Blohm + Voss / Blohm und Voss - World War II
Blohm + Voss (also shown historically as Blohm & Voss), is a German shipbuilding and engineering works. Blohm & Voss was one of Germany's best known of the shipyards, where many of the German Navy's destroyers were built. Bismarck was Germany's first "real" post-World War I battleship, with guns and protection of similar scale to those of the best foreign combat ships. Built to a relatively conservative design, she featured a main battery of eight 38 centimeter (15-inch) guns in four twin turrets, two forward and two aft. Built at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, Bismarck's keel was laid at the beginning of July 1936. The big Blohm Voss shipyards were said to be capable of building twenty-five submarines at a time.
Hamburg was also the site of the Blohm & Voss seaplane factory. From 1933 to 1945, Blohm & Voss also operated the Hamburger Flugzeugbau aircraft company. Although initially given the factory code Ha (for the factory's official name), the link with Blohm & Voss shipyards proved too strong and therefore the early aircraft designs were called "Blohm & Voss, type Ha..."
The Blohm Voss shipyards presented a target that "thoroughly satisfied" the British pilots. One of the heaviest attacks of the war up until that time was launched on 16 November 1940 by the R.A.F. against Hamburg, from nightfall until 5.30 a.m. the following morning. The first bomber force arrived over the city at 7 p.m. and, attacking from different directions and at varying heights, heavily bombed the great riverside railway sorting yards in the Billwarder and Moortleth districts, warehouses and sheds being destroyed, buildings blown up with great explosions, and enormous fires caused visible 40 miles away. At 9 p.m. the second wave of attackers came over the city, concentrating on the Blohm and Voss shipyards (where naval units are under construction); here also heavy explosions and great fires were caused, and the whole target area was left burning furiously by the time the raid ended. At 3 a.m. a third attacking force arrived and bombed important objectives ceaselessly for two and a half hours.
Many unique aircraft configurations came out of Germany in World War II, one of these was the Blohm and Voss BV P 208.Tremendous innovation permeated the German aircraft industry throughout World War II. Some of these innovations actually flew, e.g. the ME 262, ME 163, V-1 and V-2; however, many more never left the drawing board. Attracted by the advantages offered by a tailless design, Dr. Vogt and George Haag of the Blohm and Voss design bureau, spent over two years researching the concept which resulted in a unique semitailless configuration. Flight tests in the summer of 1944 on a modified Skoda SL-6 went well enough for the incorporation of the concept into future designs.
On 31 March 1945 the United States Eighth Air Force rounded out a record month of bombing operations with a 2,150-plane blow against rail and oil targets in the central Reich. Canadian and British heavy bombers of the Royal Air Force attacked the Blohm Voss U-boat yards at Hamburg.
In May 1945 the shipyards around the mouth of the Elbe River were a twisted mass of rusting steel. Allied bombs had turned the cradle of the once powerful German Navy and merchant marine into a silent junkyard, where a few shabbily dressed men and women were poking around for something they could exchange for food.
Following the complete dynamiting of the Blohm and Voss shipyards, no more destruction of the shipyards in the port of Hamburg his "on the program," British port officials said 17 June 1946. In July 1947 occupation authorities were asked to to withdraw or alter the order for the total dismantling of the Hamburg- plant of the engineering; company of Blohm & Voss. The owners of Germany's largest shipyard, which turned out Nazi submarines and dying boats during the war, were found guilty in 1949 of trying to dodge allied dismantling orders. In 1950 the Western powers decided not allow the Blohm Voss shipyards, biggest marine construction concern in Germany, to build ships again. But some of Germany's largest war factories will be saved from further dismantling by a British decision, announced 12 September 1950, to halt demilitarization of German industry in the British zone.
By 1951 only the Blohm R: Voss shipyard, of prewar note, remains unrehabilitated, at least to some extent, among the German yards. In March 1953 the Blohm Voss shipyards of Hamburg, one of the greatest shipbuilding concerns in the world until dismantled by the British, received permission from the Allied Military Security Board today to construct and repair floating docks and repair merchant ships. In 1954 the Allied Security Board granted permission to rebuild the biggest shipbuilding yards in Germany -- those of Blohm Voss in Hamburg. Hamburg's Blohm Voss yards, once the backbone of Germany's shipbuilding industry, would soon be back in production after nearly a decade of idleness.
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