Blohm & Voss / Hamburger Flugzeugbau HFB in the Cold War
At the end of World War II, most of the established German armaments companies were either liquidated or converted to civilian production. When the German military was reestablished in the mid-1950s in response to the increasing Soviet threat, Germany was almost totally dependent on foreign military assistance from the United States and the other NATO Allies for major weapon systems. Gradually, the old firms - Krupp, Thyssen, Henschel, Krauss-Maffei, Messerschmidt, Dornier, Blohm & Voss, HDW - were brought back into the defense business, first as suppliers, then with licensed production of U.S. and other systems, and finally as standalone designers and developers of major weapon systems.
The West German government issued a directive in September 1954 that individual firms should combine into operative groups. Group I ("North") consisted of the following firms: 1, Hamburger Flugzeugbau (Blohm und Voss); 2, Finanz uad Verwaltungsgesellschaft "Weser," Bremen - a post-war name for the former "Weser" Flugzeugbau; 3, Henschel und Sohn, Kassel; 4, Siebel Werke, Munich. This represented quite a concentration of industrial power, for Blohm und Voss and Weser were the aviation branches of the two largest German shipbuilding concerns, which since the war had already put Germany second only to Britain in shipbuilding output. Henschel und Sohn was one of the largest producers of railway locomotives, buses, lorries and machine tools. For aircraft production Blohm und Voss, who made the famous seaplanes of the old Lufthansa (and Luftwaffe), still possessed an intact plant in their Finkenwerder works; while "Weser," who made large quantities of Dornier and Heinkel aircraft as well as Focke-Wulf fighters and Junkers bombers, had factories, at Lemwerder and Eiswarden in Oldenburg.
By the mid-1960s the company, with a capital of DM10 million (approximately £900.000), was owned by the Blohm family. The main operating base was at Finkenwerder, just across the Elbe from Hamburg town center, in premises completed in 1940 to house all the company's aircraft activities, including flight testing from a combined airfield and seaplane station. These works suffered very little damage during the war and were modernised in 1954 to resume aircraft work. Together with the branch factory at Stade, to the west of Hamburg, they employed approximately 5,800 people.
HFB's management team included men who earned their spurs in the old German aircraft industry, such as Hermann Pohlmann (senior executive V-P), who joined HFB in 1940 after 17 years with Junkers; Hans Schubert (executive V-P, Production), who started in 1925 with Rohrbach and served with Heinkel and Focke-Wulf before going to Argentina and finally coming to HFB in 1956; and Hans Wocke (executive V-P, engineering), who began his career at Junkers in 1936, then worked for a time after the war at East Germany's Dresden Aircraft Works, joining HFB in 1957. Executive V-P, administration and finance, was Hugo Friedrich Krambeck; and finally, executive V-P, sales and service, and youngest of the management team, was Werner Blohm.
In the 1960s the work program included production of the forward and rear fuselage sections of the Franco-German Transall 160 military transport, as well as final assembly and flight tesing of this aircraft; design, development and production of fuselage sections (including engine nacelles) of the Fokker Fellowship; design and development of parts for the third stage of ELDO's Europa I satellite launcher; and last, but in no way least, quantity production of the HFB 320 Hansa jet executive, an original HFB product.
This unusual-looking design, with swept-forward wings, received both its German and FAA type certificate in February 1967 after a flight test programme involving three prototypes and some 800 flying hours. The company undertook an intensive sales campaign, particularly in the United States, and formed a wholly owned subsidiary known as Hansa Jets Inc, together with a spares depot, in New York. A licence production arrangement with an American manufacturer was also sought.
Like the four other major German airframe companies, HFB participated in design studies for the European airbus and had a one-fifth share in Deutsche Airbus GmbH. Finally, it also had a 40 percent interest in ERNO Raumfahrttechnik GmbH.
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