Mad Ludwig's flying car was a smart idea

[Dave Monroe]

Mad Ludwig's flying car was a smart idea

Michael Leidig
Sunday August 6, 2006
The Observer

It's been a long wait, but finally King Ludwig II of
Bavaria can rest easy in his grave: 120 years after
his death, German scientists have shown him to be one
of the unsung pioneers of flight.

Ludwig, whose fantastical castle at Neuschwanstein
aptly featured in the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,
drew up plans for a flying car more than two decades
before the Wright brothers took to the air, but when
he tried to build it he was declared insane and
stripped of his crown.

But now German aeronautical experts who have studied
Ludwig's designs say they would have worked. Sketches
recovered from letters between the ruler and Austrian
engineer Gustav Koch show the monarch had planned to
create a fleet of flying machines that would take him
across his beloved Alpine lakes to his many castles,
including the fairytale Neuschwanstein. The craft he
designed looked like flying cable cars powered by
steam engines. They were decorated like peacocks.

But his dreams of flying over the mountains of Bavaria
only convinced his opponents that he was mad, and he
was declared insane on 10 June, 1886, and deposed. He
died shortly afterwards and his drawings were
consigned to an archive. Now aeronautical experts have
dug them out and re-created them on computer.

Dalibor Karacic is working on the project to re-draw
the machines. He said: 'King Ludwig was unbelievably
progressive. He understood technology. The flying
peacock cars may have looked funny, but
technologically they were sound and certainly would
have worked. He couldn't have been mad, otherwise his
ideas would never have worked. He was simply ahead of
his time.'

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1838177,00.html

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