Three brothers and a festival hall

Pfalz was the idea of Alfred Eversbusch, son of a foundry owner in Neustadt an der Weinstraße, who seems to have built an aircraft of his own in 1912–1913. The company was registered in June 1913 with his brother Ernst, their brother-in-law Willy Sabersky-Müssigbrodt and three investors. A third brother, Walther, had just earned his pilot’s licence at Morane-Saulnier in France and flew as chief pilot until he was killed in a crash on 1 June 1916. Before the factory existed, the first Otto pusher biplanes were built in Speyer’s empty festival hall; one went to German East Africa, where it ended up serving as a wartime scout for the colonial troops.

Licences first, then Gehringer

The city sold Pfalz 7,000 square metres at the new Speyer airfield in February 1914 and the factory was finished in July, a month before war broke out. Pfalz built French Morane-Saulnier monoplanes under licence as its E-series, often mistaken by Allied airmen for Fokkers, then 20 Roland D.Is and 200 D.IIs. In November 1916 it hired the designer Rudolph Gehringer from Flugzeugbau Friedrichshafen, and he combined Roland’s patented wrapped-plywood fuselage with the new Mercedes engine. A railway station hall brought from Lille was re-erected in Speyer to add floor space.

The balloon-buster

The result, the D.III, reached the front in August 1917. German pilots rated it below the Albatros: heavier controls, slower climb, a vicious spin. But the Albatros lower wing tended to break in a dive and the Pfalz, with its twin-spar wing, did not. That made it the machine for diving on observation balloons through the anti-aircraft fire that guarded them. Pfalz built about 260 D.IIIs and 750 of the improved D.IIIa, which moved the guns to where pilots could clear jams in flight. Most went to Bavarian Jagdstaffeln, and some of the last batch went to Turkey.

The cart-horse that dived like a stone

The D.XII of 1918 borrowed the two-bay wing of the French SPAD. At the Adlershof fighter competition almost everyone preferred the Fokker D.VII, but Ernst Udet backed the Pfalz and his word won big orders. Between 750 and 800 were built before the Armistice. Rudolf Stark, commander of Jasta 35, compared the Fokker to a thoroughbred and the Pfalz to a cart-horse. It dived faster than the Fokker, but it floated on landing and its many bracing wires annoyed ground crews. At the end of the war Pfalz had about 2,600 workers and had delivered roughly 2,500 aircraft.

A factory with nine lives

Peace ended it. The French occupation stripped the factory and the firm went bankrupt; a successor, A.G. Pfalz, was registered in June 1919 for shipbuilding and trade and failed in 1932. The site, though, kept working: as Saarpfalz Flugwerke repairing Ju 88s and He 111s with up to 1,500 staff, many of them forced labourers; as Ernst Heinkel’s bubble-car plant, where 3,800 Heinkel Kabine were made; then for VFW, building Transall parts, and MBB. In 1997 its employees took it over and revived the old name. PFW Aerospace still makes aircraft components in Speyer.

工場

• Speyer festival hall · Speyer — Temporary workshop for the first Otto biplanes, 1913–1914
• Speyer airfield works · Speyer — 7,000 square metres bought February 1914, finished July 1914; site of today’s Technik Museum Speyer and PFW
• Lille station hall · Speyer — Railway station hall from Lille re-erected for wartime production

人々

• Alfred Eversbusch · founder
• Walther Eversbusch · chief pilot — Killed in a flying accident on 1 June 1916
• Rudolph Gehringer · chief designer from November 1916 — Hired from Flugzeugbau Friedrichshafen; designed the D.III and D.XII
• Ernst Udet · fighter ace — His preference for the D.XII at Adlershof won Pfalz large orders