The Silver Arrows

The People

Ernst Günther Burggaller (D)
12 Mar 1896 - 2 Feb 1940

 Burggaller was a excellent driver  in the Voiturette class. He was offered an Auto Union contract for 1934 but refused. When Prince zu Leiningen got sick, arrangements were made for Burgaller to compete in the 1934 German Grand Prix but he failed to finish due to gearbox problems.

Rudolf Caracciola (D/SUI)
30 Jan 1901 – 28 Sep 1959

It seems like when the topic of Silver Arrow drivers arise, the names Hans Stuck and Bernd Rosemeyer rise to the top first. Perhaps this is because they were affable personalities frequently sought out by the press. Rudy Caracciola on the other hand was a more reserved man, more of a thinking man. But if the criteria for the best Silver Arrow driver were established in quantitative terms, there is no doubt that Caracciola out shown all of his competitors. He was Mercedes top driver and between 1934 and 1939 he managed seventeen wins, ten second place finishes and five third place finishes. His closest competitor was Rosemeyer who had ten wins and four second place finishes.

His first acclaimed win was in the 1931 Mille Miglia. He drove a Mercedes-Benz SSKL to a first place finish; the first non-Italian to do so. Caracciola joined Alfa Romeo in 1932 and in 1933 he and Louis Chiron founded CC Scuderia. But 1933 was a very bad year for Rudi; he crashed at Monaco severly injuring his leg. Not long afterwards his beloved wife Charly died in an avalanche.

There were doubts that he could return to racing but Caracciola made the Mercedes Silver Arrow team in 1934. A strong personal bond formed between race manager Alfred Neubauer and Rudi Caracciola which yielded great benefits for Mercedes. He spent WWII in Lugano, Switzerland but returned to racing in the late 1940s. He had limited success but a broken leg at Bremgarten ended his career.

In addition to racing, Caracciola drove a Mercedes Silver Arrow 432.7 km/h (268.9 mph) over a flying kilometer in January 1938. It remains the fastest officially recorded speed on a public road. Rudi Caracciola died of bone disease in 1959. His trophies and records were donated to the Indy 500 museum and in 1998 he was elected to the International Motorsports Hall of Fame.

Louis Chiron (MC)
3 Aug 1899 - 22 Jun 1979

Known as The Old Fox, Chiron started racing in 1923 and this career was to last for 35 years. He was a lead driver for both Bugatti and Alfa Romeo before starting Scuderia CC with Rudy Caracciola in 1933. After that he drove for Scuderia Ferrari until 1935 when he joined the Mercedes team. After a bad crash, he left Grand Prix driving in favor of racing sports cars. After the war he raced for Talbot (1946 - 1949) and then Maserati (1950 - 1951).

Luigi Fagioli (I)
9 Jun 1898 - 20 Jun 1952

Although an exceptionally talented driver, Fagioli often let his temper get the better of him. In addition, he took extraordinary chances on the track and developed a bad reputation after several race crashes. In 1934 he joined the  Mercedes Silver Arrows team. His relationship with manager Alfred Neubauer and the other drivers was very tenuous. In his very first race for Mercedes Fagioli abandoned his vehicle on the track after being ordered to allow  fellow Mercedes driver Manfred von Brauchitsch to win. In 1935 his relationship with his teammates worsened often disregarding team orders. He left Mercedes at the end of the 1936 season and joined Auto Union where his rivalry with Mercedes driver Rudy Caracciola escalated resulting in Fagioli physically attacking his former Caracciola.

Hanns Geier (D)
25 Feb 1902 - 1986

When two Mercedes works drivers became ill before the 1934 German Grand Prix, Geier was asked to fill in. Afterwards he was signed as reserve driver for the 1934 and for 1935. He crashed badly in the 1935 Swiss Grand Prix but recovered from the accident. He returned to the Mercedes team as a timekeeper and assistant team manager.

Rudolf Hasse (D)
30 May 1906 - 12 Aug 1942

In 1936 Hasse was signed on as a driver at Auto Union and raced for the team until the war. Hasse took part in  eight major Grand Prix with several respectable finishes. In 1940 he was drafted and sent to service vehicles at the Russian front where he died of sickness at the age of 36.

Ernst Jacob Henne (D)
22 Feb 1904 - 23 May 2005

After racing BMW motorcycles Henne was asked by Neubauer to try out for the Mercedes team. His first tryout was at the Nurburgring in March 1934 where he crashed and almost drowned. Neubauer was not dismayed and Hennes was given another try during practice at the French Grand Prix. In the fall of 1934 Henne unsuccessfully attempted a land speed record run at Gyon which was his last time driving for Mercedes. He summed up his experience as "...very pleasant on a personal level, but very disappointing in terms of results."

