Career
After the war, Tank graduated from the Technical University of Berlin in 1923. A mentor from the university secured him his first job, in the design department of Rohrbach Metallflugzeug GmbH, where he worked on flying boats and assisted in the design of the passenger aircraft, the Ro VIII Roland. Tank moved on to Albatros Flugzeugwerke, where he worked as a test pilot. The Albatros company went bankrupt in 1929 and in 1931, under government pressure, was merged with Focke-Wulf.
Tank then started work on the design of the Fw 44 Stieglitz (Goldfinch), a two-seat civilian biplane. It was Focke Wulf's first commercially successful design, launched in 1934. This led to burgeoning growth for the company as Hitler began to prepare the country for war.
In 1936 Tank designed the Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor to a Deutsche Luft Hansa specification. The first flight was in July 1937 after just under one year of development with Tank at the controls.
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