engineering

Henrich Focke

Henrich Focke is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Henrich Focke rather than just read about it. In short: Henrich Focke (8 October 1890 – 25 February 1979) was a German aviation pioneer from Bremen and also a co-founder of the Focke-Wulf company. He is best known as the inventor of the Fw 61, the first successful, practical, and fully controllable helicopter, first flown in 1936.

Key takeaways

Henrich Focke belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Henrich Focke to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Henrich Focke from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Henrich Focke (8 October 1890 – 25 February 1979) was a German aviation pioneer from Bremen and also a co-founder of the Focke-Wulf company. He is best known as the inventor of the Fw 61, the first successful, practical, and fully controllable helicopter, first flown in 1936. He has been called "father of the helicopter".

Biography

Early life Henrich Focke was born in Bremen on 8 October 1890, Focke studied at Leibniz University Hannover, where he became friends with Georg Wulf in 1911. In 1914, he and Wulf both reported for military service and Focke was deferred due to heart problems, but was eventually drafted into an infantry regiment. After serving on the Eastern front, he was transferred to the Imperial German Army Air Service. Focke graduated in 1920 as Dipl-Ing with distinction. His first job was with the Francke Company of Bremen as a designer of water-gas systems.

Focke-Wulf and Focke-Achgelis

In 1923, with Wulf and Dr. Werner Naumann, Focke co-founded Focke-Wulf-Flugzeugbau GmbH. In 1927 Wulf died while test flying the Focke-Wulf F 19 canard monoplane. In 1930 Focke was offered a chair at the Danzig Institute of Technology, an honour which he declined. In 1931 the city of Bremen awarded him the title of Professor. The same year, Focke-Wulf was merged with the Albatros Flugzeugwerke company. Focke-Wulf constructed Juan de la Cierva's C.19 and C.30 autogyros under license from 1933, and Focke was inspired by it to design the world's first practical helicopter, the Focke-Wulf Fw 61, which first flew on 26 June 1936 by Ewald Rohlfs. In 1938, Hanna Reitsch piloted the Fw 61 inside the Deutschlandhalle. In 1936 Focke was ousted from the Focke-Wulf company by shareholder pressure. Though the ostensible reason was that he was considered "politically unreliable" by the Nazi regime, there is reason to believe it was so that Focke-Wulf's manufacturing capacity could be used to produce Bf 109 aircraft. The company was taken over by AEG, but soon after this the Air Ministry, which had been impressed by the Fw 61 helicopter, suggested that Focke establish a new company dedicated to helicopter development and issued him with a requirement for an improved design capable of carrying a 700 kg (1,500 lb) payload. Focke established the Focke-Achgelis company on 27 April 1937 in partnership with pilot Gerd Achgelis, and began development work at Delmenhorst in 1938. The new company built the experimental Fa 225 using the fuselage of a DFS 230 glider and a rotor from a Fa 223. Another project was the Fa 330 kite with rotor, capable of being deployed by a submarine at a moments notice and then used as a towed spotter. It was stored in a watertight container on the deck of the U-boat and was used during the war. A powered version of the kite would have been the Fa 336 which was in the design phase when the war ended and built in France postwar for testing. Focke subsequently manufactured the heavy-lift transport helicopter Fa 223, and designed the Fa 224, Fa 266, Fa 269, Fa 283, Fa 284, and the Fa 336 during World War II. Only a few of the large Fa 223 Drache ("Dragon") helicopters actually were produced, but even the prototype set a new helicopter speed record of 182 kilometres per hour (113 mph) and climb record of 8.8 metres per second (1,730 ft/min) in 1940. Subsequent war models were primarily used as mountain troop transport, rescue, and crashed aircraft recovery. The helicopter had provision for a nose-mounted machine gun, and could carry one or two bombs, but the Drache was never used for combat. Towards the end of Nazi Germany Focke started design work on the Focke Rochen, also known as Schnellflugzeug.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Henrich Focke

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Henrich Focke claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Henrich Focke before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Henrich Focke ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Henrich Focke

In research: Henrich Focke appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Henrich Focke in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Henrich Focke is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1890 births, 1979 deaths, Businesspeople from Bremen (city), so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Henrich Focke outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Henrich Focke in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Henrich Focke means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Henrich Focke out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Henrich Focke in simple terms?

Why does Henrich Focke matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Henrich Focke?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Henrich Focke.