NV Vliegtuigbouw was started by Mr. A.L. Bauling, the promotor of Aeroclub Teuge, when he realised that pilots in Holland needed more Baby's and he saw an opportunity to build several 10's of them. Production started in 1936 under supervision of Mr. Wijkens in an attick, later in a large shed. After production was well going on they hired Mr. Snellen as designer to build the -at that time- very modern V-20. Unfortunately only one was ever built, see picture. If anyone has any pictures or more information regarding this one, please contact us. The V-20 featured a robust Göppingen 535 profile for the wing, wich was attached to the fuselage with struts. Stall speed was 45 km/h (24 knots) and best glide angle (L/D) was 1:23. Very good indeed in the era of Olympia's. Besides the V-20 they also built a two-seater Grunau-8 and a trainer glider of type "Universal". Baby's however always stayed the main production line. In total 16 Baby's where delivered to Dutch gliding clubs. These Baby's are often called Bauling Baby's. They have a larger and different shaped rudder than Fokker Baby's and other ones. After WW2 they started again, this time based at Teuge airfield, with a series of high performance gliders, the Sagitta. (source www.grunaubaby.nl)

Interesting is that in 1952 the at that time 17 year old Ed van Bree flew Bauling Baby PH-45 from Heerlen to Langewiese, a distance of 176 km. Ed would later become an important ambassador for the Sagitta, flying many displays with the fully aerobatic Sagitta, often inverted a few metres above the deck. It must have been an impressive sight, as these displays were still in memory of the webmaster when he purchased his own Sagitta almost 40 years later... Ed participated in the world champs 1963 in Argentina and competed with the Sagitta against 22 K-6's, Foka-4, Edelweiss,  Vasama and other hot ships of those days. He gave an impressive display both at the opening day and last day of the world championships and ended up 31st place. This picture shows Ed on the right, with Jan Selen in the cockpit (uncle of -many many years later- world champion Baer Selen).
More exclusive images from 1963 on the (Dutch) photogallery pages, and more about the championships, including complete article from "Avia" on the Argentine 1963 pages.

Piet Alsema and the Sagitta.

It is clear that a lot of things changed from prototype (s/n 001, registration PH-266) to the serial produced glider. The first serial built Sagitta was called Sagitta 2 (s/n 002, registration PH-280). All Sagittas after s/n 013 are called Sagitta 013, because it was only then the Sagitta was fully certified. The Sagitta has always been a heavy glider, due to the fact that it is build according to the very strict Dutch airworthiness requirements; probably the most demanding in the world. The wing spars are build up of solid spruce and both wings and fuselage are covered with birch triplex. At one stage, probably after test flights, the wing tip profile was changed from NACA63-618 (over the whole wing) to NACA-4412, in order to make the tips stall later than the rest of the wing and thus keeping aileron control longer. We know now that this wasn't too successful. One other change was in shape and construction of the canopy. Sagitta 001 is the only one with the very long nose, which makes it really different from the rest. However, we don't know more than what we can see on the pictures that are available. The prototype also had tailplanes that folded upwards for transportation. This explains maybe why the tailplane can be hard to get rigged on the later versions (with a main pin through the tail fin); it was simply never designed like that originally. With the modification of the tailplane also the shape and size of the rudder changed significantly. See picture galleries and note the difference between s/n 001 and all other Sagitta's. The wings connected to the fuselage automatically with a sort of fork construction. Some other details about the prototype are to be found in this article (thanks Howard Petri). Howard also submitted one of the original advertisements drawings featuring the Sagitta logo, as depicted on the tail of N6446, and an article from Air Progress 1964 - containing a seldom seen picture of Piet Alsema. Original commercial brochures are to be downloaded here.

British article: Drawings: Air Progress 1964:Brochure:

Development and design ideas.

Ongoing research in this area. We're waiting on contributions from key people. The wing profile NACA 63-618 is also used in the Ka-6 and Ka-6CR (root section), the Foka and Foka-5, Schweizer 1-29 and the T-37 and T-45 (Skylark and Swallow). More info about the wing profiles on the "technical" pages, with a contribution of Louis van Rijn.