mounted on a platform above the rear of the nacelle and was an Argus of 100hp, again a more powerful plant than most of its non-German contemporaries. However the basic design went through many variations over time, as did many other contemporary designs, as Otto tried to refine and improve the basic idea. There were variously machines with four fins and rudders, twin two-wheel undercarriage units and various shapes to the nacelle. One photograph shows an Otto without any nacelle at all as on the Bristol Boxkite, with the pilot sitting fully exposed in the front of the aircraft and the passenger equally exposed behind. It would seem that by 1914 the design had settled to something like what I have tried to represent in my model, but I cannot be certain of all the details as there is little reliable information published in English.
The military service career of these machines seems to have been limited to reconnaissance on the Eastern front by a very few machines. The Army did not like them because they were considered to be badly constructed and the Navy ordered several but these seem to have suffered from poor construction too. However some machines do seem to have been employed at least in the early months of the war before they were withdrawn from service.
The German government had expressed an interest in developing aviation in its African colonies in South West and East Africa in response to the French having sent aircraft to Morocco in 1912. At first there were bureaucratic obstructions by various people in Germany and nothing happened for two years until in early 1914 a businessman financed a private venture and a pilot, Bruno Büchner, was instructed to take an aircraft to German South West Africa where he was to perform demonstration flights in the capital Windhoek. In May 1914 he landed at Swakopmund with his wife and a photographer, and assembled his machine before flying it to Windhoek. There he carried out demonstration flights and also carried post, and on one occasion a passenger, to small settlements in the colony.
Büchner gave joy rides to passengers who were prepared to pay for a ticket, while others enjoyed the aerial displays that he was able to put on. The original plan was that Büchner would fly the machine to German East Africa but the local conditions made this impractical: there were serious problems with air turbulence in these sub-tropical areas and in addition the South African government would not give permission to overfly its territory. Instead in July the machine was dissembled and crated and sent by sea to Dar-es- Salaam.
Büchner heard about the outbreak of the First World War in Zanzibar Harbour. He returned to Dar-es-Salaam and, on the open sea, met the battle-cruiser
Königsberg. On arrival, he offered his aircraft to Oberstleutnant Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, the commander of the Schutztruppe (defence force). Von Lettow-Vorbeck ordered Büchner to undertake a scouting mission in the direction of Zanzibar and Bagamoyo. Flying along the coast, he spotted two gunboats which immediately opened fire. He was wounded in the arm. On landing, the plane struck deep sand and somersaulted. Büchner was thrown clear, but injured, and late in the evening he arrived at his base, utterly exhausted. While he was still in hospital, a Schutztruppe officer, Leutnant Henneberger, had the plane repaired and took off. However, when he was attempting to land, the aircraft clipped the tops of palm trees and crashed. The pilot was pulled out dead from the only lightly damaged plane.
After his recovery, Büchner was ordered to fit floats to his plane and to support the
Königsberg, which was then lying disabled in the Rufiji Delta. The aircraft was rebuilt and sheet-metal floats were attached. It was then found that there was insufficient petrol available, and the project was cancelled. The inventive Büchner fitted the aircraft's engine to a small-gauge railway goods truck and, with this much admired Schienen-Zepp (Rail-Zepp[elin]), undertook two goods transport trips to the inland town of Morogoro. Büchner and his wife were interned after they had been captured by the British.
I have not been able to find out about the fate of the approximately 180 machines of this type that were built, but it seems probable that some at least found their way to training units in late 1914 and early 1915. If the records of their poor construction are accurate it is unlikely that many survived for long in that harsh environment. There is a modern replica machine in a museum in Munich.
Thanks for looking.
Stephen.
