Heinz Birkholz, 1922-2016

This website owes its existence to the work of Heinz Birkholz.

The dedicated reader of this blog will have noticed recurring references to some of the pioneers of German aviation research of the 1919 to 1945 period: Hans Redemann, Karl Ries, Karl R. Pawlas, J. Richard Smith, Eddie J. Creek, Thomas Hitchcock, or Heinz Birkholz. It is Heinz Birkholz in particular who ranks among the earliest writers to make a dedicated effort to confront misinformation, myth, and previously uncharted territory by means of publishing serious research and prime source material. Moreover, in the course of his decades of activities as a journalist and editor, Birkholz managed to bring together an illustrious group of contributors consisting of period protagonists on one hand and fellow experts of German aviation on the other. This included notables such as Karl Kössler, Günther Ott, Roy Nesbit, Günter Frost, Richard Chapman, and many others.



Born in 1922, Heinz Birkholz served in World War II as one of the German Luftwaffe's schwarze Männer (i.e., as a member of the ground crew), in his case as a technician assigned to Jagdgeschwader 5 in Norway. In 1944, he was transferred to Flugzeugführerschule [pilot school] A/B 23 in Kaufbeuren, Bavaria, where, like many others, he underwent training to become a pilot in an attempt to replenish the staggeringly mounting personnel losses of the Luftwaffe. The war ended before he flew a first operational mission, however, and Birkholz re-entered civilian life as a journalist with the Hamburger Morgenpost newspaper.

But it really was his continuing interest in aviation which was to define Birkholz' life. In the 1960s, he became one of the very first European journalists to regularly cover the hobby of plastic modelling in the press, by writing for Modellbau-Revue magazine. Moreover, he contributed to other specialist periodicals, such as the renown aviation magazine Flug Revue.



Before long, Birkholz' column about plastic kits in Modellbau-Revue became increasingly popular, and the idea for a magazine solely dedicated to plastic modelling gained traction. This finally became reality in March of 1970, when Plastik Modell was launched. Heinz Birkholz was the magazine's creative director and chief editor. But Plastik Modell wasn't simply a magazine covering plastic kits. Not only did it feature detailed articles that illuminated the histories and technical details of the actual full-size aircraft that were the subject of the kits, but it also contained an innovative readers' letters forum in which readers, photo collectors, and fellow researchers exchanged further information and contributed rare photos. This was the prototype of a highly successful and prolific concept Birkholz would henceforth apply to all of his subsequent publications.

In 1974, Birkholz established a dedicated pictorial extension to Plastik Modell by creating PM Foto-Revue. This was a photo album-type publication which contained further previously unpublished pictures of historic subjects, submitted from the private collections of both writers and readers of Plastik Modell. Regrettably, the publisher, G. Schmidt-Verlag, ceased operations just as PM Foto-Revue was launched.



But instead of giving up, Birkholz and his editorial team professionalised their efforts and went on to found the new periodical Modell Magazin, which, starting in 1975, covered both scale models and aviation history, and subsequently became one of the most important and influential publications within the growing Luftwaffe research community. In 1976, following the earlier example set with Plastik Modell, Modell Magazin introduced Modell Magazin Foto Archiv, its own softcover photo album offspring. Published sporadically until the early 1980s, Modell Magazin Foto Archiv again featured period pictures submitted by the writers and readers of the magazine and thus exposed extraordinary treasures to a wider audience.



When Modell Magazin eventually changed direction and content in the mid-1980s, Birkholz left and established a new magazine, Flugzeug, dedicated entirely to aviation, both in scale and history. In 1988, Flugzeug continued the tradition of its predecessors by launching an infrequently published offspring softcover photo album, Flugzeug Archiv. One final time, history repeated itself when Birkholz, after internal disagreements, left Flugzeug to establish Jet & Prop in 1991. The by now inevitable offspring photo periodical, Jet & Prop Foto Archiv, was first published in 1992.



By the end of 2000 and aged 78, Heinz Birkholz felt it was time to transfer Jet & Prop's reins into younger hands. The magazine still exists to this day, and for a while after his "retirement", Birkholz was still a contributor to both the magazine proper and Jet & Prop Foto Archiv.

The importance of Heinz Birkholz' near life-long efforts with regard to the Luftwaffe research community cannot be overstated. Generations of young readers first came in contact with the topic through his magazines, uncounted researchers and collectors were able to first publish their findings in the pages of his publications, and the readers' letters forum was a crucial pre-internet age platform for the exchange of information, new discoveries, or the placement of specialist questions or requests for research assistance. And Birkholz' dedicated photo publications were an inexhaustible source of unpublished photos.



