Weser Flugzeugbau
GmbH, known as Weserflug, was an aircraft manufacturing company in
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...
.
History
The company was founded in 1934 as a subsidiary of the ship and machine company
Deutsche Schiff- und Maschinenbau AG (DESCHIMAG). It began production that year at
Berlin
Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European U ...
Tempelhof, and in
Bremen
Bremen (Low German also: ''Breem'' or ''Bräm''), officially the City Municipality of Bremen (german: Stadtgemeinde Bremen, ), is the capital of the Germany, German States of Germany, state Bremen (state), Free Hanseatic City of Bremen (''Freie H ...
.
In 1935, Dr. Adolf Rohrbach became technical director of a new Weserflug factory at Lemwerder, near Bremen, which opened in 1936. He had been working on ideas for
VTOL
A vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft is one that can take off and land vertically without relying on a runway. This classification can include a variety of types of aircraft including helicopters as well as thrust-vectoring fixed-wi ...
(Vertical TakeOff and Landing) aircraft since 1933, and now developed them further.
In 1938, the company developed the
Weserflug P.1003
The Weserflug P.1003, was a two-seat German aircraft designed in 1938 by Weserflug. The aim of the project was to construct a military tilt rotor aircraft with VTOL characteristics for use in World War II.
At the beginning of 1938 plans for a til ...
, a VTOL aircraft. It had 4 m diameter propellers that swivelled between horizontal and vertical, and could fly up to 650 km/h. It requires very complex gearing to tilt the wings without varying the power to the propellers, and therefore was never built.
World War II
During
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
Weserflug had another factory in
Liegnitz
Legnica (Polish: ; german: Liegnitz, szl, Lignica, cz, Lehnice, la, Lignitium) is a city in southwestern Poland, in the central part of Lower Silesia, on the Kaczawa River (left tributary of the Oder) and the Czarna Woda. Between 1 June 19 ...
. It built
Ju 188
The Junkers Ju 188 was a German ''Luftwaffe'' high-performance medium bomber built during World War II, the planned follow-up to the Ju 88 with better performance and payload. It was produced only in limited numbers, due both to the presence of i ...
and
Ju 388
The Junkers Ju 388 '' Störtebeker'' is a World War II German ''Luftwaffe'' multi-role aircraft based on the Ju 88 airframe by way of the Ju 188. It differed from its predecessors in being intended for high altitude operation, with design features ...
bombers, one of which survives in the
National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.
Perhaps foreseeing the end of the war, the management of Weserflug transferred in 1944 from Berlin to
Hoykenkamp, 15 km west of Bremen. It took over buildings previously used by
Focke Achgelis
Focke-Achgelis & Co. G.m.b.H. was a German helicopter company founded in 1937 by Henrich Focke and Gerd Achgelis.
History
Henrich Focke was ousted in 1936 from the Focke-Wulf company, which he had cofounded in 1924, due to shareholder pressure ...
.
[F.-Herbert Wenz: Flughafen Tempelhof. ''Chronik des Berliner Werkes der "Weser" Flugzeugbau GmbH Bremen.'' Bau der Kriegsflugzeuge Ju 87-Stuka und Fw 190 1939-1945. Lemwerder (Stedinger Verlag) 2000. . 159 pages.]
During 1940-5, Weserflug built 5215
Junkers Ju 87 Stuka planes at Tempelhof. This plant also constructed
Fw 190 fighters. Forced labour was used; on 20 April 1944 2,103 of the 4,151 Tempelhof workers were foreign forced labourers.
Ju 86 aircraft were manufactured at Lemwerder.
After the war
At the end of the war, all aircraft production in Germany halted for several years. In 1948 a trustee, Horst Janson, was appointed to collect the assets of Weser AG, to which Weserflug belonged. He was responsible for some postwar reindustrialization in Bremen, such as reactivating the shipbuilding industry, and joined the board of Weser AG. Production of motorized aircraft was forbidden in Germany from 1945 until 1955. In the 1950s the Hoykenkamp area was used for small businesses.
In 1960, while retaining his other commitments to the reindustrialisation of Bremen, Janson became chairman of Weser AG. In 1961, Weserflug joined forces with
Focke-Wulf
Focke-Wulf Flugzeugbau AG () was a German manufacturer of civil and military aircraft before and during World War II. Many of the company's successful fighter aircraft designs were slight modifications of the Focke-Wulf Fw 190. It is one of the ...
- also of Bremen - and
Hamburger Flugzeugbau in the
Entwicklungsring Nord (ERNO) to develop rockets. Focke-Wulf and Weserflug formally merged in 1964, becoming
Vereinigte Flugtechnische Werke
Vereinigte Flugtechnische Werke (VFW) was a West German aerospace manufacturer.
The company was formed by the 1964 merger of two German aerospace firms, Focke-Wulf and Weser Flugzeugbau GmbH (Weserflug). The formation of VFW was a natural outco ...
(VFW). Janson retired as chairman of Weser AG in 1969.
Aircraft
*
Weserflug We 271
*
Weserflug WP 1003
See also
*
Volksflugzeug
References
{{Authority control
Companies based in Bremen
Defunct aircraft manufacturers of Germany
Manufacturing companies based in Bremen (state)