, Director, Development Operations Division, Robert Lusser, a Project Paperclip engineer.
Robert Lusser (19 April 1899 – 19 January 1969) was a German engineer,
teflon
anti-friction pads to improve release.
Biography
Lusser was born in
Challenge 1932: 10th).[1] In August 1930 he was 3rd in the handicapped race Giro Aereo d'Italia in Italy.[2]
Lusser's first jobs were with the
Messerschmitt Bf 108, and formed the basis for the company's best known product, the Bf 109fighter aircraft. By 1934, Lusser was head of Messerschmitt's design bureau and in charge of the Bf 110 heavy fighter project. In 1938 the company was renamed Messerschmitt
.
Lusser stayed with the company until 1938, when he returned to
RLM (Reichsluftfahrtministerium - "Reich Aviation Ministry") passed over in favour of the Messerschmitt Me 262. The He 219 was an advanced night-fighter design that was rejected by the RLM in August 1941 as being too complex to order into production because of its many innovations. Ernst Heinkel
immediately dismissed Lusser and resubmitted a simplified design that eventually saw limited production.
From Heinkel, Lusser went to
V1, (Vergeltungswaffe - "revenge weapon"). It was a design competing with Wernher von Braun
' s "V2" vertical takeoff rocket. Despite initial demonstrations before Luftwaffe made the V2 look more reliable, it was decided both designs should proceed into production. Lusser and von Braun were rivals, and even later their relationship was never frictionless. Near Wolfsburg, Lusser found the main design flaw of his rocket, which turned out to be an underdimensioned main wing spar, as the ramp up of production began. From there on, the design worked.
Post war time
Like many important German engineers, Lusser was brought to the
Lusser's Law. Based on these calculations, he pronounced that von Braun's ambitions of reaching the Moon and Mars
were doomed to failure because of the complexity of the spacecraft required.
He returned to Germany, and to the Messerschmitt company, by then, Messerschmitt-Bölkow. His alarming reliability study of the adaptations that the company was making to the
F-104 Starfighter
that it was building under licence turned out to be tragically correct.
In 1961 he ruptured his Achilles tendon while testing his ski's cable bindings in his hotel room at Saas-Fee. He decided to attack the binding problem, developing the first bindings that gripped the toe of the boot, rather than the flange projecting from the front of the sole at the toe. This allowed the toe binding to release in any direction. In 1963 he quit his job at Messerschmitt to start the Lusser Binding Company.[3] This was a major brand until his death in 1969. He died on 19 January 1969 in Munich.