For decades, Birkholz' specialist magazines were the place where one would frequently find spectacular historic German aviation research discoveries and hitherto unknown images of elusive aircraft types. One might remember the ground-breaking articles on the Junkers Ju 88 H, the Heinkel He 176, the Henschel Hs 132, or the Fieseler Fi 168, to name but a few of so many.



Last but not least, the author of this blog was himself one the aforementioned young readers when, in 1975 and at age 12, he first discovered Modell Magazin und from then on religiously followed everything and anything published by Heinz Birkholz, eventually beginning to build his own dedicated library and photo collection. And, many years later, this blog.

Heinz Birkholz passed away on March 20, 2016, at age 93. He is buried, anonymously, at Hamburg-Öjendorf cemetery.

Header photo of Heinz Birkholz originally published in Modell Magazin 4/1984.

The Blohm & Voss Bv 141 - A Technical Guide

Airframe Detail No. 1, Richard A. Franks, Valiant Wings Publishing Ltd., Bedford, England, 2014, ISBN 978-0-9575866-7-3. Illustrated, softcover, published in English.

Cover image © by Valiant Wings Publishing Ltd., 2014.

It is pleasantly astonishing that we live in an age where aircraft formerly thought of as rather obscure - or even outright unworthy of any attention - become the subject of lavish, dedicated publications. I do remember the time well when books on the former German Luftwaffe focused only on the most well known aircraft or units but still rendered all interested parties happy merely due to the fact that one was starved for a publishing house that would actually consider us odd crowd. If a glimpse at aircraft other than, say, Ju 52s, Bf 109s, or Fw 190s was desired, one was left with occasional brief but, in hindsight, vastly pioneering articles in magazines such as Flug Revue + flugwelt (authored by Hans Redemann), Modell Magazin (Heinz Birkholz, Theodor Mohr, Karl Kössler, Heinz Mankau, and many others), Modell Fan (Manfred Leihse, Gebhard Aders, etc.), or Luftfahrt international (Günther Ott, Karl Kössler, etc.).

Things have changed dramatically in the past thirty or forty years, of course. We are now not only treated to the substantial array of information available through the internet (as utterly flawed and/or regurgitated as it often is), the possibility of near-instant exchange of research and images provided by the very same medium, and plenty of books about rare types such as, e.g., the Junkers Ju 287, Messerschmitt Me 264, Horten Ho 229, or Focke-Wulf Ta 152. Happy times, indeed, and among the latest such publications is Richard Frank's Airframe Detail No. 1 on the rare but truly unique Blohm & Voss BV 141.

By and large the book follows the concept of earlier releases by Franks/Valiant Wings. And those have set a reasonably high standard. At 66 pages and a format of 29 x 21 cm, the layout, paper quality, and text and image reproduction of the book are quite exceptional, as expected.

Once again, as with Franks' previous Valiant Wings releases, The Blohm & Voss Bv 141 is a comprehensive examination of the aircraft's various details, preceded by an 11-page illustrated overview of the history of the BV 141. The material provided in the technical description section of the book is beautifully opulent, consisting of 38 pages of close-up photos as well as reproductions of drawings sourced from the aircraft's handbook. This comprises cockpit and interior details, landing gear, wings, empennage, armament, and equipment. Much of this material is known to those seriously studying the Luftwaffe, and the handbook has been available commercially for considerable time. Even so The Blohm & Voss Bv 141 serves as a significantly valuable collection of relevant information.

This content is bookended by a 9-page section discussing camouflage and markings. It also includes numerous rather lovely colour profiles. The profiles are a bit small, however, due to the probably inevitable decision to print them horizontally across the pages rather than vertically. The latter would have resulted either in less aircraft featured or more pages added to the publication. Nonetheless, it works as it is. The book concludes with a 5-page look at BV 141 scale models and a bibliography. All of this makes for a precious and thorough work of reference, not least given the lack of attention this fringe aircraft has endured through past decades. All that is lacking, mysteriously, is a good set of line drawings.

