Every modern all-metal aircraft flying today has a common ancestor which first flew a mere 12 years after the very first aeroplane under the definition, the Wright Flyer, completed its maiden flight. This was Professor Hugo Junkers' J 1, a single-seat low wing cantilever monoplane, with smooth metal skinning similar to today's aircraft and made its inaugural flight on 12th December 1915, at a military airfield near Berlin. For strength and lightness, Junkers subsequently changed the skin to its characteristic Junkers corrugated finish, later copied in America on the Ford Trimotor and in Russia by Tupolev.
The story of how Germany came to be the world leader in aviation technology so early in the history of powered flying goes back a millennium to the Tenth Century A.D. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Germanic tribes emerged as the peoples who would lay the foundations of European civilisation: the Franks, the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings.
The Ninth Century had seen the greatest of the Frankish kings, Charlemagne, headquartered at Aachen, Germany, crowned as Emperor of the Western world in 800. Charlemagne instituted methods of administration, finance and education which not only laid the foundations of European life as we know it, but was thereby able to unite and harness the disparate factions within his empire: Franks, Romans, Germans, Celts, Scandinavians and Slavs. Concurrently Charlemagne was able to renew interest in metals and metal-working, which resulted in the great cathedrals then being built having lead roofs and lead-lined stained glass windows.
The world's oldest continuously working underground mine at Rammelsberg in the Harz Mountains near Goslar, Saxony, Germany is still producing copper eleven centuries later, after starting out as a silver, lead and copper mine. Methods of extraction pioneered at Rammelsberg are still in use today around the world. Within a few decades of its discovery, the Rammelsberg mine became the most important source of silver, copper and lead in central Europe, and a key training school for miners, prospectors and smeltermen. The Harz Mountains became the centre of an ever-expanding region of growth and prosperity, as silver from this region became the basis of Charlemagne's economy, being used for minting coins.
Johannes Gutenberg was the next significant player in this story, having invented movable metal type for his printing press at Mainz, Germany in 1452. The immediate benefit of this invention was a tremendous exchange of technology in almost every field of human activity.
In 1556 the town physician of the Bohemian mining centre of Joachimstal published the De Re Metallica (On the subject of Metals) under his pen name, Agricola, which then became the miner's bible, detailing methods of locating, recovering and processing of metals, the first such publication. This book enabled widespread dissemination of mining techniques and knowledge, which then spurred technical advances to an increasing rate. Creation of alloys became more sophisticated and brass entered into everyday use. Germany went on to become a world leader in metal production, metallurgical and chemical techniques and industrial manufacturing.
Back to Aachen but leaping ahead some 41/2 centuries to 1897, when Dr. Hugo Junkers became Professor of Heating Technology at the local university. By 1910, Junkers had obtained a patent for a flying wing design and in 1913 founded the Junkers Motor Works at Magdeburg.
By 1915, Junkers had designed the J1 all-metal monoplane test aircraft, featuring the first-ever in use cantilever wings and empennage, powered by a 6-cylinder 120 hp water-cooled Mercedes D.II engine.
Unable to obtain donation of the precious aluminium he had planned for construction, Junkers went ahead, incredibly using very thin sheet iron as the basic skinning material, covering an iron tube framework.
This considerably underpowered proof of concept experimental aircraft, nicknamed the " Blechesel" (tin donkey), displayed good stability and a good turn of speed at low altitude, but had sluggish take-off and climb performance due to its solid "battleship" constructio
