RICHTER RAKETENRAD

ROCKET BICYCLE (1931)



By Rob Arndt

In Germany in the 1920s and 1930s there was great interest and craze in all kinds of rocket-propelled vehicles; cars, airplanes, boats, motorcycles, roller skates, and ice skates.









The well-known racing cyclists Max Hahn and Oskar Tietz, with an unknown partner,

try out rocket propulsion on the Olympiabahn track in Berlin-Plötzensee, in the Autumn of 1929.

However, one of the strangest and least promising applications of rocket propulsion was applied to the bicycle by the late 1920s with many German racing cyclists daring to compete with one another in dangerous track runs that largely ended in disaster.

In March 1931 Herr Richter attached twelve solid-fuel black powder rockets to his bicycle, then made a run down the Avus race track in Berlin .







It is not known if Herr Richter made another attempt with the Raketenrad (Rocket Cycle), but German applications of solid-fuel rockets declined considerably in the 1930s due to the promises held with liquid-fuel propulsion being pioneered by Walter and von Braun which led to the German Me-163 Komet, Walter RATO (Rocket-Assist Take-Off) units, and the mighty V-2 ballistic missile.





STRANGE VEHICLES OF PRE-WAR GERMANY

&

THE THIRD REICH

(1928-1945)























He used a white box suspended from the bicycle crossbar to hold the battery used to ignite the solid-fuel rockets, controlled by switches on the handlebars.

THE TEST RUN



Accounts vary as to what happened; according to one report, everything went well until he had reached 55 mph, when he lost control and was thrown from his machine. Miraculously, he was not seriously injured.







Richter takes off with a good start







Richter can be seen picking himself out of a

ditch at top right







Richter cautiously approaches his fallen machine.

Explosions of these solid-fuel rockets were not unknown.







.