Walter Mittelholzer
Encyclopedia
Aviation
Aviation is the design, development, production, operation, and use of aircraft, especially heavier-than-air aircraft. Aviation is derived from avis, the Latin word for bird.-History:...
pioneer. He was active as a pilot, photographer, travel writer, and also as one of the first aviation entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
s.
Mittelholzer earned his private pilot's license in 1917, and in 1918 he completed his instruction as a military pilot.
On November 5, 1919 he co-founded an air-photo and passenger flight business, Comte
Alfred Comte
Alfred Comte was a Swiss aviation pioneer. He was active as a pilot, photographer, instructor, also as one of the first aviation entrepreneurs and was successful in the construction of civilian and military aircraft.- Life :At the age of 15 Alfred Comte built a motorized bicycle...
, Mittelholzer, and Co. In 1920 this firm merged with the financially stronger Ad Astra Aero
Ad Astra Aero
Ad Astra Aero was a Swiss airline.-Time of the pioneers:Initiated by Oskar Bider and Fritz Rihner, in July 1919 the «Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Lufttourismus» was established in Zürich...
. Mittelholzer was the director and head pilot of Ad Astra Aero which later became Swissair
Swissair
Swissair AG was the former national airline of Switzerland.It was formed from a merger between Balair and Ad Astra Aero , in 1931...
.
He made the first North-South flight across Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
. It took him 77 days. Mittelholzer started in Zürich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
on December 7, 1926, flying via Alexandria
Alexandria
Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...
and landing in Cape Town
Cape Town
Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...
on February 21, 1927. Earlier, he had been the first to do serious aerial reconnaissance of Spitsbergen
Spitsbergen
Spitsbergen is the largest and only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in Norway. Constituting the western-most bulk of the archipelago, it borders the Arctic Ocean, the Norwegian Sea and the Greenland Sea...
, in a Junkers
Junkers
Junkers Flugzeug- und Motorenwerke AG , more commonly Junkers, was a major German aircraft manufacturer. It produced some of the world's most innovative and best-known airplanes over the course of its fifty-plus year history in Dessau, Germany. It was founded there in 1895 by Hugo Junkers,...
monoplane
Monoplane
A monoplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with one main set of wing surfaces, in contrast to a biplane or triplane. Since the late 1930s it has been the most common form for a fixed wing aircraft.-Types of monoplane:...
, in 1923. On December 15, 1929 he became the first person to fly over Mt. Kilimanjaro, and planned to fly over Mount Everest
Mount Everest
Mount Everest is the world's highest mountain, with a peak at above sea level. It is located in the Mahalangur section of the Himalayas. The international boundary runs across the precise summit point...
in 1930. In 1931, Mittelholzer was appointed technical director of the new airline called Swissair, formed from the merger of Ad Astra Aero and Balair
Balair
Balair was a Swiss airline that became BalairCTA when it merged with CTA/Compagnie de Transport Aerien in 1993. Balair had its headquarters in Basel.-Company history:...
. Throughout his life he published many books of aerial photographs. He died in 1937 in a climbing accident on an expedition in the Hochschwab
Hochschwab
The Hochschwab is a mountain range in the Northern Limestone Alps of Austria....
massive in Styria, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
.
Among other Swiss air pioneers, he is commemorated in a Swiss postage stamp issued in January 1977.
Select bibliography of books by Mittelholzer
- Im Flugzeug dem Nordpol entgegen: Junkers'sche Hilfsexpedition für Amundsen nach Spitzbergen, 1923 (with Kurt Wegener, Adolf Miethe, Hans Boykow). Orell Füssli, 1924.
- Die Schweiz aus der Vogelschau: 274 Abbildungen aus der Sammlung von Walter Mittelholzer (with Otto Flückiger. Eugen Rentsch, 1926.
- Persienflug (with Otto Flückiger). Orell Füssli, 1926.
- Kilimandjaro Flug. Orell Füssli, 1930.
- Alpenflug (with F. Hass, Hans Kempf, Willi Fritz Burger). Orell Füssli, 1930.
- Mittelmeerflug, mit 120 Fliegeraufnahmen und einer Einleitung (with Gustav Ehrhardt). Rascher & cie, 1930.
- Tschadseeflug: Mit dem drei-motorigen Fokker der Swissair durch die Sahara zum Tschadsee (with Auguste PiccardAuguste PiccardAuguste Antoine Piccard was a Swiss physicist, inventor and explorer.-Biography:Piccard and his twin brother Jean Felix were born in Basel, Switzerland...
). Schweizer aero-revue, 1932. - Abessinienflug: Mit dem dreimotorigen Fokker an den Hof des Negus Negesti. Schweizer aero-revue, 1934.
- Fliegerabenteuer (with Willi Rickmer Rickmers, Werner von Langsdorff). Brockhaus, 1938.
- Die Schweiz von damals, 1917-1937: 350 historische Flugaufnahmen (with Walter M. Borner). Weltbild-Verlag, 2005. ISBN 3038121045, 9783038121046.