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62-539: When the Reichsluftfahrtministerium was given control of the country's aviation activities in 1933, it set out to catalog both the aircraft already in production by various German aircraft manufacturer as well as new projects approved for development by the ministry. The RLM made necessary improvements to a designation system which had been set up in 1929/30 by the Heereswaffenamt (Army Weapons Office) in

124-458: A Messerschmitt Bf 110 testbed airframe. Problems continued, however, so delaying the program that while the Me 262 V1 prototype airframe (the first aircraft intended to use the engine) was ready for flight-testing, there were no power plants available for it and it actually began flight tests with a supplementary, conventional Junkers Jumo 210 piston engine in the nose. It was not until November 1941 that

186-639: A 27 hp/ton power-to-weight ratio — just over twice the factor that the Panther's original gasoline-fueled Maybach V12 piston engine provided. Following the war, two captured 003s powered the prototype of the first Soviet jet, the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-9 . Blueprints for BMW engines had been seized by Soviet forces from both the Basdorf-Zühlsdorf plant near Berlin and the notorious Mittelwerk slave labor facility near Nordhausen . Production of

248-429: A German military aircraft emerged from its production plant, it was given a four-letter Stammkennzeichen code (factory radio code), which was an individual aircraft's radio code before it entered service and staying with the aircraft throughout its entire existence. This format was also usually used for prototype aircraft if they did not bear a German national "D-xxxx" style civil registration. The entire Stammkennzeichen

310-466: A contract to the Fieseler Fi 156 - the post-July 1938 era's name change from BFW to Messerschmitt AG for the same manufacturer also changed the prefix, the later example being the much more famous Komet rocket-powered interceptor, where the same firm (under a new name and appropriate prefix) re-used the same airframe number. A parallel designation system was created for piston aircraft engines, using

372-563: 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 the BFW firm, and thus Messerschmitt's record-setting four-seat sportsplane design, the M 37, was produced as the Bayerische Flugzeugwerke Bf 108. Dissatisfied with this settlement, Messerschmitt himself used the money from

434-492: A lower case alphabetical suffix. When the Me 262 A-1a was to be experimentally equipped with different engines, in this given case the BMW 003 units, it became the Me 262 A-1b . Additionally, special conversions of basic types were given the suffix /R or /U followed by a number. R was an abbreviation of Rüstsatz , a pre-packaged kit of parts that was usually installed on aircraft in

496-490: A project of the Brandenburgische Motorenwerke ( Brandenburg Motor Works, known as " Bramo "), under the direction of Hermann Östrich and assigned the RLM designation 109-003 (using the RLM's "109-" prefix, common to all jet and rocket engine projects). Bramo was also developing another turbojet, the 109-002. In 1939, BMW bought out Bramo, and in the acquisition, obtained both engine projects. The 109-002 had

558-505: A result, the further development of his Focke-Wulf Fw 190 became the Tank Ta 152 but remained commonly known as the Focke-Wulf Ta 152 . There is no single "master list" of designations that holds true throughout 1933–1945; the sequence is particularly muddled at the beginning and end of the list. (For see the RLM airplanes arranged by manufacturer, see RLM aircraft by manufacturer ) When

620-462: A two-letter designation reflecting the designer's name rather than the constructor he (originally) worked for. To further complicate things, those new design bureaus were often assigned ranges (or "blocks") of aircraft numbers formerly assigned to other constructors but unused. Thus when Focke-Wulf's chief designer Kurt Tank founded his own design bureau he got assigned the prefix Ta and the block of RLM airframe numbers comprising 8-151 through 8-154. As

682-456: A variety of factories often without any links to the constructor whose name it bore. Furthermore, aircraft engineers and designers, a hot commodity for a constructor and therefore aggressively courted and headhunted, were famous for their tendency to leave one company for the next bigger one every few years. Finally more and more of them started their own aircraft development company under their own name. The RLM followed suit by giving their products

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744-506: A very sophisticated contra-rotating compressor design intended to eliminate torque , but was abandoned in favour of the simpler engine, which in the end proved to have enough development problems of its own. Construction began late in the same year and the engine ran for the first time in August 1940, but produced only 330 lb (150 kg) thrust, just half what was desired. The first flight test took place in mid-1941, mounted underneath

