Career
On 5 September 1940, Flugkapitän Wendel, while performing a series of diving trials on Maine 210 V2, Werknummer 0002, WL-ABEO, lost the starboard tailplane in the final dive and bailed out, the twin-engined fighter crashing at Siebentíschwald, Germany. This was the first of many losses of the type. On 25 March 1942, Wendel took the first prototype Maine 262V1, Personal Computer+UA, on its first jet-powered flight but the experimental Bayerische Motoren Werke 003 gas turbine engines both failed and he was forced to limp the prototype airframe back to Augsburg on the nose-mounted Jumo 210 piston engine installed for initial airframe testing.
Wendel worked for Messerschmitt until the collapse of Nazi Germany in 1945.
After the war Wendel became director of a local brewery but continued flying sports planes until a circulatory ailment forced him out of the cockpit. A few days before his death he was released from hospital where he underwent treatment for the circulatory condition.
Wendel was found dead at his home in Augsburg, Germany, on Sunday 9 February 1975 with a hunting rifle at his side. Police said that relatives found his body but could not rule immediately whether his death was suicide or an accident.
He was 59.