It seems perhaps a bit odd that some authors or publishing houses chose to accompany their specialist publications by advertising or content statements which, upon closer examination, simply serve to direct the reader's attention to very limitations of the publication in question. On page 3 of the book, Franks states that he believes that his The Blohm & Voss Bv 141 contains every existing photo of the BV 141. To anyone familiar with serious Luftwaffe research, this is of course an utterly perilous statement. In spite of the wealth of excellent photos actually featured in Franks' work, it is thus not surprising that a number of previously known photos are missing from the book (e.g. landing gear well details, tail wheel details, canopy details, etc.). Some of them have been available online for many years, for example, courtesy of Lars Kambeck and Gary Webster, or were part of Lars Kambeck's truly excellent four-part series of articles on the BV 141, published in Jet & Prop magazine in 2003 and 2004.

Also on page 3, Franks states that he has chosen a certain manner of writing the aircraft's designation (i.e., Bv 141, Bv 141A-0, etc.). This in spite of the fact that a majority of surviving Blohm & Voss company documentation (some of which is even reproduced in Franks' book) contradicts this (as evidenced by the manner used in this blog). An unimportant detail to some, perhaps, but I find this rather unnecessary and annoying, and it certainly doesn't serve to ensure historical accuracy and prevent confusion.

There are some further puzzling observations, most likely caused by an unfortunate yielding to production requirements. The photo of the cockpit of the BV 141 V2 on page 15, top, for example, also exists in an uncropped version (published by Kambeck) that actually shows the instrument panel referred to by Franks in its very caption. Moreover, some detail shots (a random example would be the cockpit port side shot on page 16, bottom left, or the rear observer's station and cabin interior images on page 17, top) are reproduced so small that they offer hardly any value. In addition, they have been reproduced far larger elsewhere. Odd for a publication named Airframe Detail.

Finally, on page 36, bottom left, there is a photo depicting a pair of devices under the aircraft's starboard wing (they are visible in other photos as well). Franks asks what they are and presumes they might serve to "measure gust". They are, in fact, the Paddelausgleich (Fahnenausgleich) zur Ausrichtung des Querruders [paddle balance supporting aileron movement].

The Paddelausgleich helped the pilot in operating the ailerons. It consisted of two sets of pairs of small, square paddles, mounted under the port and starboard outboard wing segments on slim, forward-pointing support arms. They were linked internally by means of rack and pinion linear actuators, and connected to the aileron by push rods, moving inversely. With increasing deflection of the aileron, the paddles were spread apart into the airstream, thus opposing the force of the control surface and relieving the pilot.

The Paddelausgleich was a device frequently seen on Blohm & Voss aircraft. It is featured, for example, in Modell Magazin 5/1976 (referring to the Blohm & Voss BV 222), Modell Fan 4/1977 and Modell Magazin 4/1977 (Blohm & Voss BV 138) or in Flugzeug Extra 2 (Blohm & Voss Ha 139).

E-Stelle See

E-Stelle See - Die Geschichte der Seeflug-Erprobungsstelle Travemünde und der daraus hervorgegangenen E-Stelle für Flugzeugbewaffnung in Tarnewitz

Edited by Heinrich Wollé, Dr. H.A. Caspari & Oskar Passoth, Luftfahrt-Verlag Axel Zuerl, Steinebach-Wörthsee, Germany, 1972. Illustrated, hardcover, 130 x 200 mm, 312 printed pages, published in German.




E-Stelle See Travemünde - Die Geschichte der Seeflug-Erprobungsstelle Travemünde und der daraus hervorgegangenen E-Stelle für Flugzeugbewaffnung in Tarnewitz - Band 2

Edited by Heinrich Wollé, Dr. H.A. Caspari & Oskar Passoth, Luftfahrt-Verlag Axel Zuerl, Steinebach-Wörthsee, Germany, [year?], ISBN 3-87500-024-2. Illustrated, hardcover, 130 x 200 mm, 336 printed pages, published in German.




E-Stelle See - Die Geschichte der Seeflug-Erprobungsstelle Travemünde und der daraus hervorgegangenen E-Stelle für Flugzeugbewaffnung in Tarnewitz - Band 3

Edited by Heinrich Wollé, Dr. H.A. Caspari & Oskar Passoth, Luftfahrt-Verlag Axel Zuerl, Steinebach-Wörthsee, Germany, [year?]. Illustrated, hardcover, 130 x 200 mm, 320 printed pages, published in German.

Cover images © by Luftfahrt-Verlag Axel Zuerl.

These three books constitute one of the most comprehensive series of publications on a specific topic related to the Luftwaffe. And in spite of having been published decades ago, their contents are still relevant. Some of the information contained in the three volumes of E-Stelle See has in the meantime found its way into more recent magazine articles or books, but the combined 968 pages of this study still make it an undisputed and excellent single source reference on the seaplane testing center Travemünde and the affiliated aircraft armament testing center in Tarnewitz.