806-656: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . BMW 003 The BMW 003 (full RLM designation 109-003 ) is an early axial turbojet engine produced by BMW AG in Germany during World War II . The 003 and the Junkers Jumo 004 were the only German turbojet engines to reach production during World War II. Work had begun on the design of the BMW 003 before its contemporary, the Jumo 004, but prolonged developmental problems meant that

868-539: The Jägernotprogramm ’s light fighter production contract. which was won by the Heinkel He 162 Spatz design. Developments of the engine included the 003C, which raised thrust to 900 kg (2,000 lb) — in the same thrust class as the competing Jumo 004B, but some 136 kg/300 lb lighter in weight; and the 003D, which raised it to nearly 1,100 kg (2,400 lb), which added one extra compressor stage beyond

930-532: The Allies . As an example, this occurred between the Messerschmitt firm's competitor for the production contract won by Fieseler's Fieseler Fi 156 , having its number reused for the rocket-powered Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet , and could also occur between two different firms, as with Messerschmitt's unsuccessful Schnellbomber having its RLM airframe number re-used for Heinkel's He 162 Spatz (Sparrow) design as

992-620: The Arado Ar 234 . About 3,500 BMW 003 engines were built in Germany, but very few were ever installed in aircraft. The engine also formed the basis for turbojet development in Japan during the war, and in the Soviet Union following the war. A larger derivative was the BMW 018 , but only three prototypes had been built by the end of the war. The practicality of jet propulsion had been demonstrated in Germany in early 1937 by Hans von Ohain working with

1054-690: The Bf 109 F-4 trop . Another notable practice in the German aviation industry of the time was for the "increase" of the three-digit section of an earlier design's RLM airframe number by an increment of one hundred for the earlier design's intended upgrade, or replacement: the intended replacement for the Messerschmitt Bf 110 , for example, was the Messerschmitt Me 210 , and similarly, the Heinkel aviation firm's entry in

1116-577: The French Zone . Within a couple of years, he was working for Voisin , a division of SNECMA , France's state-owned aircraft engine company. Using the basic design of the 003, he produced the larger Atar jet engine that powered Dassault's Ouragan , Dassault Mirage III and Mystère fighters. Data from: Aircraft Engines of the world 1946 and Design Analysis of BMW 003 Turbojet by Maj Rudolph C Schulte, Project Officer, Turbojet and Gas Turbine Developments, HQ, USAAF Data from Aircraft Engines of

1178-463: The German "spelling alphabet" for each major variant's letter. More minor variants were then suffixed numerically, beginning with "-0" for pre-production evaluation versions. Thus, the first batch of Me 262 As supplied by Messerschmitt were designated Me 262 A-0, followed by production versions Me 262 A-1 through to (in the case of this particular aircraft) Me 262 A-5. More minor variants still were given

1240-464: The Heinkel company. Recognising the potential of the invention, the Reich Air Ministry ( German : Reichsluftfahrtministerium , abbreviated RLM) encouraged Germany's aero engine manufacturers to begin their own programmes of jet engine development, offering contracts to both Junkers and BMW for an engine capable of 1,520 lb (690 kg) static thrust . The BMW 003 began development as

1302-537: The Heinkel He 162 , other letters such as "M" for Muster (model) replaced the "V" designation, and even the Me 262's own later prototypes began using the letter "S" for such models. Once accepted by Deutsche Lufthansa or the Luftwaffe , major variants of the aircraft were suffixed alphabetically with a capital letter. For example, the major variants of the Me 262 were numbered Me 262 A, Me 262 B, and Me 262 C, often using

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1364-509: The Messerschmitt AG . The RLM assigned this 'new' aircraft firm the designation prefix of Me . The first aircraft to benefit from the change was the Me 210. Nevertheless, the three production contract aircraft designs from the earlier Bayerische Flugzeugwerke firm in Germany, the Bf 108, Bf 109 and Bf 110 officially kept their "Bf" prefix, due to their pre-July 1938 origins, until the end. In 1933,

1426-576: The Reichswehrministerium (Defense Ministry), together with other institutions related to the industry. The former system had caused confusion in the use of aircraft designations among the different manufacturers; six aircraft of different firms used the number 33. The improved designation system was introduced in order to provide a simple and unambiguous identification of every German civilian and military aircraft, be it fixed-wing or rotary-winged, and its corresponding airframe design. The heart of

