page_title: Braunschweig LF-1 Zaunkönig
section_title: Operational history
hierarchical_section_title: Braunschweig LF-1 Zaunkönig / Operational history
context_page_description: The Braunschweig LF-1 Zaunkönig, is a STOL single-seat light aircraft designed in 1939 by Prof. Ing. Hermann Winter as a fool-proof trainer for novice student pilots to experience solo flight.
context_section_description: The first prototype, the LF-1 V1, was built in 1940 and made its maiden flight, piloted by Winter himself, in December 1940. Test flights stopped in November 1942 after part of the wing ruptured causing the aircraft to crash. In 1943 a second prototype, the V2, was built, receiving the registration D-YBAR.  The aircraft was tested for military applications and was once even armed with a Panzerfaust 100 recoilless anti-tank weapon.
  At the end of World War II the Zaunkönig registration D-YBAR was taken to the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) at Farnborough for slow flying tests; given the British serial VX190., where amongst others, it was flown by Eric "Winkle" Brown CO Aero Flight, the aircraft also being soloed by the then-head of the RAE Aerodynamics Section, Handel Davies, after half an hour of ground instruction, and whose only previous piloting experience was as a pupil in a dual-control Miles Magister. It was sold to a British private owner in June 1949 as G-ALUA, and then to the Experimental Flying Group and to the Ultra Light Aircraft Association, subsequently in 1974 to an Irish owner, being registered EI-AYU, returning to Germany, in 1976, as D-EBCQ. As of 2008, it was preserved in the Deutsches Museum collection at Oberschleissheim near Munich.
  Encouraged by the positive British reviews Prof. Ing. Hermann Winter decided to build a third LF-1. The construction started in 1954 and it was the first new aircraft in Germany after the war to receive a certificate by the Luftfahrt-Bundesamt (LBA) in Braunschweig and the registration D-EBAR. Winter envisioned the Zaunkönig as a People's Aircraft affordable for all (for a price of around DM 6,000).
  At the time a fourth LF-1 V4 was already under construction and it flew a few months after the fatal accident with the V3. It received its certificate in 1958 and the registration D-ECER. This aircraft flew for some years in Germany until grounded after the death of Prof. Ing. Winter in 1968. It was restored in 1980 and flew until 1999 as D-EBCG and as of 2008 preserved in the collection of the Internationales Luftfahrtmuseum Manfred Pflumm near Villingen-Schwenningen.
caption: D-EBCG Fly by
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