The helicopter that could loop

Most helicopters of the 1960s were not built to fly upside down. The Bo 105 was. Its rotor had no hinges at all, its blades were made of glass fibre, and it was the first helicopter able to fly aerobatics such as inverted loops, which is why Red Bull later used one for air-show routines. It was also the world’s first light twin-engine helicopter. The machine first flew at Ottobrunn on 16 February 1967, built by the company of Ludwig Bölkow, a former Messerschmitt aerodynamicist who had worked on the Me 262. By the time it went into production, Bölkow’s firm had merged into something much bigger.

Three names, one champion

That something was Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm. West Germany had too many small aircraft firms and the government wanted a national champion. Bölkow GmbH and Messerschmitt AG merged as Messerschmitt-Bölkow in 1968, and on 14 May 1969 took over Hamburger Flugzeugbau, the aircraft offshoot of the Blohm + Voss shipyard, adding the Blohm name. The family names said it all: in 1969 the Blohm family owned 27.1 per cent, Willy Messerschmitt himself 23.3 per cent and Bölkow 14.6 per cent, alongside Boeing, Nord Aviation, Siemens and Bavaria. The new group had 19,255 employees and turnover of 900 million marks.

Airbus, Tornado and the stars

MBB became the German pillar of almost every European project. It held Germany’s share in the Airbus A300, the world’s first twin-engine wide-body airliner, and Hamburg-Finkenwerder grew into a major Airbus site. It was a partner in the Panavia Tornado, the Transall transport and the Eurofighter, built Germany’s first satellite, Azur, launched in 1969, and supplied the Helios solar probes and parts of the Galileo Jupiter probe. With Kawasaki it created the BK 117 helicopter, and with Rockwell it flew the X-31 thrust-vectoring research jet in 1990. In 1981 it absorbed VFW, heir to Focke-Wulf, and by then employed 38,500 people.

Spies and helicopters for Iraq

Size brought scandal. In August 1984 MBB confirmed it had delivered two transport helicopters to Iraqi government ministers during the Iran-Iraq war, and 24 licence-built helicopters fitted with cannon also reached Iraq from CASA in Spain. The following month, on 20 September 1984, an MBB department head working on the Tornado was arrested as a KGB spy: Manfred Rotsch had been passing secrets to Soviet intelligence. MBB and its successor DASA were, in their time, Germany’s largest arms exporters.

Into Daimler, Eurocopter and Airbus

By 1989 MBB had about 40,000 employees and sales of 7.1 billion marks, but Airbus losses weighed heavily and Bonn wanted a stronger owner. Daimler-Benz’s new aerospace arm, DASA, took control in 1989 and absorbed MBB completely in 1992. The same year its helicopter division merged with Aérospatiale’s to form Eurocopter, where the Bo 108 became the EC135, more than 1,400 of which have since been built. Through DASA and EADS, MBB’s factories at Ottobrunn, Donauwörth, Hamburg and Bremen are today part of Airbus.

Fábricas

• Ottobrunn · Ottobrunn, near Munich — Headquarters, former Bölkow site; Bo 105 first flew here
• Donauwörth · Donauwörth, Bavaria — Helicopter works from the WMD wagon factory; now Airbus Helicopters
• Hamburg-Finkenwerder · Hamburg — From Hamburger Flugzeugbau; Airbus fuselage work
• Augsburg and Manching · Bavaria — Former Messerschmitt works
• Bremen · Bremen — From VFW and ERNO, acquired 1981

Pessoas

• Ludwig Bölkow · co-founder and engineer — 1912–2003; former Messerschmitt aerodynamicist; led Bo 105 design; left the MBB board in December 1977
• Willy Messerschmitt · co-founder and shareholder — Held 23.3% in 1969
• Manfred Rotsch · department head — Arrested 20 September 1984 for spying for the KGB

Recordes e pioneirismos

• Bo 105: first light twin-engine helicopter and first helicopter able to perform aerobatics such as inverted loops
• Bo 108: first helicopter with full-authority digital engine control
• Built Azur, Germany’s first satellite, launched 1969