1488-696: The Siebel Si 204 . 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

1550-613: The Volksjäger "emergency" jet fighter contract winner. In 1933 Germany's largest shipbuilder Blohm & Voss in Hamburg opened an aircraft subsidiary under the name of Hamburger Flugzeugbau . RLM assigned this factory the designation prefix of Ha. However the connection with Blohm & Voss was just too strong and the aircraft coming from the Hamburger Flugzeugwerke were commonly known as 'Blohm & Voss type Ha xxx' . Eventually

1612-460: The Volksjäger light fighter design competition mandated its use), with the Spatz utilizing an 003E version, designed to possess ventral mounting points to allow it to be mounted atop the fuselage of an aircraft. The other was the four-engined Arado Ar 234 C reconnaissance-bomber variants, which were designed to use what was supposed to be the "more available" engine, despite its primary allocation for

1674-617: The 003 was set up at the "Red October" GAZ 466 ( Gorkovsky Avtomobilny Zavod , or Gorky Automobile Plant) in Leningrad and in Kuznetsov along KMPO, where the engine was mass-produced from 1947 under the designation RD-20 ( reactivnyi dvigatel , or "jet drive"). After the Allied occupation of Germany, Marcel Dassault assisted Hermann Östrich in moving from the American Zone of occupied Germany into

1736-474: The 801. At Kolbermoor, location of the Heinkel - Hirth engine works, the Fedden Mission , led by Sir Roy Fedden , found jet-engine manufacturing was simpler and required lower-skill labor and less sophisticated tooling than piston engine production; in fact, most of making of hollow turbine blades and sheet metal work on jets could be done by tooling used in making automobile body panels . The lifetime of

1798-488: The BMW 003 entered production much later, and the aircraft projects that had been designed with it in mind were re-engined with the Jumo powerplant instead. The most famous case of this was the Messerschmitt Me 262 , which used the 003 in two of the V-series prototypes and in the two experimental A-1b aircraft. The only production aircraft to use the BMW 003 were the Heinkel He 162 and the later C-series, four-engined versions of

1860-548: The Fedden Mission postwar estimated total German jet engine production by mid-1946 could have reached 100,000 units a year, or more. The 003 was intended for export to Japan, but working examples of the engine were never supplied. Instead, Japanese engineers used cross-section drawings to design an indigenous turbojet, the Ishikawajima Ne-20 . The 003 was selected as the basis for a gas turbine development project for

1922-580: The German military's anticipated need for what is today called a turboshaft powerplant for multiple needs — this project was called the GT 101 , using the 003 axial-flow turbojet as the starting point in mid-November 1944. Its original purpose would have been to re-engine the Panther tank with a turboshaft-based power system capable of up to a 1,150 PS usable shaft horsepower rating into an AFV 's drivetrain, from an engine weight of only 990 lb (450 kg), giving it

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1984-527: The He 162A. The BMW 003 proved cheaper in materials than the company's own 801 radial , 12,000  ℛ︁ℳ︁ to 40,000 ℛ︁ℳ︁, and cheaper than the Junkers Jumo 213 inverted V12 piston engine at 35,000 ℛ︁ℳ︁, but slightly more costly than the competing Junkers Jumo 004's 10,000 ℛ︁ℳ︁. Moreover, the 004 needed only 375 hours to complete (including manufacture, assembly, and shipping), compared to 1,400 for

2046-509: The May 1942 Amerika Bomber design competition for a trans-oceanic range strategic bomber for the Luftwaffe, initially to be derived from the earlier Heinkel He 177 A heavy bomber — as one of a trio of parallel design proposals to fully upgrade the 177A design into a true "four-engined" bomber concept — emerged as an almost totally new design (with heavy He 219 influence) by later in 1943, receiving

2108-400: The Me 262 V1 was flown with BMW engines, which both failed during the test. The prototype aircraft had to return to the airfield on the power of the piston engine, which was still fitted. The general usage of the BMW powerplant was abandoned for the Me 262, except for two experimental examples of the plane known as the Me 262 A-1b. The few Messerschmitt Me 262 A-1b test examples built used

