A publisher buys into the air age

In March 1911 a Leipzig publisher, Bernhard Meyer, and an engineer, Erich Thiele, set up the Sächsische Flugzeug-Werke at Lindenthal, on the northern edge of the city. The timing was no accident. A month later Lindenthal opened as only the second officially licensed airfield for powered flight in Germany after Johannisthal near Berlin. By November the firm had a grander name, Deutsche Flugzeug-Werke, and three rented sheds on the airfield in which it assembled its machines. English-language references, following Bill Gunston, date the company to 1910.

Flying school, Farmans and a record

Like most German pioneers, DFW began by building French Farman designs under licence before turning to the Etrich Taube and then its own aircraft from 1913. Thiele opened a company flying school in 1911, which from 1912 trained future military pilots and later counted Franz Büchner among its instructors. The works pilot and designer Heinrich Oelerich set a German endurance record of 3 hours 39 minutes on a DFW biplane on 2 November 1911. In 1914 Meyer founded a naval offshoot at Lübeck-Travemünde, and in June 1915 the National-Flugzeugwerke took DFW on as a subsidiary.

Giants on the drawing board

DFW thought big. In September 1915 the designer Hermann Dorner began work on one of Germany’s first Riesenflugzeuge, or giant aircraft, and the four-engined R.I flew about a year later. The R.II and R.III followed. None was built in numbers, but they placed a Leipzig firm in the same club as Zeppelin-Staaken and Siemens-Schuckert. DFW also tried its hand at fighters: the tiny T 28 Floh of 1915, the D.I, a triplane and the D.II of 1918. None of them made the breakthrough.

The two-seater everybody built

The breakthrough was a two-seater. The C.V flew in May 1916 and entered series production that August; by October the order had grown to 1,000. Pilots liked it for its easy handling, reliability and climb, and in skilled hands it could out-turn many Allied fighters. DFW built about 2,000 and licensees such as Aviatik, LVG, Halberstadt and the Bayerische Flugzeugwerke many more, making it the most-produced German aircraft of the war. About 1,000 were at the front at the end of 1917 and some 600 at the armistice. Sources credit the design to Oelerich or to Willi Sabersky-Müssigbrodt.

Versailles closes the doors

Meyer died on 19 April 1917 and his son-in-law Kurt Herrmann became general director. Defeat ended everything. Under the Treaty of Versailles DFW had to stop operating by 18 December 1919, and plans for civil aircraft came to nothing. One last flourish came from the F37, a cleaned-up C.V successor that made an unofficial altitude record flight in 1919 and was then turned into a three-passenger limousine. On Herrmann’s initiative the assets passed to the Allgemeine Transportanlagen-Gesellschaft, and the DFW company was struck off the commercial register in June 1928.

Fábricas

• Lindenthal works · Lindenthal and Radefeld, north of Leipzig — Rented airfield sheds from 1911; own assembly halls, offices and staff housing by 1915
• Werk II · Großzschocher (Kaisergrund), Leipzig — Built from 1917; works airfield opened 11 May 1917
• DFW-Flugzeugwerft Lübeck-Travemünde · Travemünde, Baltic coast — Naval aircraft subsidiary founded 1914 with Meyer as sole shareholder

Pessoas

• Bernhard Meyer · co-founder, Leipzig publisher — Died 19 April 1917
• Erich Thiele · co-founder, engineer — Opened the company flying school in 1911
• Heinrich Oelerich · test pilot, designer, director — Endurance record 1911; credited with the C.V by English sources
• Hermann Dorner · designer — Led the R.I giant aircraft project from 1915
• Willi Sabersky-Müssigbrodt · designer — Credited by German sources with developing the C.V
• Kurt Herrmann · general director from 1917 — Meyer’s son-in-law; steered the 1919 transfer to ATG

Recordes e pioneirismos

• German endurance record of 3 hours 39 minutes by Heinrich Oelerich on a DFW biplane, 2 November 1911
• Most-produced German aircraft type of the First World War, the C.V
• F37 altitude flight of 1919: 7,700 m by English sources, 9,620 m by Oblt Diemer on 11 May 1919 by German sources; not recognised by the FAI because it breached the armistice