A Messerschmitt engineer starts again

Ludwig Bölkow had spent the war at Messerschmitt, working on high-speed aerodynamics for the Me 262 and running the Bf 109 development office in Vienna. With aircraft building banned in occupied Germany, he opened a small engineering office in Stuttgart in 1948. From 1954 it developed the BO 810 Cobra, a wire-guided anti-tank missile, and in 1956 it became Bölkow-Entwicklungen KG at Stuttgart airport. To build things as well as design them, Bölkow rented a hall from the gliding pioneer Wolf Hirth at Nabern, where Cobras and licence-built Klemm Kl 107 light aircraft took shape.

Missiles first, then aircraft

In 1958 the firm moved to Ottobrunn outside Munich, with a missile assembly plant at Schrobenhausen. A light-aircraft works at Laupheim followed. Its first product was the Bo 207, a four-seat development of the Kl 107, of which 90 were built from 1961 to 1963. Then came the Bo 208 Junior, a licence-built version of the Swedish MFI-9, made at Laupheim from 1963 to 1971. Bölkow was also among the first to build sailplanes in glass fibre, with the Phönix T and then the Phoebus, which finished third in the German championships of 1964.

Glass fibre and strange rotors

From 1955 Bölkow and Emil Weiland worked on helicopters, and the firm was not afraid of oddities. The Bo 102 was a helicopter trainer tethered to a swivelling ground rig; the Bo 103 of 1961 was little more than a seat, a frame and a single glass-fibre rotor blade. The Bo 46 tested the Derschmidt rotor, whose blades swung back and forth to reach high speeds, and hovered in 1964. Bölkow was also a partner, with Heinkel and Messerschmitt, in EWR, whose VJ 101C tilt-jet became the first vertical take-off aircraft to break the sound barrier.

The helicopter with no hinges

The idea that mattered was the hingeless rotor. Glass-fibre blades bolted to a solid titanium hub could flex where other rotors needed hinges and bearings, and Bölkow built a safe, twin-engined light helicopter around it. The Bo 105 flew at Ottobrunn on 16 February 1967. It was the world’s first light twin-engined helicopter and agile enough to loop. Sixty per cent of the development money came as a government loan, and the programme nearly died more than once before army orders rescued it. About 1,640 were built in Germany and under licence, and Aérospatiale took a licence for the rotor principle.

Into MBB

Bölkow was inventive off the drawing board too. In 1967 it introduced the Ottobrunn model of flexible working hours, partly because a single narrow road served the works; flexitime is now used by millions. The government wanted a stronger industry, and in June 1968 Bölkow merged with Messerschmitt to form West Germany’s largest aircraft company. A year later Hamburger Flugzeugbau joined and the group became Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm. The Bo 105 and the Bo 209 Monsun lightplane were built under the MBB name, and Bölkow’s helicopter line runs on through Eurocopter to Airbus Helicopters.

Fábricas

• Ottobrunn headquarters · Ottobrunn, near Munich — From 1958; Bo 105 first flight here
• Nabern works · Nabern, Württemberg — Rented from Wolf Hirth in 1956; Cobra and Kl 107 production
• Schrobenhausen works · Schrobenhausen, Bavaria — Cobra final assembly and warheads from 1958
• Laupheim works · Laupheim, Württemberg — Light aircraft: Bo 207, Bo 208, Bo 209

Pessoas

• Ludwig Bölkow · founder — Former Messerschmitt aerodynamicist; Ludwig-Prandtl-Ring 1972
• Emil Weiland · helicopter engineer — Developed helicopters with Bölkow from 1955
• Hermann Mylius · technical director — Led the spare-time team that designed the Bo 209 Monsun

Recordes e pioneirismos

• Bo 105 was the first light twin-engined helicopter in the world and the first rotorcraft able to fly aerobatics such as inverted loops
• Bo 105 was the first helicopter with a hingeless main rotor and rigid head
• EWR VJ 101C was the first vertical take-off aircraft to break the sound barrier, 1964
• Introduced the Ottobrunn model of flexible working hours in 1967, the first company to do so according to German Wikipedia