2170-529: The RLM designation Fh. However, by the time the first Halle design, the Siebel 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 aircraft under the RLM letter designation Si, including the definitive Kl 104 development,

2232-630: 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 Württemberg 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

2294-614: The RLM gave the factory a new designation of 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 secured 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. In part because of

2356-460: The RLM, these designs retained the 3-letter all-capital designation DFS. A list of the most notable changes in designation appears below: By the time the Second World War started, manufacturers increasingly built developments of successful existing types rather than completely new designs. To reflect the lineage of those aircraft, the new types were numbered in steps of 100 above the number of

2418-593: The basic model they were derived from. As mentioned previously, the Junkers Ju 88 formed the basis for the Ju 188 , Ju 288 , Ju 388 , and Ju 488 . Another change in the system was the gradual replacement of the two-letter prefix for the constructor with a prefix for the designer. Almost from the beginning the RLM used an elaborate system of licence-building and subcontracting to maximize its output of huge numbers of relatively few types of 'standard equipment' airplanes. Initially,

2480-419: The beginning of 1935, all inspection officials in the newly created program started on an equal footing as Technical Inspectors, but by the start of the war in 1939 nearly all of them had been promoted to Technical Inspector First Class with a rank of Hauptmann (Captain). Waffenamt code (WaA) is the German inspection proof mark and can be found on firearms and equipment. This German military article

2542-450: The combustion chambers was estimated at 200 hours. The BMW 003 utilized nearly the same starting method as its slightly more powerful Jumo 004 competitor: one of Norbert Riedel 's 10 PS flat-twin two-stroke engines, installed within the engine's intake diverter as a mechanical APU , to get the 003's central shaft rotating for operation. An American military-authored post-war review of the BMW 003 stated that an electric starter of some sort

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2604-479: The designation Heinkel He 277 by February 1943, of which no examples were ever completed to airworthy status before its cancellation in April 1944. The best-known case of the "third-digit increase" scheme occurred with arguably the most versatile airframe design in German production, the Junkers Ju 88 — as successive designs meant to replace the original design went through the airframe numbers 188, 288 and 388, as well as

2666-461: The designation BV for their new aircraft, the first of which was the BV 138 Fliegender Holzschuh maritime patrol trimotor flying boat. As such the RLM referred to a Messerschmitt twin-jet fighter project internally as type "8-262", although in service the same aircraft would be known as the "Me 262". Originally, these numbers were assigned sequentially and wherever possible attempted to take into account

2728-423: The factory that designed the plane maintained the biggest share of that planes production. With the war proceeding, the Luftwaffe's need for fresh airplanes quickly outpaced the capacity of the original manufacturers, certainly with its factories now regularly being bombed by the Allies . As a result, the connection between aircraft and original manufacturer eventually lost its significance. Aircraft were now built by

2790-543: The field, as opposed to requiring an aircraft factory to install one. The Rüstsatz designation was used for modification of basic types in order to be usable for a specific mission task like recon, fighter-bomber or bomber-destroyer. U was Umrüst-Bausatz ("conversion kit"), often contracted to Umbau , and was done with aircraft taken from the assembly line but also in repair workshops with airframes already in use, in any environment equipped at least as well as an aircraft factory would have had. The Umrüst-Bausatz designation

2852-760: The manufacturer's prefix. Heereswaffenamt Waffenamt (WaA) was the German Army Weapons Agency. It was the centre for research and development of the Weimar Republic and later the Third Reich for weapons, ammunition and army equipment to the German Reichswehr and then Wehrmacht . It was founded 8 November 1919 as Reichwaffenamt (RWA), and 5 May 1922 the name was changed to Heereswaffenamt (HWA). The task of overseeing Germany's gigantic pre-World War II rearmament program

2914-456: The manufacturers' own in-house design numbers for types already existing in 1933. Duplication resulted from the fact that when one manufacturer abandoned a project, the same number was occasionally re-allocated, with an appropriate time delay, to another manufacturer. One known case that differed from the usual situation involved the airframe number "8-163", used initially for the Messerschmitt Bf 163 competing liaison design that lost its chance at

