A Klemm branch becomes Siebel

Siebel began as somebody else’s factory. In 1934 the light-aircraft maker Klemm opened a branch at Halle an der Saale to build all-metal aircraft. Hanns Klemm had no taste for military work, and at the end of 1937 he sold it, with its final-assembly plant at Leipzig-Schkeuditz airport, to Friedrich Siebel, who had already been helping to run it. On 15 December 1937 it became the Siebel Flugzeugwerk Halle. Siebel saw it chiefly as a licence factory, and by the end of 1939 about 5,800 people worked in Halle and Schkeuditz, many of them building wings for the Junkers Ju 88.

Hallore, Hummel and a raft for Sea Lion

Its own aircraft came from the design office of Friedrich Fecher, inherited from Klemm. The Fh 104 Hallore, named after the people of Halle, was a five-seat twin that won the main prize at the 1938 Littorio Rally and flew a 40,000 km circuit of Africa in 1939; Ernst Udet, Albert Kesselring and Adolf Galland used it as a personal transport. The little Si 202 Hummel set light-aircraft altitude records in February 1939. Then in 1940 Siebel himself, now in uniform, built an invasion raft for Operation Sea Lion from bridge pontoons and aero engines. The Siebel ferry outlived the plan by years.

The Si 204 and the last shoot-down

The Si 204 began in 1938 as an eight-passenger feeder airliner for Lufthansa and became a Luftwaffe trainer with a fully glazed nose. Siebel was too busy with the Ju 88 to build it, so only 15 prototypes came from Halle; SNCAN in France and Aero and BMM in Bohemia made the rest, 1,216 by January 1945. One was probably the last German aircraft shot down on the Western Front, by a P-38 at 8 pm on 8 May 1945. From summer 1944 the Halle works also used prisoners from the Birkhahn sub-camp of Buchenwald as forced labour.

Deported to Podberezye

American troops took Halle and Schkeuditz on 18 and 19 April 1945 and handed them to the Soviets in July. The Siebel office had been building the DFS 346, a swept-wing rocket research aircraft, and the Soviets let the team carry on under Heinz Roessing. On 22 October 1946, in Operation Osoaviakhim, the engineers and their families were taken to Podberezye near Moscow, where they worked on rocket aircraft into the 1950s. The Halle works was dismantled or blown up by 1948. In the Arctic, captured Si 204s with skis suffered so many engine failures that crews gave them a Russian nickname meaning disaster.

SIAT and the road to MBB

Siebel returned from British captivity and on 18 November 1952 founded the Siebelwerke ATG, or SIAT, in Munich with Bernhard Weinhardt. He died in April 1954, but SIAT moved into a new Flick-owned works at Donauwörth and took part in nearly every Bundeswehr aircraft programme. Ludwig Bölkow bought control step by step, and SIAT helped form what became Bölkow-Messerschmitt-Siebel. Its only production design, the SIAT 223 Flamingo trainer of 1967, outlived the firm. SIAT passed to MBB in 1969 and was dissolved on 29 June 1972; Donauwörth is now home to Airbus Helicopters.

Fábricas

• Werk I · Halle-Mötzlich — Main components plant, 1934–1946; demolished after 1945
• Werk II · Dessauer Straße, Halle — Former Ritter piano works, 1934–1946
• Werk III · Leipzig-Schkeuditz airport — Final assembly 1937–1945, including Ju 88
• Donauwörth works · Donauwörth, Bavaria — Built by WMD for SIAT by 1956; later MBB and Airbus Helicopters

Pessoas

• Friedrich Wilhelm (Fritz) Siebel · founder — Luftwaffe officer from 1940; devised the Siebel ferry; died April 1954
• Friedrich Fecher · chief designer — Led the Halle design office; Si 204 designer
• Franz Walter · managing director — Ran Siebel Flugzeugwerke GmbH from 1940 to 1945
• Heinz Roessing · technical director — Led OKB-2 at Podberezye after deportation
• Bernhard Weinhardt · SIAT co-founder — First managing director of Deutsche Airbus GmbH

Recordes e pioneirismos

• Si 202b light-aircraft altitude records: 5,982 m with two aboard on 2 February 1939, 7,043 m solo on 6 February 1939
• Fh 104 won the principal award of the 1938 Littorio Rally and flew a 40,000 km circuit around Africa in 1939
• An Si 204 was probably the last German aircraft shot down on the Western Front, 8 May 1945