VGC News/Newsletters - Lakes Gliding Club

may not have been very much); they were not ill treated and
Peter and Helen did not think of them as slaves. Peter was
involved with trying to sort out the many problems of the very
complicated HE 177, which was supposed to be Germany's
only heavy bomber. Rostock had been badly bombed by the
British, but the Heinkel Works had not been seriously
damaged. Peter wanted to move at least the machine shop to
Saxony, where it would be in less danger. This was accomplished.
Peter and Helen did up a small sailing boat called
Sturmvogel. They had a wild idea to try to sail it to Sweden.
However, Helen became very ill and this was later revealed to
be tuberculosis. At Heinkel's personal request, she was
accepted by a sanatorium at Waren, 65 kms from Rostock. She
became so ill that she had to be got into another sanatorium in
Switzerland at Davos. To pay for this was impossible for him
and he had to join the Abwehr (German Secret Service) to
assure that she could go there and be paid for. However, there
was very little he could do for the Abwehr except to investigate
a crashed 1088 in a Swedish forest which had SN-2 radar
on board. The British already had an SN-2 radar set.
He could not destroy the Ju 88 with its secret radar, because
the Swedes were with him and watched his every move. He
thus could not help the Abwehr but managed to assure the
safety of its pilot in hospital in case Nazis would wish to kill
him, which was very likely. By that time no country was
making available information advantageous to an enemy.
Later, to try and help, he wrote to US General Donovan, with
whom he had been friendly in America, saying simply that as
the majority of German people were now absolutely fed up
with the Nazis and the war, he was convinced that, providing
they were governed sensibly after the war, they would not
cause problems and that there would be no resistance movement
to fight the Allied occupation.This was betrayed to the
Nazis in Germany. Knowing what this would mean, he
decided to leave his job and go into hiding. However, first he
warned the Swiss authorities about what might happen to
Helen and they found her somewhere more secure to live.
Shortly afterwards, her family was able to get her back to
Amel;ca and her health improved. It was a time of the mass
movement of refugees from the East in their attempt to escape
from the Russians. It so happened that a lugger arrived in
Sweden and the refugees on her intended to try to sail her
away from war-torn Europe. Peter was able to get on her. After
many problems with the engine and stops in ports to fix it, one
of them being Dover, it finally got them to Casablanca. Here,
the French authorities arrested him and tried to get him to
confess to being a war criminal. After a year of prison life,
sickness and interrogations, dU1;ng which time he was able to
write a considerable part of his memoirs, the French got tired
of guarding him and he was able to clandestinely get aboard a
BI;tish yacht which took him to Venezuela where Helen was
able to join him. As he had no papers be could not go to the
USA but, after 3 years, he decided to visit Canada where,
through a glider pilot friend, Ron Claudi, he found work as a
construction engineer for 2 years but he was not allowed to
stay there. From there he visited SW Africa, where he became
Chief Instructor of the Windhoek Gliding Club. Here Helen
was able to earn some money selling her art work through the
local camera shop. She developed quite a cottage industry producing
Greetings Cards with African themes. When Peter's
job came to an end, they moved to Pretoria where Peter
worked in civil engineering, while training to requalify for a
commercial pilot's licence. When the Eisenhower Government
came into office in the USA, immigration laws were
relaxed and so at last Peter and Helen were allowed to return
to live in the USA in 1955. For a time, he worked as pilot for
a local businessman and then he obtained a job as an engineer
for TWA in Kansas City where they bought a house, and Peter
was at last admitted to full US Citizenship. He was then sent
to Seattle as a member of a group observing some of the first
Boeing 707 airliners being constructed for TWA. He was able
to bring about some important improvements in the methods
of construction used. Later he worked as an engineer for Pan
American Airlines, which sent him and Helen to Pakistan and
later Vietnam. After retiring from Pan Am, Peter visited Australi~
in 1971. This was the only continent that he had not yet
visited. There, Martin Simons enabled him to fly fibreglass
sailplanes. One reason for his visit was to prospect the route
for a round the world trip in a self-launching sailplane. This
was an extension of his idea in 1939 to fly in stages across the
North American Continent.. Subsequently, he worked for the
flying doctor service in East Africa as a pilot, before returning
to the USA to live for a time in Florida. In 1974 he brought the
replica of his PR-2 glider to fly in our 1974 (our second) International
VGC Rally. In 1985 he, in conjunction with the
Jungfrau Railway and many Swiss friends, decided to re-enact
the 1935 International Contest on the Jungfraujoch which is
11,333ft (3,454 m,) asl.so that we of the new generation could
experience for ourselves gliding amid that fantastic arctic
wonderland. Three of the 1935 pilots were present. Alexander
Stanojewic - Yugoslavia, WiIli Baur-Switzerland and Peter­
Germany. Peter himself flew a Ka-8 to Thun. The meeting was
a fantastic experience for those taking part. Peter then began
to write his trilogy of self experienced Rhon History during
the 1920s and 1930s. He returned temporarily to Germany to
interview survivors from that time. During this period he was
able to carry out a 500 km distance flight from the
Wasserkuppe in to France flying a Ka-6, and doing better than
all the other pilots from the Wasserkuppe who were flying
fibre glass sailplanes on the same task. This brought him the
second Diamond to his Gold C. After this, he returned to the
USA to settle with Helen at Ardmore, Oklahoma. He managed
a small gliding school there for a few years. He finally tried to
organize a round the world trip in motorgliders and made considerable
progress with its organization etc. Approaching the
age of 92 years, he was forced to concede that he might not be
able to do the flying. Finally, he has left us with a legacy of his
experiences written in his trilogy and also described in Martin
Simons' magnificent book "German Air Attache". The three
volumes of his self experienced Rh6n History were a terrific
achievement and would take years for one man to translate
into English, but this must clearly happen. His enthusiasm for
life never waned and his interest in helping less fortunate ones
and making this a better world remained undiminished. He
passed away peacefully after a short illness on the 6th November
1998 at the Ardmore Memorial Hospital.
Our deepest sympathies go to Helen and to all his friends
in many lands, and especially to those in the American and
German Soaring Fraternities.
This obituary was written with very much help from Martin
Simons' "German Air Attache" and Peter's volumes of "Self
Experienced Rh6n History."
ANON
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