Carriages first

The Hannoversche Waggonfabrik was a wagon maker with roots in a Linden wheelwright’s shop of 1830. Incorporated on 6 February 1898, backed by the Hannover bank Ephraim Meyer & Sohn, it built railway carriages and tramcars, many of them for export. Over some 30 years it turned out about 45,000 railway and tram vehicles, along with tractors, threshing machines and even iron garden pavilions. After a fire in 1914 it commissioned Peter Behrens, the architect of AEG’s famous turbine hall, to design new factory halls in Linden.

Seasoned wood for the war

The First World War brought it into aviation for a practical reason. Railway works had large skilled workforces and, crucially, big stocks of seasoned timber. HAWA began with propellers and repairs in 1915, then built other firms’ designs under licence: 146 Aviatik C.Is, 375 Rumpler C.Ias and 30 Halberstadt D.II fighters. It laid out a works airfield next to the Linden factory so that its aircraft could be flown straight out of the shop.

Dorner’s little two-seaters

Its own designs came from Hermann Dorner, the former chief designer of DFW. His Hannover CL.II, first flown in 1917, answered a call for a light two-seater to escort reconnaissance aircraft. It was so compact, with a stubby biplane tail to clear the gunner’s field of fire, that enemy pilots mistook it for a single-seater and closed from behind, straight into the observer’s gun. The CL.II and the improved CL.III and CL.IIIa ran to well over 1,000 aircraft and finished the war as ground-attack machines.

The Vampyr

Versailles stopped military aircraft, but HAWA had one more gift for aviation. In 1921 students of the Hannover technical university, most of them former war pilots, designed a glider under the lecturer Georg Madelung, and HAWA built it. The Vampyr had a single spar, a plywood D-box leading edge and a plywood-skinned fuselage: probably the first stressed-skin aeroplane apart from airships. In 1922 Frederick Hentzen kept it aloft at the Wasserkuppe for 3 hours 10 minutes. It hangs today in the Deutsches Museum in Munich.

Trams, electric cars and liquidation

Peace was less kind to the parent company. HAWA built electric cars from 1921 to 1923 and its works airfield served as Hannover’s first civil airport from 1919 to 1928. It slid into insolvency after the hyperinflation, dragging its bank into crisis in 1924, and the Depression finished it: liquidation was decided on 17 February 1932 and completed in 1933. An aluminium works rose on the site in 1935.

Fábricas

• Linden works and airfield · Hannover-Linden, by the Fischerhof station — Carriage works rebuilt to Peter Behrens’ designs after 1914; works airfield was Hannover’s first civil airport 1919–1928

Pessoas

• Hermann Dorner · chief designer — Former DFW chief designer; designed the CL.II to CL.V
• Georg Madelung · designer of the Vampyr — Lecturer at the Hannover technical university
• Max Menzel · founder — Arranged the 1898 incorporation with Bankhaus Ephraim Meyer & Sohn

Recordes e pioneirismos

• Vampyr (1921) is believed to be the first heavier-than-air aircraft with stressed-skin construction
• Vampyr flight of 3 h 10 min by Frederick Hentzen, Rhön competition, 19 August 1922