Ludwig, Rudolf and Emil Rüb - Forgotten German Aeronautical and Rotating-Wing Pioneers

Abstract

Ludwig Rudolf Rüb, a passionate inventor and enthusiastic – but mostly under-funded – visionary lived in poverty most of his life and is virtually unknown in the rotorcraft community. His first inventions covered combustion engines and motorcycles. Around 1900 he built a paddle-wheel plane under contract to Count Zeppelin, next he designed and built a first version of a coaxial rotor helicopter in Munich, and then he moved to Augsburg to build a large fixed-wing aircraft. None of these were ever finished. At the beginning of the First World War, with support of the German army, he took up a refined version of his coaxial rotor helicopter concept as a highly agile and maneuverable replacement of the observation balloons used in those times, which also was intended to take an active part in warfare by installing a machine gun or dropping bombs. It included some astonishing advanced features and, with the help of his sons, construction was finished and ground testing started in June 1918. The end of the war immediately stopped all work. The Treaty of Versailles demanded the destruction of that vehicle, bringing an end to Rüb’s aeronautical work. Ludwig Rüb, a bright yet uneducated person with good ideas, died in 1918 without having seen his rotors turning