A shipyard in trouble looks to the sky

In 1933 the great Hamburg shipyard of Blohm & Voss, builder of liners and battleships since 1877, was short of work. The founder’s sons, Rudolf and Walther Blohm, decided to diversify into aircraft, betting that Deutsche Luft Hansa would soon want all-metal, long-range flying boats and that shipwrights already understood metal hulls and salt water. That June they registered a subsidiary, Hamburger Flugzeugbau, keeping the risk away from the yard. The first product, the Ha 135 trainer biplane, was built in a rented joinery and had to be carried to Fuhlsbüttel airport to fly. Only six were made.

Richard Vogt and the tubular spar

The firm’s character came from its chief designer, Richard Vogt, who had worked for Dornier and then for Kawasaki in Japan. His aircraft were built around a large welded tubular steel wing spar, which in the flying boats doubled as the fuel tank. A new land works opened at Wenzendorf, south of Hamburg, in September 1935, and between 1936 and 1940 a seaplane works was dredged and built out of marshland at Finkenwerder on the Elbe. Meanwhile former shipyard workers learned aircraft trades building other people’s designs under licence, from Junkers Ju 52 parts to 261 Junkers W 34s. In September 1937 the subsidiary was folded into its parent, and the RLM code changed from Ha to BV.

The flying clog and the giant Wiking

The bread-and-butter type was the BV 138 Seedrache, a twin-boom, three-engined maritime patrol flying boat whose short, flat-sided hull earned it the nickname Fliegender Holzschuh, the flying clog. It flew in July 1937, needed a redesigned hull and stronger booms, and only became structurally sound with the C-1 of 1941; in all 297 were built. Its diesel engines meant a BV 138 could be refuelled at sea from a U-boat, which happened four times off Novaya Zemlya in 1943. The six-engined BV 222 Wiking, designed for transatlantic airline work, flew in September 1940 and became the largest Axis flying boat to enter service. Thirteen were built.

Asymmetry: the BV 141

Vogt’s strangest idea was the BV 141 reconnaissance aircraft of 1938. The engine sat at the front of a single tail boom; the three crew rode in a glazed gondola off to the right, joined to the boom by the wing. Nobody had asked Blohm & Voss to bid, and the air ministry would not pay for a prototype, so the company built one with its own money. The asymmetric machine flew well, but the ministry preferred the twin-engined Focke-Wulf Fw 189 and only 28 BV 141s were completed. Vogt went on drawing asymmetric projects for years; none was built.

Lake Schaal and after

The last giant was the BV 238, a six-engined flying boat of 100 tonnes loaded weight, the heaviest aircraft flown up to that time and the largest built by any Axis power. Its only flying prototype was strafed and sunk on Lake Schaal, east of Hamburg, in 1945. At the shipyard the war meant U-boats, 224 of them, built increasingly by forced labourers and concentration camp prisoners. The British closed the business and dismantled the aircraft works. Walther Blohm revived Hamburger Flugzeugbau at Finkenwerder in 1956, independent of the yard; it merged into MBB in 1969, and Finkenwerder is today an Airbus plant.

מפעלים

• Wenzendorf works · Wenzendorf, south of Hamburg — Land aircraft works opened September 1935
• Finkenwerder works · Finkenwerder, Hamburg — Seaplane works built 1936–1940 on reclaimed Elbe marshland; later HFB and Airbus
• Steinwerder works · Hamburg — BV 222 assembly, two at a time

אֲנָשִׁים

• Walther Blohm · co-owner, founder of HFB — Revived Hamburger Flugzeugbau in 1956
• Rudolf Blohm · co-owner — Headed the shipbuilding committee of Speer’s armaments ministry from 1942
• Richard Vogt · chief designer — Ex-Dornier and Kawasaki; tubular-spar wings and asymmetric designs
• Helmut Wasa Rodig · chief test pilot from 1934
• Eric Brown · Royal Navy test pilot — Flew a captured BV 222 from Norway to Calshot in 1946

שיאים וראשונות

• BV 238: heaviest aircraft yet flown, at 100 tonnes loaded, and the largest aircraft built by any Axis power
• BV 222 Wiking: largest Axis flying boat to enter production and service
• BV 141: one of very few asymmetric aircraft ever flown and built in series