18 replies to this topic

[Tim Murray]

I can't let this anniversary pass by without a brief mention of one of my all-time favourite drivers. If only Mercedes could have waited until the next Rekordwoche before challenging the AU records, things might have been so different.

RIP Bernd.

[Bernard]

Good post Tim, heres the man

http://uk.youtube.co...h?v=B3h89rc7HJ0

[Vitesse2]

A while back, I was looking for contemporary reports of Bernd's accident. Here's the one from The Times of January 29th 1938. Headlined "Racing Motorist Killed. Rosemeyer's Crash" and by-lined by the paper's Berlin Correspondent. All typos and literals are as in the original.

Herr Berndt Rosemeyer, the brilliant racing driver employed by the Auto-Union company, was killed this morning on the Frankfurt-Darmstadt Autobahn, while attempting to beat speed records set up earlier in the morning by Herr Carraciola in a Mercedes-Benz.

Rosemeyer arrived at Frankfurt by air in the morning to hear that Carraciola, in a stream-lined 700hp Mercedes-Benz, had done the flying kilometre at an average speed of 268.82 miles an hour and the flying mile at an average of 268.6 miles an hour. Carraciola thus broke the record of 252.4 miles an hour for cars of 5000-7000cc, set up by Rosemeyer last October over the same distances with an Auto-Union car. Rosemeyer decided to take his Auto-Union car on to the racing stretch of the Autobahn and attempt to regain the records. When he was driving at over 250 miles an hour, a gust of wind carried the car to the extreme outer edge of the track. Rosemeyer was unable to bring it again into the centre, it collided with a stone pillar of a bridge carrying an ordinary road over the Autobahn, and he was thrown out of the car and killed.

Rosemeyer, who was 28 years of age, had a remarkable series of successes in many parts of the world, culminating in his victory in the Vanderbilt Cup race in the United States last year. He was also a qualified air pilot, and with his wife, who was Fräulein Elli Beinhorn, a well-known German airwoman, had made a flight to the Cape. A son was born 2½ months ago.

I used that report as the inspiration for this, which I'm re-posting from the "Headlines you wished you'd seen" thread:

From The Times January 29th 1938:

RACING MOTORIST SURVIVES 250mph CRASH
Miraculous escape when thrown from car into brushwood.
Seriously ill in hospital at Frankfurt.
His wife flies to be by his side.

Herr Berndt Rosemeyer, the brilliant racing driver employed by the Auto-Union Company ....

RIP Bernd & Elly - together once more.

[Greatest]

It would have been great to see him with my own eyes racing somewhere. Maybe it's possible to ask his autograph when I'm dead and buried (or cremated)...

R.I.P., Herr Rosemeyer!

[jcbc3]

Originally posted by Tim Murray
I can't let this anniversary pass by without a brief mention of one of my all-time favourite drivers. If only Mercedes could have waited until the next Rekordwoche before challenging the AU records, things might have been so different.

RIP Bernd.

RIP Bernd.



OT (but since the threadstarter put it in) :
Putting ANY blame on Mercedes is ludicrous, imho. Yes, I know the story about how Auto Union and Bernd felt they 'had to' respond. I don't buy it. If it wasn't safe and since Caracciola begged Bernd not to go, it was up to him and only him if he wanted to board the car that day. Furthermore the accident happened on his third run of the day and he must have known what conditions he was up against.

[David M. Kane]

His wife left 13 Roses each year at his grave. What was that symbolic of? He was the 13th one?

[ensign14]

13 was his lucky number.

[Mark A]

Visited the accident site and memorial where they found his body a couple of years ago on the way to the Audi museum, very well cared for.

[kayemod]

Originally posted by Mark A
Visited the accident site and memorial where they found his body a couple of years ago on the way to the Audi museum, very well cared for.

I last visited the site just over a year ago, there were fresh flowers and candles then too. It was my second visit, and I've always found the site nicely cared for.

[kayemod]

Originally posted by jcbc3


RIP Bernd.



OT (but since the threadstarter put it in) :
Putting ANY blame on Mercedes is ludicrous, imho. Yes, I know the story about how Auto Union and Bernd felt they 'had to' respond. I don't buy it. If it wasn't safe and since Caracciola begged Bernd not to go, it was up to him and only him if he wanted to board the car that day. Furthermore the accident happened on his third run of the day and he must have known what conditions he was up against.

Most reports I've seen claim that the crash was caused by a gust of wind, there's a flyover and gaps in the trees just before the crash scene, but if you do a bit of Googling, a fairly recent report more or less proves, to me at any rate, that the cause was one of the streamlined sheet metal fairings between the wheel bumps, a last minute addition done more or less overnight I think, detaching itself. There are photos taken at the start of the fatal run that show they weren't fixed as well as they should have been, the aluminium was rippled, and a gap was appearing at the front edge. I'll have to look up the report again to make sure, but although a gust of wind may have been a contributary factor, the car's bodywork coming apart was what did for poor Bernd.

