From the Augsburger Allgemeine 14 November 2009
The aircraft factory in the backyard
Augsburg's aviation history is peppered with memorable episodes, beginning with Salomon Idler's failed flight attempt. The fact that around three centuries later, in the early
1930s, three young men designed and built a small airplane, and took off from the ground with it, is one of these curiosities. The life stories of the aviation-obsessed farmer's sons Theodor (d. 1985) and Michael Wank (d. 1954) from Tegernbach near Mering were recorded in the late 1980s by contemporary witnesses and former companions.
Apparently, they were friends with the Augsburg amateur photographer Eusebius Schiele, who photographed their aircraft with his plate camera. In his estate,
photos of the "shell" of the biplane (1931) and of the improved successor model, the "W 3," were found, with which they presented themselves in 1932 in front of the air traffic control barracks at the Augsburg airfield. The "W 3" was the first airworthy aircraft developed and built by amateurs: one that received air certification, noted aircraft construction and aviation historian Willy Radinger . The Wank brothers' now deceased, temporary professional companion, still holds the insurance policy, which stipulated that it only applied to flights within the airfield area. He had stored the home-built aircraft in a shed until 1945 and only scrapped it after the end of the war.
Reaching the Technical Limits
The two Wanks, along with Georg Mayensohn (pictured with them in "knickerbockers"), and Willy Radinger, had landed at the Messerschmitt factory in Augsburg. After 1935, men who could somehow be employed in aircraft construction were "collected" there. In 1931, Theo and Michael Wank, unemployed and making ends meet with emergency work, had reached the technical limits of their own construction and brought in Georg Mayensohn, a plumber's apprentice and technical college graduate from Hochgreuth near Kempten, to work as an "aircraft mechanic." He had already built hang gliders and was therefore "experienced in flying." The three moved their "workshop" to a backyard in the Ulrichsviertel district of Augsburg: where the photo of the biplane shell was taken. With a two-cylinder Maybach engine producing 20 hp, the aircraft was said to have only made small hops and never really taken flight – so the trio designed and built the single-seater "W 3": which actually flew. In 1932, the Wank brothers sold their farm in Tegernbach, in whose cowshed the first fuselage was built from wooden frames.
Brothers were spared military service. Theodor Wank was not a farmer but a highly talented developer: in 1935, he designed a light aircraft engine and a diesel motorcycle engine. MAN examined the drawings. Although they didn't build the engines, they immediately hired the young engineer as a designer.
That same year, the Wank brothers were drafted into the military. Naturally, they ended up in the aviation field. Theo, a pilot's license holder, received training as a fighter pilot, but his technical skills were so highly valued that Messerschmitt brought him to Augsburg. There, he rose to the position of "Group Leader Hydraulics."
His brother Michael was also listed there as a "technical employee." Both were spared wartime deployments; they were indispensable in aircraft construction. Georg Mayensohn was also allowed to build Messerschmitt aircraft professionally.
After the war, the trio stayed together and set up a spinning machine factory in Hochgreuth. A few years later, their paths diverged. The "Messerschmittler" Willy
Radinger, in retirement, developed into an almost omniscient aviation historian, able to draw on an extensive archive built over decades. The 15th episode of "Augsburg's Aviation History" is dedicated to him and the
three aircraft builders
