Railway wagons, then giants

Linke-Hofmann was a railway company first, last and almost always. Its roots go back to the wheelwright shop that Gottfried Linke took over in Breslau in 1834 and turned into a wagon works in 1839. In 1912 it merged with its local rival Gebr. Hofmann & Co. to form the Linke-Hofmann-Werke. When the First World War came, the firm was one of many German industrial houses drawn into aviation with no aeronautical experience, repairing and licence-building Roland and Albatros two-seaters before winning a 1916 contract for a four-engined Riesenflugzeug, or giant aircraft.

A bomber you could see through

Designer Paul Stumpf’s first answer, the R.I, was startlingly odd. Its tall fuselage filled the whole gap between the wings, housing four Mercedes engines that mechanics could tend in flight, and the first prototype was skinned in transparent Cellon to make it harder to see. The idea backfired: the film reflected sunlight, yellowed and sagged. One pilot remembered the R.I as not an aircraft but a sickness. One prototype’s wings collapsed at low altitude; another nosed over and was never repaired.

The biggest propeller in history

The R.II went the other way: essentially a single-engined biplane scaled up about three times, with all four engines driving one Garuda propeller 6.90 metres across, the largest single propeller ever used to propel an aircraft. Flown after the Armistice in 1919, it handled well, even on two engines. Plans for a 12-passenger airliner died under the Versailles restrictions, and Linke-Hofmann went back to trains. As Linke-Hofmann-Busch it later built metro and S-Bahn stock, and today it is part of Alstom.

Fábricas

• Mochbern works · Breslau (Wrocław) — Main wagon and locomotive works from 1906–1912; nationalised in 1945 as Pafawag

Pessoas

• Paul Stumpf · designer — Designed both Riesenflugzeug types
• Gottfried Linke · founder of the original wagon works — Took over his father’s wheelwright shop in 1834

Recordes e pioneirismos

• R.II turned the largest single propeller ever used to propel an aircraft, 6.90 m in diameter