HISTORY
Wilhelm Emil "Willy" Messerschmitt
graduated from the Munich
Institute of Technology
in 1923, with Messerschmitt founding
his own aircraft company that same
year at Augsburg,
Bavaria. At
first, Messerschmitt built
sailplanes, but within two years had
progressed via motor
gliders to
small powered aircraft - sports and
touring types. These culminated in
the Messerschmitt
M 17 and Messerschmitt
M 18 designs,
which Messerschmitt sold to
Bayerische Flugzeugwerke (BFW)
(Bavarian Aircraft Works) in
1927, when the Bavarian state
government encouraged a merger
between the two companies.
Messerschmitt became the chief
designer and engineer, and formed a
design team.
One of the
first designs, the Messerschmitt
M20, was a near-catastrophe for the
designer and the company. Many of
the prototypes crashed, one of them
killing Hans Hackmack, a close
friend of Erhard Milch, the head of
Deutsche Luft Hansa and the German
civil aviation authorities. Milch
was upset by the lack of response
from Messerschmitt and this led to a
lifelong hatred towards him. Milch
eventually cancelled all contracts
with Messerschmitt and forced BFW
into bankruptcy in 1931. However,
the German re-armament programs and
Messerschmitt's friendship with Hugo
Junkers prevented a stagnation of
the careers of him and BFW, which
was started again in 1933. Milch
still prevented Messerschmitt's
takeover of the BFW until 1938,
hence the designation "Bf" of early
Messerschmitt designs.
Messerschmitt promoted a concept he
called "light weight construction"
in which many typically separate
load-bearing parts were merged into
a single reinforced firewall,
thereby saving weight and improving
performance. The first true test of
the concept was in the Bf 108
Taifun
sports-plane, which would soon be
setting all sorts of records. Based
on this performance the company was
invited to submit a design for the
Luftwaffe's 1935 fighter contest,
winning it with the Bf 109, based on
the same construction methods.
From
this point on Messerschmitt became a
favorite of the Nazi party, as much
for his designs as his political
abilities and the factory location
in southern Germany away from the
"clumping" of aviation firms on the
northern coast. BFW was
reconstituted as
Messerschmitt AG
on July 11, 1938, with Willy
Messerschmitt as chairman and
managing director. The renaming of
BFW resulted in the company's RLM
designation changing from
Bf
to
Me
for all newer designs that were
accepted by the RLM
after
the acquisition date. Existing
types, such as the Bf 109 and 110,
retained their earlier designation
in official documents, although
sometimes the newer designations
were used (in error) as well, most
often by subcontractors, such as
Erla Flugzeugwerke of Leipzig. In
practise, all BFW/Messerschmitt
aircraft from the Bf 108 four-seat
touring monoplane, to the Bf 163
light observation aircraft (not the
same plane as the later Me 163
rocket fighter) were prefixed
Bf,
all later types with
Me.
During
the World War II Messerschmitt
became a major design supplier,
their Bf 109 and Bf 110 forming the
vast majority of fighter strength
for the first half of the war.
Several other designs were also
ordered, including the enormous Me
321
Gigant
transport glider, and its
six-engined follow on, the Me 323.
However for the second half of the
war, Messerschmitt turned almost
entirely to jet-powered designs,
producing the world's first
operational jet fighter, the Me 262
Schwalbe
("Swallow"). They also produced the
DFS-designed Me 163
Komet,
the first rocket-powered design to
enter service.
Messerschmitt relied
heavily on slave labor to produce
much of the parts needed for these
planes during the second half of
World War II; these parts were
assembled in an enormous underground
tunnel system in Sankt Georgen an
der Gusen, Austria. Slave labor was
provided by inmates of the brutal KZ
Gusen I and Gusen II camps, and by
inmates from nearby Mauthausen
concentration camp, all located near
the St. Gorgen quarries. 40,000
inmates from Spain, Italy, Poland,
Slovenia, France, Russia, Hungarian
Jews and twenty other nationalities
were murdered during the production
of these planes at KZ Gusen.
Messerschmitt officials maintained
barracks at the concentration camp
to oversee the work being done by
the inmates. Messerschmitt, and its
executive Willy Messerschmitt also
occupied the famed Villa Tugendhat
in Brno, Czech Republic, designed by
Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich in
the 1920s; the Messerschmidt
aircraft factory office and the
Gestapo occupied the property during
the war.
Messerschmitt had its share of poor
designs as well; the Me 210,
designed as a follow-on to the 110,
was a disaster that almost led to
the forced dissolution of the
company. The design problems were
eventually addressed in the Me 410
Hornisse,
but only small numbers were built
before all attention turned to the
262. Late in the war, Messerschmitt
also worked on a heavy
Amerikabomber
design, the Me 264, which flew in
prototype form but was too late to
see combat.
After
World War II, the company was not
allowed to produce aircraft. One
alternative the company came up with
was the three-wheeled motorcycle/bubble
car or Kabinenroller (cabinscooter)
KR175 / KR200, which was designed by
an aircraft engineer Fritz Fend.
The cars
were actually made by Fend's own
company in the Messerschmitt works
at Regensburg and Willy
Messerschmitt had very little to do
with the vehicles other than ruling
that they carried his name.
Production of the KR200 ceased in
1964.
Less known
is the fact that the Messerschmitt
factory also produced prefabricated
houses, which were designed as
"self-building-kits" mainly based on
an alloy frame work.
On 6
June 1968, Messerschmitt AG merged
with the small civil engineering and
civil aviation firm Bölkow, becoming
Messerschmitt-Bölkow. The following
May, the firm acquired Hamburger
Flugzeugbau (HFB), the aviation
division of Blohm + Voss. The
company then changed its name to
Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB). In
1989 MBB was taken over by Deutsche
Aerospace AG (DASA), which was
renamed Daimler-Benz Aerospace in
1995. The former DASA now operates
as "EADS Germany".
Source:
Wikipedia
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