Adolf Hühnlein

1 2 Nov 1881 – 18 Jun 1942

The political leader of the Silver Arrow’s crowd was SportscorpsFührer Adolf Hühnlein. Of course this was by necessity since Hühnlein had been personally appointed by Hitler to head up the National Socialist Kraft Korps (N.S.K.K.) motorsports program. But Hühnlein had a more difficult job than many given credit for. He was constantly caught in the middle of dictates from Berlin and the independent spirit of the Grand Prix drivers. This was no easy balancing act since the Silver Arrows were seen by the Nazi party as simply a propaganda tool they paid for and could control to whatever degree they chose. Indeed there was more than one instance where party officials attempted to order the finishing position for drivers. Of course the teams would have no such manipulation of their sport and so it fell upon Hühnlein’s shoulders to obey the dictates of his superiors and at the same time to keep his drivers from defecting and out of prison.

During the war Adolf Hühnlein was promoted to head of Military Transport but killed during a purge of Hitler’s henchman.

Christian Kautz (CH)
23 Nov 1913 - 4 Jul 1948

Kautz was the son of a Swiss multi-millionaire. He beagan with Mercedes driver in 1936 and then switched to Auto Union in 1938. Kautz was a testpilot for Lockheed in the US during WWII. He died at age 34  at the 1948 Swiss Grand Prix.

Hermann Lang (D)
6 Apr 1909 - 19 Oct 1987

Lang was initially the lead Mercedes-Benz mechanic for Luigi Fagioli. He was given a chance to drive for the Mercedes team in 1935. His first win came at the the 1937 Tripoli Grand Prix in Libya and he won it again in 1938 and 1939. Lang's time with the Mercedes team was difficult for him. Compared to his peers he neither wealthy, aristocratic or highly educated. But in 1939 he won five of the eight Grand Prixs in which was entered and enter some respect as a result.

Prinz Hermann zu Leiningen (D)
4 Jan 1901 - 29 Mar 1971.

Zu Leiningen started was an Auto Union driver in 1934. He started in five races but failed to finish in four of them. He continued racing in 1935 but was unsuccessful in three attempts resulting in zu Leningen retiring from the sport.

Georg Meier (D)
9 Nov 1910 - 19 Feb 1999

Auto Union junior driver during 1939 season.

August Momberger (D)
26 Jun 1905 - 22 Dec 1969

Momberger was an Auto Union reserve driver during the 1934 season.  His racing skills were reasonable but he failed to get along with team amanager Willy Walb. He retired after this first season.

Hermann Müller (D)
21 Nov 1909 - 30 Dec 1975

In 1937 Müller was asked to join the Auto Union Grand Prix team as reserve driver and he became a regular team driver in 1938. His best results were third places at the 1937 Coppa Acerbo and sharing the drive with Rosemeyer at the Masaryk Circuit. He was wounded in French GP crash 1938. In 1939, Müller came second to Lang in the Kahlenberg Mountain Climb where he beat Stuck in both runs. At the Grossglockner Mountain Climb, Müller again won the first heat by one second but in the second heat, he lost too much time in the fog, finishing third. He won the French Grand Prix and came second at the German Grand Prix. In the four races of the 1939 European Championship Müller outscored Lang and would under normal circumstances have been the 1939 European Champion, the equivalent of today’s World Champion. But after the conclusion of the series, the A.I.A.C.R. could not meet and the German ONS changed the existing rules to the favor of Lang and declared him the champion instead.

Alfred Neubauer (AU)

29 Mar 1891 – 22 Aug 1980

When his wife told him that even a bus driver was faster than him, Herr Neubauer decided he needed a new career path and invented the role of Rennleiter or race team manger in 1926. One of his first contributions to the sport was the method of signaling his drivers from the pits through the use of flags and reader boards. In addition to improving tactical strategies, he strategically demanded perfection in race preparation including having his driver driving tracks in practice until they were thoroughly acquainted with every nuance of the course.
Although Neubauer achieved his highest notoriety in connection with the Silver Arrow racers, he continued as race team manager with Mercedes after the war. The winning car he coached was the famous 300SL which achieved victory at both Le Mans and in the Carrera Panamericana. But the end came in 1955 when a 300SL launched into the crowd at Le Mans killing some 80 people. This resulted in Mercedes completely withdrawing from racing and Neubauer retiring.

Tazio Nuvolari (I)
16 Nov 1892 - 11 Aug 1953

In 1933 the Alfa Romeo company was nationalized and its racing organization was turned over to Enzo Ferrari. This included the Italian champion Tazio Nuvolari. It proved to be a womderful situation for Nuvolari who won ten races that year in the Ferrari Alfa P3s. Later, after some equipment failures, Nuvolari broke his contract with Ferrari and joined on with Maserati where he achieved several wins over the Ferrari cars.  By the time the Silver Arrows made their debut, Tazio Nuvolari was generally considered the greatest race driver in the world.
 

In 1934, Nuvolari was an independent driver and not very successful. As a result he interviewed with Auto Union as a driver in late 1934 but was told there was no room for him on the team. Apparently the reason was that other drivers did not want him on the team - perhaps this specifically refers to his Italian rival Achille Varzi who possibly had already received a contract from

Auto Union for the 1935 season. As a result of no offer coming from Auto Union and at the request of Mussolini, Nuvolari rejoined the Ferrari team.

Nuvolari's relationship with Ferrari sour during 1937. Nuvolari managed to race for Auto Union in the Swiss Grand Prix that year and then obtained a contract for the 1938 season. He stayed at Auto Union until Grand Prix racing was suspended due to WWII. Nuvolari was given the nickname The Flying Mantuan. The only major European Grand Prix he never won was the Czechoslovakian Grand Prix. He died of a stroke in 1953.

Paul Pietsch (D)
20 Jun 1911

Pietsch began racing at the age of twenty. In 1935 he tried out for the Auto Union team at Nürburgring and was hired along with Bernd Rosemeyer. Pietsch was a respectable but never exciting driver at Auto Union. In retrospect he said he was never comfortable with the mid-engine design nor with Auto Union’s manager Willy Walb. Pietsch wished he had instead driven for Mercedes who also asked him to try out for their team. Pietsch's last race for Auto Union was the 1935 Spanish Grand Prix. In 1937 Pietsche began successfully racing Maserattis. After the war, in 1946, he started the German automobile journal Das Auto which later became Auto Motor und Sport the biggest magazine of its kind in Europe.

Ferdinand Porsche (AU)

3 Sep 1875 – 30 Jan 1951

Although he had minimal formal training, Porsche had a natural engineering talent. He worked for a series of Austrian and German car builders before opening his own engineering consultation firm. Establishing his own company was largely a necessity because his cantankerous personality had alienated many, if not most, of the executives and workers at Steyr, Austro-Daimler and Daimler-Benz. Although Professor his perhaps best known for making the Volkswagen a reality, he was also instrumental in producing both the Mercedes and Auto Union Silver Arrows.

While working for Daimler Benz in 1926, Porsche led the development of a car series which utilized straight-eight supercharged engines. These cars, the Mercedes S, SS and SSK, achieved many successes in racing during the second half of the 1920s and perhaps more importantly became the foundation for the Silver Arrow Mercedes W25.

Bernd Rosemeyer (D)
14 Oct 1909 – 28 Jan 1938

Bernd Rosemeyer was the prototypical image of Aryan breeding. He was tall, blond and blue eyed. He was a fun, personable guy with a famous, adventurous aviatrix wife. The pair were the darling of the press

At the age of sixteen Bernd acquired a motorcycle and trained himself to be a stunt driver. The boy lost his license after repeatedly standing on the seat of his bike while motoring along the cobblestone streets of Lingen at 50 mph. After pleading and promising to behave, the Constable returned his license and Bernd took his motorcycle interests to the track where he quickly demonstrated his natural race talents.

Although he had never raced a car, Bernd tried out at the Nürgurgring for the Auto Union team on October 24, 1934. He was the second fastest on the track that day and was invited to be a cadet driver for Auto Union. His first race was the fast AVUS track on May 26^th. Although a DNF due to engine problems, Bernd was now a full member of the driver’s team. His first podium finish came at the very next race, on June 16^th at the IX ADAC Eifelrennen on the Nürburg Ring. Although Auto Union was struggling with technical difficulties in 1935, Rosemeyer managed four more podium finishes that year including first place at the last race of the season in Czech city of Brno. In 1936 Rosemeyer had five first place finishes and four more in 1937.

In addition to Grand Prix races, the Silver Arrow cars competed in hillclimbs and land speed record (LSR) competitions. On January 28, 1938 Caracciola drove a Mercedes Silver Arrow 432.7 km/h (268.9 mph) over a flying kilometer on the Autobahn between Frankfurt and Darmstadt. It remains the fastest officially recorded speed on a public road. Weather conditions deteriorated after Carracciola’s run but the invincible Bernd Rosemeyer decided he needed to better Carraciola’s time immediately. Bernd’s first run was intended to warm up the engine and familiarize Bernd with the stretch of road. It went well enough with a speed of 268.7 mph. The second run was for the record. There was a tremendous crash leaving the Auto Union car in pieces and Rosemeyer deal.

Bernd Rosemeyer was famous before the crash and as a result an in depth investigation was carried out. The results indicated that the car was hit by a heavy gush of win and even the man with the quickest reflects was not able to avoid disaster. All of Germany mourned the loss of their national hero.

Dick Seaman (GB)
4 Feb 1913 - 25 Jun 1939

Wilhelm Sebastian (D)
17 Jan 1903 - 30 Oct 1978

Sebastian was Caracciola's mechanic and reserve driver for Auto Union during the 1934 season.

Hans Stuck (D/AUT)
27 Dec 1900 - 9 Feb 1978

In recognition of his many victories in hill-climb races Stuck was nicknamed the "King of the Hills". He raced until he was 62 years old, and won his final German hill-climb championship at the age of 60. Stuck was instrumental in getting Auto Union race cars supported by Adolf Hitler and became the lead driver for Auto Union the very first year. Stuck was perhaps not as naturally gifted as some of his associates - Rosemeyer, Caracciola, and Nuvalori for example but he was,the stalwart of the Auto Union team from the very beginning. Before the Mercedes had even appeared, Stuck broke three World records in an Auto Union Silver Arrows at the AVUS track on March 6, 1934.

Manfred von Brauchitsch (D)
15 Aug 1905 – 5 Feb 2003

It has been widely reported that the Siler Arrows owe their name to a predicament Mercedes faced prior to scrutineering for their first race. Although they had taken every measure to ensure the cars would fall under the 750kg limit, measurements prior to inspection indicated they had violated the weight limit. Absolutely everything had been done to remove any unnecessary equipment and lighten the remaining but still race team manger Alfred Neubauer faced a problem. “Well it looks as if the only thing you have left to peel off is the paint,” Manfred reportedly said. And the white paint came off, the bare aluminum shown like silver and the Mercedes W25 came in under the 750kg limit.

Despite this interesting anecdote, von Brauchitsch real claim to fame was his nickname, “Pechvogel," which means “bird of bad luck.” His volatile Prussian temper caused him to abuse his car is an effort to be out in front. Mercedes race team manger Neubauer capitalized on von Brauchitsch’s attitude by encouraging him to lead from the very start of the race. Manfred obliged until his engine gave out or he slid off the track. But behind him his competition was doing the same thing allowing the rest of the Mercedes drivers to hang in and complete the race while their competition followed von Brauchitsch to failure.

Manfred was the nephew of General Field Marshall Walther von Brauchitsch. He was an aristocratic who started racing in 1929. In 193X he won the AVUS Grand Prix in a Mercedes SSK. Between 1934 and 1939 he drove as a Mercedes Werke driver. After the war, faced with charges of treason, he fled to East Germany where he worked at the Ministry of Sports.

Ernst von Delius (D)
29 Mar 1912 - 26 Jul 1937

Von Delius was and Auto Union junior driver during the 1936 and 1937 seasons and started in 14 races. His last race was the German Grand Prix of 1937 where he died in an collision with Dick Seaman.

Klaus von Oertzen

1894 – 1991

When Auto Union was formed Baron Von Oertzen had been in charge of sales at Wanderer and became sales director and chairman of the board of directors of Auto Union. He was an admirer of Ferdinand Porsche and together with him and Hans Stuck, convinced Hitler to subsidize Auto Union’s entry into Grand Prix racing. Von Oertzen, concerned with the Nazi revolution going on, decided to relocate to South Africa in 1935. In 1937 he arranged for the Auto Union Grand Prix Silver Arrow racers to be brought to South Africa for promotional purposes.

After the war, Volkswagen appointed Von Oertzen as their representative in South Africa. He was heavily involved in bringing Volkswagen to South Africa and is sometimes referred to as the “Father of Volkswagen of South Africa”

Achille Varzi (I)
8 Aug 1904 - 01 Jul 1948

While the Silver Arrows were racing, Italy had three famous drivers: Fagioli, Nuvalari and Varzi. Achille Varzi began racing on motorcycles like many other drivers of the time. He was an elegant but aloof gentleman who always dressed impeccably. During the late 1920s fierce battles were held on the track between Nuvalari and Varzi which delighted the race crowds. Impressed with the Silver Arrows, Varzi hired on with Auto Union for the 1935 season and, unlike several other drivers, found the mid-engine car a delight to drive. Although the Auto Union team was struggling with design problems that year, Varzi managed one win and one second and third place finish. 1936 was also a good year for Varzi while he was on the race circuit but by August his personal life began to destroy his career. This was when he became involved with a married woman, Ilse Pietsch, wife of a fellow driver Paul Pietsch. To make matters worse, Ilse got Varzi involved with the drug morphine.

After the war Varzi attempted a comeback  andn 1947, he won three minor Grand Prix races. During practice at the 1948 Swiss Grand Prix Bremgarten track, Varzi's car flipped over and crushed him. This accident resulted in crash helmets being required in FIA endorsed racing.

Willy Walb

Walb started his career at Benz eventually working in their Experimental and Racing Department. He moved to Mercedes in 1929 and worked under Neubauer as a driver and assistant manager. Walb accepted the job of Auto Union Team Manager when the Silver Arrow effort began.

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