Ulrich Steinhilper

Ulrich Steinhilper (14 September 1918 – 20 October 2009) was a World War II Luftwaffe fighter ace who made numerous attempts to escape after he was shot down and captured. As a post-war IBM typewriter salesman, he was an early proponent of word processing, considered by some to have either coined the phrase or even originated the concept.

Early life Steinhilper was born in Stuttgart, Germany, during a World War I air raid. His father was a teacher.

In 1936, he was allowed to graduate early from high school after passing the test for Luftwaffe flight training. As the youngest officer, he was also made the Staffel Nachrichtenoffizier (communications officer), a job no one else wanted (or even knew much about). He became an ace. He destroyed two or three He later described a 30 September mission in which his and other fighter Gruppen were assigned to escort Junkers Ju 88 bombers to London (which they were unable to locate). Many Bf 109 fighters ran out of fuel while returning to base, forcing their pilots to bale out over the English Channel; Steinhilper claimed to have seen a secret memorandum which stated that 19 of these pilots drowned.

Steinhilper was shot down on 27 October over Canterbury by Sergeant Bill Skinner of 74 Squadron, and made a prisoner of war after parachuting to safety. (The "substantial remains" of Oberleutnant Steinhilper's Bf 109E were recovered in 1980 and are displayed in the Dowding Memorial Hangar of the Kent Battle of Britain Museum. )

Escape attempts In January 1941, he was sent across the Atlantic Ocean to Canada to be interned in Camp W (later renamed 100) in Neys, Ontario, or Camp 30 in Bowmanville, Ontario. He made his first escape on 23 November, remaining at large for two days before being recaptured at Niagara Falls, Ontario. He was then transferred to Camp 20 in Gravenhurst, Ontario, where he made two further unsuccessful breakouts.

After the end of the war in 1945, he was returned to Germany and released in late 1946.

IBM and later life Post-war, he worked at several jobs before being hired by IBM Germany. As an IBM typewriter salesman, he coined the word "Textverarbeitung" ("word processing") in 1955. A number of sources even credit him with originating the concept. Steinhilper tried to get IBM Germany interested in the concept, but without much success.