Nobody wanted them

On 1 December 1933 an official at the new German Air Ministry wrote that its technical office had no interest in Bücker Flugzeugbau, either as a designer or as a licence builder, citing foreign capital, secrecy and the crowding of aircraft firms at Johannisthal. Carl Clemens Bücker, a naval airman of the First World War, had spent the 1920s in Sweden running Svenska Aero, which built Caspar and Heinkel designs under licence while the Versailles treaty barred military aircraft in Germany. He came home with a young Swedish designer, Anders J. Andersson, and founded his company in Berlin-Johannisthal.

Jungmann and Jungmeister

Andersson’s first design, the Bü-131 Jungmann, a two-seat trainer biplane, flew on 27 April 1934. It became a worldwide export success before the Luftwaffe would buy it. Yugoslavia flew as many as 400; CASA built hundreds in Spain; Imperial Japan operated more than 1,300 as the Kokusai Ki-86 and Kyushu K9W. The single-seat Bü-133 Jungmeister, first flown in 1935 by Luise Hoffmann, Germany’s first woman test pilot, astonished spectators at the 1936 International Aerobatic Championship at Rangsdorf. The Luftwaffe eventually ordered both, but drove the price down to 12,000 Reichsmarks for a Jungmann.

Rangsdorf to oblivion

In autumn 1935 Bücker opened a new works at Rangsdorf, designed by Herbert Rimpl’s team with Otto Meyer-Ottens, a former close colleague of Walter Gropius, in a style close to the Bauhaus. The monoplane Bü-181 Bestmann trainer followed, built under licence by Fokker, Hägglund and Zlin; Zlin kept building it after the war, and Egypt’s Heliopolis works produced it as the Gomhouria. Bücker itself ended with the war in 1945, its plant seized and used by Soviet forces.

מפעלים

• Johannisthal works · Berlin-Johannisthal — First home of the company
• Rangsdorf works · Rangsdorf, Brandenburg — Opened autumn 1935; designed by Herbert Rimpl’s team with Otto Meyer-Ottens

אֲנָשִׁים

• Carl Clemens Bücker · founder — WWI naval airman; ran Svenska Aero in Sweden from 1921
• Anders J. Andersson · chief designer — Followed Bücker from Sweden
• Luise Hoffmann · test pilot — Germany’s first female test pilot; first flew the Jungmeister

שיאים וראשונות

• Bü-131: the last biplane produced in Germany