I first found out about E-Stelle See when, as a teenager, I read glowing reviews about these books in German specialist magazines Modell Magazin and Modell Fan in 1976 and 1980. It took until the early 2000s until I finally managed to track down pristine second hand copies of what had by then become collector's items. They were well worth the patience and persistence, however. Incidentally, a small address sticker in my copy of volume 2 shows that this book was once owned by one of the editors of Modell Fan magazine!

The three volumes of E-Stelle See are a collection of accounts, records, and archive material by former members of the Travemünde and Tarnewitz testing centers. Over a dozen authors thus contributed to make this a very wide-ranging compilation of facts and images, although the introduction states explicitly that there are inevitable gaps in the information thus compiled.

E-Stelle See opens with a brief history of German seaplane aviation and the inception of the Travemünde testing center. Even from the very beginning, there are remarkable photographs showing, for example, the testing center, the Dornier Do X in the dry dock, and Junkers, Heinkel, Dornier, and Rohrbach aircraft of the period. A frequent drawback is that the photos are often printed to a rather small size due to the fairly small dimensions of these books. In addition to the plentiful photo content of E-Stelle See, the text is also supported by tables, original documents, and drawings.

The narrative then describes the massive development of the testing center undertaken after 1933 and following the official establishment of the Luftwaffe. More modern aircraft types soon enter the picture, such as the Heinkel He 59, Blohm & Voss BV 138, Arado Ar 195, or Fieseler Fi 168. Also intriguing are the trials conducted with the Focke Achgelis Fa 330. The text continues to be generously illustrated with photos which are at times so specialized that one is unlikely to find them in any other, more generalized publication.

The wealth of material is simply far too extensive to be listed in full here. A few examples:

- engine and armament evaluation

- weapons testing in Tarnewitz, including, for example, turret development, or the various cannon fitted to the Henschel Hs 123

- Rohrbach flying boats

- sea trials in various conditions and involving the He 115, Ha 140, and Ar 196

- catapults and catapult testing with the Fi 168, Ar 197, Bf 109, Ju 87, and even the Ar 96

- landing trials with a Fieseler Fi 156 on board of the ship "Greif"

- evaluation of the Bf 109, Fw 159, Ar 80 and He 112

- helicopter testing

- evaluation of navigation and radio equipment

- tests involving flotation gear in aircraft

- supply flights to Narvik with BV 138 and Do 24

- organization of the RLM testing centers

- aircraft carrier-based version of the Ju 87

- a large section dedicated to affiliated ships and boats

- an illustrated list of German seaplanes and flying boats from 1920 to 1945

and much more.

One of the most intriguing sections reveals just how many aircraft carriers Germany was planning to build. Next to the well-known "Graf Zeppelin", which is covered in somewhat greater detail, drawings illustrate the projected (and, in some instances, commenced) "Flugzeugträger B" (a.k.a. "Peter Strasser"), "Weser I", "De Grasse", "Europa", "Elbe I", "Elbe II", and the converted "Gneisenau".

Newer publications - such as, for example, Flugerprobungsstellen bis 1945 (Heinrich Bauvais, Karl Kössler, Max Mayer & Christoph Regel, Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Germany, 1998) - have since also covered this topic and included newer research. But E-Stelle See remains an essential and utterly abounding three-volume study on a most fascinating aspect of past German military aviation.

LO+ST - Snapshots Of The Wrecked/Captured Luftwaffe Aircraft Taken By GIs From 1944 To The Defeat Of Germany

Hideki Noro, Dai Nippon Kaiga Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, 2009, ISBN 978-4-499-22992-0. Illustrated, softcover (with dust jacket), published in Japanese, photo captions in Japanese and English.

Cover image © by Dai Nippon Kaiga Co., 2009.

This truly astonishing softcover book is among the most recent exponents of what is by now a well-established and highly engaging category of Luftwaffe-related releases: the photo album-type publication. The pioneer of this concept was probably Karl Ries, whose legendary Dora Kurfürst und die rote 13 photo books (published by Verlag Dieter Hoffmann, Germany) revolutionized the presentation of the results of Luftwaffe research in the 1960s. Although obviously primitive and utterly imperfect by today's standards, the photo captions contained in Ries' books provided the reader perhaps for the first time with unprecedented photo interpretation detail.

