RLM Aircraft Designation System - Name Changes and New Constructors

Name Changes and New Constructors

In 1933 Germany's largest shipbuilder Blohm & Voss in Hamburg opened an aircraft subsidiary under the name of Hamburger Flugzeugbau. RLM awarded this factory the designation Ha. However the connection with 'Hamburgs tradition' Blohm & Voss was just too strong to be neglected and the aircraft coming from the Hamburger Flugzeugwerke were commonly known as 'Blohm & Voss type Ha xxx' . Finally the RLM caved in to popular views and gave the factory a new designation BV for Blohm & Voss.

Bayerische Flugzeugwerke ("Bavarian Aircraft Works") was founded in 1926 out of the bankrupt remainder of former Udet flugzeugbau. Originally producing its legacy of Udet-designed sportsplanes, it later went on to secure the services of Willy Messerschmitt, not as a chief engineer but as a free-lance designer. Thus BFW in Munich and Augsburg would produce and distribute designs from Flugzeugbau Messerschmitt in Bamberg. For some reason, (and also in part because of a deep personal animosity between Willy Messerschmitt and State Secretary of Aviation Erhard Milch) the RLM awarded the manufacturers designation NOT to Messerschmitt but to BFW and thus Messerschmitt's record sportsplane design M 37 was produced as the Bayerische Flugzeugwerke Bf 108. Dissatisfied with this settlement, Messerschmitt himself used the money from the sales of his designs to buy a tract of land in Regensburg, founded the Messerschmitt GmbH aircraft factory and planned (or threatened) to start aircraft production on his own. Forced to choose between giving Messerschmitt his due and becoming a pure subcontractor, on 11 July 1938 the Bayerische Flugzeugwerke took on Messerschmitt as chairman and managing director, took over the Regensburg plant and renamed itself the Messerschmitt AG. The RLM assigned this 'new' factory the designation Me. The first aircraft to benefit from the change was the Me 210. Nevertheless the three aircraft Bf 108, 109 and 110 officially kept their Bf prefix, due to their pre-July 1938 origins, until the end.

In 1933, the RLM found that its aircraft production was concentrated too much in the South and West of the country and therefore asked Hanns Klemm to relocate his factory Klemm Flugzeugbau from Böblingen in Bavaria to the town of Halle in Saxony. Unwilling to leave his 'home turf,' Klemm teamed up with financier Fritz Siebel and founded Flugzeugbau Halle: a completely new factory in Halle license-building Klemm designs under the RLM designation Fh. However by the time the first Halle design, the Fh 104 (that started its life on the drawing board still as the Klemm Kl 104) had flown in 1937, Siebel became majority shareholder of the new factory, bought in his own design team and renamed the factory Siebel Flugzeugwerke KG, henceforth producing his own designs under the RLM letter designation Si.

Also in 1933, the glider schools of the Rhön-Rossitten Gesellschaft were incorporated into the Hitlerjugend, while its construction and research team continued as a pure experimental think tank under the name Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Segelflug or simply DFS. Although the DFS was a pure research facility and lacked the means of series production, several of its designs were license-built by various aircraft factories. Uncharacteristic for the RLM, these designs retained the 3-letter all-capital designation DFS.

A list of the most notable changes in designation appears below: