His flight instructor was Gustav Witte. On January 11, 1912, he received his pilot's license (pilot's license No. 149). [1] In December 1912, he set an endurance flight record of over five hours in a Rumpler pigeon. After Pyotr Nesterov demonstrated a looping in August 1913, Friedrich invented the corkscrew, a controlled spin, in September.
In September 1913, with Hermann Elias as navigator, he took off on a five-country flight in the Etrich Taube.
From 1 April 1914 he was chief pilot at the Rumpler aircraft works in Berlin-Johannisthal (?) In June, he caused a sensation with his flights Berlin-Sofia, where he wanted to demonstrate German flying material, and Sofia-Bucharest, which was the first flight over the Balkan Mountains with a passenger.
When the First World War broke out at the end of July, there was no Luftwaffe and he initially joined the Imperial Air Force as a contract employee; only later did he receive a military rank. Initially, he flew in Feldfliegerabteilung 14 and was deployed as a reconnaissance aircraft in September 1914 at the Battle of Tannenberg in East Prussia. For his front-line flights, he received both Iron Crosses and was promoted to lieutenant in the reserve.
On August 1, 1915, he became head of the Döberitz flying school, where the fighter pilots Oswald Boelcke and Manfred von Richthofen, among others, passed through his school.
On 1 January 1916, he was granted leave of absence to train pilots in the Bulgarian army. From the summer of 1916 until the end of the war, he was a factory pilot and pilot at the Berlin Albatros works.
After the war, he founded an engineering company. He was primarily interested in light aircraft construction, which experienced an upswing mainly thanks to the development of sports and training aircraft. Hanns Klemm and the Englishman Geoffrey de Havilland with his D.H.60 Moth contributed in particular to this. Friedrich made this popular in Germany with his demonstration flights and from 1926 was head of the German branch of the de Havilland Aircraft Company in Berlin-Tempelhof. He was in close contact with Carl Clemens Bücker in Rangsdorf.
In September 1927, the Alte Adler association was founded, which he managed with Walter Mackenthun until the beginning of the Second World War.
In 1934, after Hitler's seizure of power, he founded his aircraft repair plant for light aircraft in Strausberg, mainly for Heinkel and Klemm. In the Berlin area, there was a great need for repair for training and sports aircraft. His brother Hermann became commercial director, technical director Mr. Spindler. At the end of Hegermühlenstraße, he acquired the disused electricity and waterworks for the repair plant. For the factory airfield, he acquired a 500 m long field in the north of Strausberg, where he built the final assembly hall. The average aircraft arrived by Strausberg railway, were dismantled under the supervision of the Reich Ministry of Aviation, reassembled, fuselage and wings were transported separately by truck to the final assembly hall and flown in. In April 1941, he hired Beate Uhse as a flyer, who completed 700 flights here over the next three years.
The Reich Ministry of Aviation tried in vain to win him over for a position in the Luftwaffe, which was still kept secret in 1933/34.
Originally, they repaired around 30 machines a month with 250 employees. In the first years of the war, with around 80 conscripts and prisoners of war, the number rose to 45.Jagdgeschwader
400, which was equipped with Me 163s from the summer of 1944, often caused breakage during landings. As a result of missing and inaccurate spare parts, the squadron was disbanded with the collapse of supplies. In February 1945, only Bücker Bestmann machines were repaired in Strausberg. When the Red Army had advanced on the Oder, Friedrich received the order to transfer the workforce to Gustav Besser KG in Ruppertsgrün.
