As a boy of 14, Lippisch witnessed a flight by Orville Wright in September 1909. He
followed the accounts of Dunne's and Etrich's experiments with inherent stability, and after
military service during World War I, applied his interest to glider design. His first tailless
glider was built in 1921, by Gottlob Espenlaub, the German glider enthusiast who would later
collaborate with the Swiss designer Alexander Soldenhoff on his designs

The Lippisch-Espenlaub E2 was the first of over 50 swept-wing, tailless designs produced by
Lippisch over the next three decades. Though this first effort was less than impressive, it at
least was a starting point from which Lippisch began serious, systematic development of
tailless designs. In 1924, he was designated Director of the Aeronautical Department of the
RhonRossitten-Gesellschaft (RRG, which later became the German Research Institute for
Soaring Flight).

 With limited resources at his disposal, Lippisch chose an unconventional, step-by-step
method of developing his designs, testing the original concept first as a flying model, then as a
man-carrying glider, and finally as a powered aircraft. Lippisch considered this approach
would produce results in less time and with less expense than a wind tunnel research
program. From this design philosophy evolved two famous series of tailless aircraft -- the
Storch (stork) and the Delta.

 Between 1927 and 1932, eight Storch aircraft were designed by Lippisch, all of them
high-wing monoplanes with sweepback. In 1926, a succession of large, free-flying models of
various configurations, including canards and the "flying plank" design later adopted by Fauvel
in France, led to the Storch I experimental glider, first test-flown in 1927 by Bubi Nehring.
Lack of aileron effectiveness was evident in this and the Storch 11 and III that followed. The
ailerons were redesigned to approximate the form of the Zanonia seed and Igo Etrich's
Taube. Etrich himself recommended the configuration to Lippisch; his faith in the principle
was reaffirmed when the 1929 Storch IV glider demonstrated impressive stability and control
characteristics with Gunther Gronhoff at the controls. Development work on the Storch series
was temporarily interrupted in 1928 when Lippisch collaborated with Fritz von Opel and the
rocket manufacturer Sander in performing rocket-powered flights of some Lippisch tailless
models. These successful experiments were followed by a manned flight of a rocket-powered
tail-first glider, the Ente (duck). Although these experiments also met with moderate success,
Lippisch returned to his original interests in 1929. These experiments, and subsequent
research on the basic principles of rocket propulsion, provided the foundation for later
projects with rocket-propelled aircraft in the late 1930s.

 In 1929, the Storch V appeared equipped with a small, 8-hp DKW engine for Lippisch's
first attempt at powered flight with the Storch series. Following successful test flights by
Gronhoff, a public demonstration of the Storch V was made at Tempelhof Airfield at Berlin in
October 1929, with the expectation of obtaining some government financial backing. None
came, but the transatlantic pilot Captain Herman Kohl expressed interest in the idea of a
tailless aircraft for flights across the Atlantic.  With this order in hand, Lippisch stopped work
on the Storch VI and began the design of what would eventually become the renowned Delta
series. Lippisch later worked on three more versions of the Storch; the Storch VII, powered
by a 24-hp engine, won a prize for the first 300 km overland flight of a tailless aircraft when
Gronhoff flew the aircraft from the Wasserkuppe to Berlin in 1931 in 1 hour, 55 minutes. The
Storch VIII was a privately financed craft that could be flown either with or without tail
surfaces attached. The Storch IX training glider appeared in 1933, and was successful
enough to prompt two variations, the IX a and b.

 Lippisch's methodical, step-by-step experiments had been quite successful with the Storch
series, but the Storch was merely a foundation for further efforts to build a pure, all-wing
aircraft. From the Storch, with its swept back leading and trailing edges, came the Delta, also
a swept back wing but with one essential difference: the trailing edge, from wing tip to wing
tip, was a straight line. This triangular wing allowed a thick midsection, with the potential for
storing all loads inside the wing.

 Following his customary routine, Lippisch proceeded from drawing to flying model to
full-scale glider, and finally in June 1931, the powered Delta I was flown on the
Wasserkuppe. Again, Gunther Gronhoff's test flights were so successful that another
Templehof demonstration was conducted; and again, the Lippisch aircraft was clearly a
success, with accounts of Gronhoff's aerobatic skill with the revolutionary airplane appearing
in the press in Europe and the United States. Unfortunately, no financial backing materialized.

 For the next several years, Lippisch, serving with the RRG (in 1933 reorganized under the
title Deutsche Forschungsanstalt fur Segelflug [DFS, German Research Institute for Soaring
Flight]), produced dozens of designs for tailless aircraft; some never left the drawing board,
and some made it to the model stage. Others, like the Delta, eventually flew and underwent
countless modifications as tests revealed deficiencies in stability and control. The Delta series
progressed through the Delta IVC, at which point the series designation was changed to DFS
39. The DFS 40, or Delta V, was the last of the series to fly, in 1939.

 As the decade came to a close and Germany prepared for war, Lippisch transferred to the
Messerschmitt Company in January 1939, where he again became involved in the application
of rocket propulsion to tailless aircraft.

After the war ended, Lippisch moved to the United States, where after a few years of
government service, he joined Collins Radio Company as an expert on special aeronautical
problems. In 1966, he founded Lippisch Research Corporation and developed the X-113A
Aerofoil Boat.

 Alexander Lippisch died in 1976.