Airships first

The Luft-Fahrzeug-Gesellschaft was founded on 30 April 1908 from the assets of the Motorluftschiff-Studiengesellschaft, with money from Krupp, AEG and a chemical company. Its first business was non-rigid airships designed by August von Parseval: the PL.II of 1910 was followed by about 25 PL airships in all. Parts were made at Bitterfeld, the main factory was at Berlin-Adlershof, and seaplanes were finished at Stralsund. For its aircraft LFG used the brand name Roland.

The whale and the shark

LFG’s great contribution was a way of building fuselages. Its Wickelrumpf, or wrapped body, laid strips of plywood around a mould to make a smooth, strong semi-monocoque shell, a method it patented and licensed to Pfalz. The Roland C.II Walfisch, the whale, used it to make a sleek two-seat reconnaissance aircraft. Fighters followed: 20 D.Is, about 230 D.II Haifisch, the shark, six of them for Bulgaria in 1917, and about 350 D.VIs, ordered as a backup after the Fokker D.VII won the 1918 fighter trials.

Fire, defeat and decline

On 6 September 1916 fire destroyed the Adlershof works, a blaze allegedly set by the British Secret Service, and production moved to Charlottenburg. Defeat ended military aviation in Germany. LFG moved to Seddin and turned to aircraft, balloons and lifeboats, building three more Parseval-type airships, but never recovered its wartime scale and was defunct by 1933. Besides the Wickelrumpf, LFG had also patented a second construction method, the Klinkerrumpf or clinker body, named after the overlapping planks of a boat hull.

Factories

• Adlershof works · Berlin-Adlershof — Main factory; destroyed by fire 6 September 1916
• Charlottenburg works · Berlin-Charlottenburg — Main site after the 1916 fire
• Stralsund works · Stralsund — Floatplane final assembly
• Bitterfeld works · Bitterfeld — Initial base, parts manufacture
• Seddin works · Seddin — Post-war operations

People

• August von Parseval · airship designer — Designed the PL airships