As most of you will know, Bernd's widow Elly Beinhorn Rosemeyer died only a few weeks ago. I was surprised and disappointed not to see a press obituary, at least not in The Times or Telegraph. I think most would agree that she'd done quite enough in her own right as a record breaking flier to qualify, quite apart from being the widow of one of the World's greatest ever racing drivers.

[Lord Crapulus]

IIRC, the aluminium rippling thing you mention was just a trick of the sunlight on the polished surface. I haven't read it in a while, but I seem to remember Chris Nixon talking about that in Racing the Silver Arrows. Apparently that was one of the theories that surfaced in the aftermath and Auto Union did some photography on a brand new car that debunked it.

Alternately, I could be completely misremembering!

[kayemod]

Originally posted by Lord Crapulus
IIRC, the aluminium rippling thing you mention was just a trick of the sunlight on the polished surface. I haven't read it in a while, but I seem to remember Chris Nixon talking about that in Racing the Silver Arrows. Apparently that was one of the theories that surfaced in the aftermath and Auto Union did some photography on a brand new car that debunked it.

Alternately, I could be completely misremembering!

It all depends which report you want to believe of course, but the contemporary Auto Union pics were widely condemned at the time as a hasty attempt to cover AU arses after accusations of corporate negligence in the German popular press, just imagine what fun an ambulance-chasing lawyer could have with all this in today's litigous climate. Read this report http://www.kolumbus....ellman/zana.htm and decide for yourself. In my opinion it makes a very convincing case for Bernd's death being caused by disintegrating bodywork on the car. There are eye witness reports and photographic evidence of the gaps I mentioned, they would have been more than enough at the speeds he was reaching. In Racing the Silver Arrows Chris Nixon seems to accept the disintegrating bodywork theory, something that was supported by MB's Alfred Neubauer in his autobiography, known to be somewhat unreliable in parts, that was published some years after the tragic event.

[Tim Murray]

Originally posted by kayemod
. . . but if you do a bit of Googling, a fairly recent report more or less proves, to me at any rate, that the cause was one of the streamlined sheet metal fairings between the wheel bumps, a last minute addition done more or less overnight I think, detaching itself.

I suspect the report kayemod is referring to is the one by TNFer 'aldo' (Dr Aldo Zana) which appears on Leif Snellman's excellent website:

http://www.kolumbus....ellman/zana.htm

This report suggests that the accident may have been caused by the detachment of a plate in the underbody venturi section due to the failure of the screws securing it, causing a sudden loss of downforce.

Originally posted by jcbc3
OT (but since the threadstarter put it in) :
Putting ANY blame on Mercedes is ludicrous, imho. Yes, I know the story about how Auto Union and Bernd felt they 'had to' respond. I don't buy it. If it wasn't safe and since Caracciola begged Bernd not to go, it was up to him and only him if he wanted to board the car that day. Furthermore the accident happened on his third run of the day and he must have known what conditions he was up against.

I was not trying to 'blame' Mercedes in any way. The point I was trying to suggest was that AU were working on the 'ground effect' concept for the record car (and developing the new 3-litre GP car) with resources far more limited than those of MB. Then they discovered that MB was planning to attack the records in January instead of at the Rekordwoche in the autumn. AU were thus forced to put in a rapid development programme to have the ground effect car ready in time, with possible corner-cutting and lack of proper testing leading to the scenario suggested by aldo. The concentration of their limited resources on the record car must have caused the delays in the GP car programme which meant that the car was not fully competitive until the very last races of 1938.

Like kayemod, I was very disappointed that there were apparently no obituaries for Elly in the British press.

Edit: Sorry, kayemod, I hadn't spotted that you had beaten me to it with the Aldo Zana link.

[cpbell]

RIP Bernd.

I'm confused about the references the venturis on the streamliner. My 1:18th Revel model shows the dip between the wheel humps and a smooth undertray. Are we talking late-'70s style ground effect?

[Tim Murray]

If your model has the dip between the wheel humps it must be the 1937 car. Have a look at Aldo Zana's report (linked to above) for details and photos of the 1938 modifications.

[cpbell]

Interesting - very ugly modifications to the car. I am confused by one point, though: the report says that the weight of the ice-cooling tank shifted the C of Gravity behid the C of Pressure, yet the skirts and upper fairings shifted the C of Pressure rearwards too. Are we therefore to assume that the C of P moved rearward to a lesser degree than the C of G, thus placing it behind the main mass of he car? If so, is it not possible that the stripping of the upper body reduced frontal downforce to a point where the car simply flew without any influence of touching the grass, wheels collapsing etc.? Also, does this partly explain the flight of the Mercedes CLRs at Le Mans in '99? I ask this because it occurred to me at the time that there was a big swoop down from the top of the front wheel arches to door level, surely creating an area of low air pressure just aft of the front wheels. Surely the upper-body mods on the '38-spec AU were designed to eliminate this source of aerodynamic lift?

[rosemeyer]

The loss of one of the greatest drivers ever.

RIP Bernd & Elly Back togather again.

[irvine99]

RIP Bernd.

irvine99

[Coral]

R.I.P. Bernd and Elly.