A helicopter in the Deutschlandhalle

In February 1938 the test pilot Hanna Reitsch flew a helicopter indoors, inside Berlin’s Deutschlandhalle sports arena. The machine was the Fw 61, designed by Henrich Focke and engineer Gerd Achgelis from 1932 and first flown freely on 26 June 1936: the first successful, fully controllable helicopter. Its twin rotors sat on outriggers either side of a Focke-Wulf Fw 44 trainer fuselage. In June 1938 it set an altitude record of 3,427 m and flew 230 km in a straight line. By then Focke no longer ran the company he had co-founded, Focke-Wulf; he had been pushed out in 1936.

The margarine factory at Hoykenkamp

The Air Ministry, impressed by the Fw 61, suggested Focke start a company devoted to helicopters, and asked for a design able to lift 700 kg. On 27 April 1937 he founded Focke, Achgelis & Co. with Gerd Achgelis, a German aerobatic champion, at Hoykenkamp near Bremen, in an old iron foundry and a former margarine factory. The firm was meant to develop prototypes and license them to others; it had an engine shop at Varel, work at the Bramo engine plant in Berlin-Spandau and later a branch at Laupheim near Ulm.

Drache, the first production helicopter

Its masterpiece was the Fa 223 Drache, a six-seat development of the Fw 61 ordered first by Lufthansa as the Fa 226 Hornisse. It flew untethered on 3 August 1940 and at Rechlin reached 182 km/h and 7,100 m, far beyond any other helicopter of the time. It is noted as the first helicopter to attain production status, but bombing wrecked the Delmenhorst line in 1942 and the Laupheim plant in July 1944. Drachen lifted a Fieseler Storch and recovered a crashed Do 217 from a moor; on 6 September 1945, in Allied hands, one became the first helicopter to fly across the English Channel.

Wagtails on U-boats

The company’s strangest product was the Fa 330 Bachstelze, or wagtail, an unpowered rotor kite towed on a cable behind long-range U-boats. Spun up by the boat’s own speed, it lifted an observer about 120 m, stretching his horizon from 5 to about 25 nautical miles. It could be assembled in four minutes in calm seas. Its single success came on 6 August 1943, when U-177 used one to find and sink the Greek steamer Efthalia Mari. After the war the Fa 330 inspired Igor Bensen’s small autogyros.

Bombed out, taken over

The Hoykenkamp works was largely destroyed by bombing on 4 July 1942, and development moved to Laupheim and Ochsenhausen, though the Fa 330s, light enough to be carried into a cellar during air raids, stayed at Delmenhorst. When priority shifted to the Me 163 rocket fighter, Focke-Achgelis had to hand over space and staff to Messerschmitt. In the spring of 1944, on Air Ministry orders, Weser-Flugzeugbau took the company over; it then had 419 workers. In France, Sud-Est built the SE.3000 from the Drache with Focke’s help.

Заводы

• Hoykenkamp works · Hoykenkamp (Ganderkesee), Lower Saxony — Former iron foundry and margarine factory; bombed 4 July 1942
• Delmenhorst · Delmenhorst, Lower Saxony — Test airfield and Fa 330 production
• Лаупхайм · Laupheim, near Ulm — Helicopter assembly from January 1943; bombed July 1944
• Varel engine works · Varel, Lower Saxony

Люди

• Henrich Focke · co-founder and designer — Co-founder of Focke-Wulf, ousted 1936
• Gerd Achgelis · co-founder, aerobatic champion
• Ewald Rohlfs · test pilot — Flew the Fw 61’s first free flight, 1936
• Hanna Reitsch · test pilot — Flew the Fw 61 inside the Deutschlandhalle, 1938
• Helmut Gerstenhauer · Luftwaffe helicopter pilot — Flew a Drache across the Channel, 1945

Рекорды и первые достижения

• Fw 61 altitude record of 3,427 m and straight-line distance of 230 km, June 1938
• Fa 223 reached 182 km/h and 7,100 m at Rechlin, October 1940
• First helicopter crossing of the English Channel, Fa 223 V14, 6 September 1945