The 9th Gliding World Championships - Junin - Argentine -
1963
With thanks to Harrie Wiertz
jr. who submitted all pictures, letters and articles on this page.
The Sagitta made one single international appearance, to
make or break the success of the manufacturing of this Dutch glider. This
was at the world champs 1963. Those days it wasn't easy to get a team with
all its equipment shipped to the other side of the world, and it was thus
also literally done, by ship. Nobody could know on beforehand, but the final
results were disappointing. A team of 5 pilots was send out, Ed van Bree to fly the Sagitta in the standard class, Jan Selen to fly a
Ka-6 in the same class,
Arie Breunissen to fly a Skylark 3 in the open class, Harrie Wiertz sr. as
technician (see picture) and Jos Krols as spare pilot. Furthermore there were
some people from NV Vliegtuigbouw and KNVvL secretary Wim Adriaansen as
journalist, besides a few others like family and so on. The picture shows Ed
in the middle and Harrie Wiertz to the right, "full of admiration for Ed's
airmanship but often holding his breath when Ed was flying the Sagitta..."
(comment by Harrie jr.)
All pilots ended up in the lower ranks, and the Sagitta
failed to win the OSTIV award. The Dutch team got famous however, by the
inverted flying displays of Ed van Bree with the Sagitta, and of course by
the breaking of the Skylark wing in flight -above the airfield, passing the
start line. Not ranking
any higher was blamed to the late arrival of the gliders, no cloud flying
experience, completely different flying conditions and lots more. We guess a
few lessons were learnt those days... (click pictures to get
full size images)
Below you will find the complete story as published in
aviation magazine "Avia", and some documents from the KNVvL
(Royal Dutch Aeronautical Association, the organisation that did send out
the national team). By describing the world champs in detail the article
gives a very good picture of the gliding movement of the sixties .
That is, if you can read Dutch... The following
jpegs are quite large and will take a while to download. We'll see if we can
do something about this in the future. As for now, you can download the
complete Avia article in pdf format by
right clicking this link and choosing "Save As..."
Two letters from the KNVvL regarding the Dutch National Team, travel times
and the team member for NV Vliegtuigbouw, Mr. Franken.
List of all pilots and gliders.
Several newspaper clippings.
Mid
page of "Sailplane & Gliding", April 1963.