Uwe Feist's Luftwaffe in Action series of landscape-format softcovers (published by Squadron/Signal Publications in the US), continued the concept, beginning in 1971. But it was really the distinguished Heinz Birkholz who took it to the next level. In 1974, he launched PM-Foto Revue as an offspring to Germany's Plastik Modell magazine, of which he was the editor. PM-Foto Revue featured photos submitted from the private collections of the writers and readers of Plastik Modell. Unfortunately, the publisher, G. Schmidt-Verlag, ceased operations just as PM-Foto Revue was released.

But Birkholz and his editorial team went on to found the new periodical Modell Magazin, which, starting in 1975, covered both scale models and aviation history, and subsequently became one of the most important and influential publications within the growing Luftwaffe research community. In 1976, following the example set by Plastik Modell, Modell Magazin introduced Modell Magazin Foto Archiv, its own offspring softcover photo album. Published sporadically until the early 1980s, Modell Magazin Foto Archiv again featured photos submitted by the writers and readers of the magazine and thus exposed uncounted previously unseen photographic treasures to a wider audience.

When Modell Magazin changed direction and content in the mid-1980s, Birkholz left and established a new magazine, Flugzeug, dedicated entirely to aviation, both in scale and history. In 1988, Flugzeug continued the tradition of its predecessors by launching an infrequently published offspring softcover photo album, Flugzeug Archiv. One final time, history repeated itself when Birkholz left Flugzeug to establish Jet & Prop in 1991. The by now inevitable offspring periodical, Jet & Prop Foto Archiv, was first published in 1992 and continues, sporadically, up to today.

Recent decades have seen an outright proliferation of Luftwaffe-related photo album-type publications. From Alfred Price's The Luftwaffe 1939-1945 volumes (in the Warbirds Illustrated series by Arms and Armour Press, England, 1981), for example, or the various Luftwaffe Warbirds Photo Albums (Tank Magazine special issues by Delta Publishing Co. Ltd., Japan, 1992 to 1994), to current releases such as Eagle Editions' outstanding Wings of the Black Cross or Axel Urbanke's exceptional Luftwaffe im Focus series (by Luftfahrtverlag-Start, Germany). There are many others, the concept thriving not least due to the existence of uncounted astounding photos once taken by victorious allied troops during their advance through late-war Germany.

Hideki Noro's LO+ST focuses on such late-war and post-war photos. Sized a modest 257 x 210mm, the book still feels substantial. Consisting of 192 pages, its 272 black & white photos are printed on semi-matt, high-quality paper, the book is clearly laid out and nicely designed and also features a glossy dust jacket. Its five chapters are divided by geographic location: Northern Germany, Central Germany, Southern Germany, neighboring nations, and unknown locations.

The photos presented are truly engrossing and of great interest to any student of the late-war German Luftwaffe; at times they are outright stunning due to the subject and detail contained therein. Even the very first photos of the book, one of a damaged Messerschmitt Bf 109 G-14/AS "Black 10", in Regensburg in 1945, and one of a light blue Messerschmitt Bf 109 G-6/AS nightfighter with antennae, are absolutely striking. A great number of the photos have either never been published before or have only very rarely been seen.

LO+ST focuses almost exclusively on fighter aircraft. Among the aircraft covered are Fw 190 V65 CS+IA, numerous Fw 190 D-9s, JG 301 aircraft at Stendal (such as Ta 152 H-0, Werknummer 150007), Ar 234, Me 262, Ta 152 H, Ta 152 E, Bf 109 K-4, Ta 154, Fw 190 D-11 at Bad Wörishofen, He 111, and uncounted Bf 109 Gs and Fw 190 As and Fs. It will take many hours to seriously absorb and digest the wealth of photographic material presented here.

If there exists a drawback to LO+ST, it might be that the majority of the book is written in Japanese. This includes the (limited) text as well as all photo captions. Brief English translations are provided for all photo captions, but these are limited to the most crucial data (such as the aircraft type and location) and are nowhere near as detailed as the extensive Japanese captions seem to be. This is of course a pity, and it will undoubtedly keep many of those interested in the German Luftwaffe but unable to read Japanese from buying the book.

A decision to pass on LO+ST would be an utter shame, however, as is the case for many Luftwaffe-related specialist publications produced in Japan. It is my firm opinion that the professionalism and attention to detail which characterizes so many Luftwaffe books from Japan makes it readily possible to ignore the language barrier for any serious researcher or student of the Luftwaffe. In fact, the abundance of vital information available by means of the visual content of these publications is simply indispensable and easily offsets any inconvenience caused by an inability to understand the Japanese text.