Klemm L 20 d

Scale: 1:24
Length: 27
Width: 52
Height: 8
Degree of difficulty: 2 (moderately difficult)
Number of sheets: 2.5

Klemm L 20 d (Daimler L 20 “Kamerad”)
The 20s was the decade of pioneering and records in aviation. In 1927 Charles Lindbergh flew alone across the Atlantic. A year later the Hindenburg Prize was set up, promising 10,000 Reichsmarks for the best German amateur achievement with a sports plane by 1 November 1928. Friedrich Karl Freiherr von Koenig-Warthausen started in Berlin for Moscow in a small plane with a wing-span of 13 m. In 16 hours the 20 year-old had flown the 1700 km, although his machine only had a top speed of 120 km per hour. He had only 40 Marks with him and something to eat, but it didn’t stop him planning to extend his flight as far as Karachi. With several stopovers, the rather inexperienced young pilot reached his destination in India. On the way he had to make several emergency landings because of bad weather. With that he had won the Hindenburg Award. Then Koenig-Warthausen found out that the German Reich President had again set up the Award for 1 November 1929. His Klemm L 20 d was still in good condition so that he could fly on to Singapore with several stopovers.
Then he and his plane took the ship to USA. In San Francisco he flew on and made stops in Los Angeles, where his Klemm L 20 almost burnt out, and in El Paso. On 3 November 1929 he finally arrived in New York. A car accident, bad weather and increasing problems with the engine had cost him a lot of time and so he arrived too late to get the Award a second time. But with his little plane he had covered 25,000 km round the earth.
The two-seater L 20 d was constructed by Hanns Klemm. He was head design engineer in the Daimler plane construction in Sindelfingen, and made a name for himself mainly in the field of light planes. The 2-cylinder engine had a cubic capacity of 883 ccm and 20 h.p. The original can be seen in the Daimler-Benz Museum in Stuttgart-Untertürkheim.