2976-504: The middle of 1944, approximately 8,000 of these Abnahme inspectors were "freed for service at the front". The Heeres-Abnahmewesen was responsible for the testing and acceptance of all weapons, equipment and ammunition before delivery to the Wehrmacht . Inspections were carried out according to detailed guidelines called " Technische Lieferbedingungen " (TLs) prepared by the various Waffenprüfämter ( WaPrüf ) departments When

3038-415: The more developed version of the 003 jet, recording an official top speed of 500 mph (800 km/h). The Me 262A-1a production version used the competing Jumo 004, whose heavier weight required the wings to be swept back in order to move the center of gravity into the correct position. Work on the 003 continued anyway, and by late 1942 it had been made far more powerful and reliable. The improved engine

3100-508: The new system was a (theoretically) unique number assigned by the RLM. In internal paperwork, this number was simply prefixed "8-" (or, in the case of sailplanes , subject to a separate numerical list, "108-"), while "9-" indicated aircraft engines, with 109 prefixing reaction engines (gas turbines, pulse-jets and rockets). The new standardized type designation added two letters representing the manufacturer; Dornier ( Do ) and Rohrbach ( Ro ) already used this practice. The first of these two letters

3162-418: The only four-engined development of the series, the Junkers Ju 488 , through using components of most of the three previous designs. It was also not unknown to re-use an earlier RLM airframe number for an entirely new design, usually when the earlier design bearing a given number had lost a production contract, with other possibilities for the practice coming from the likely desire for disinformation to confuse

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3224-498: The prefix "9-" , with the special 109- prefix replacing it for reaction propulsion (jet or rocket) powerplants. After February 1935, each individual prototype aircraft were suffixed with "V" (for Versuchs German: "prototype") and a unique identification number for an individual airframe for that design type. So, for example, the Me 262 V3 was the third prototype of the Me 262 built. Later in World War II, with such aircraft as

3286-515: The rearmament program began, Waffenamt inspection departments were established in each factory and armourers were encouraged to apply for positions there. In preparation for their new duties they were given a four-week course at the Heereswaffenmeisterschule (Army Armourers School). The course ended with a test for Technical Inspector which raised the rank of each successful applicant to that of Oberleutnant (First Lieutenant). At

3348-603: 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

3410-404: The seven of the earlier designs, and an extra turbine stage, with the thrust-weight ratio of 16.58 N/kg for the 003D at only 1,431 lb (649 kg) in weight, being some 30% greater than the 1.288 lb f /lb (12.63 N/kg) figure for the 950-kilogram (2,090 lb) Heinkel HeS 011 A. Only two German production aircraft used the 003. The first was the Heinkel He 162 A Spatz (since

3472-507: Was flight tested under a Junkers Ju 88 in October 1943 and was finally ready for mass production in August 1944. Completed engines earned a reputation for unreliability; the time between major overhauls (not technically a TBO ) was about 50 hours. (The competing Jumo 004's was between thirty and fifty, and may have been as low as ten.) Through 1944 the 003's reliability improved, making it a suitable power plant for air frame designs competing for

3534-691: Was given to the Heeresabnahmestelle (the Army Acceptance Organization, commonly referred to as the Abnahme ), a subsidiary of the Heereswaffenamt . By 1940 the Abnahme consisted of 25,000 personnel in five departments in 16 inspection areas, augmented by specially selected plant personnel who were assigned to assist the Waffenamt inspectors in each manufacturing facility. Later, in

3596-423: Was known as the BMW 003R and was tested, albeit with some serious reliability problems, on single prototypes for advanced models of the Me 262 (the Me 262C-2b Heimatschützer II [Home Defender II]), and He 162 (He 162E). Both prototypes flew under hybrid jet/rocket power during March 1945, though records do not indicate the results of testing with the 162E. Only about 500 examples of the BMW 003 were built, but

3658-462: Was shown in upper case, the second always in lower case, no matter its origin – so Fw for Focke-Wulf or Bf for Bayerische Flugzeugwerke . The very first exemption from this rule was granted several years later to the Blohm & Voss shipbuilding firm, when they renamed their aircraft manufacturing operation – which had been split off from Hamburger Flugzeugbau (Ha) – to Blohm & Voss and received

3720-452: Was used for smaller equipment changes like additional boost agents for the engine or a different main armament. For example, Me 262 A-1a/U3 referred to a small number of the standard Me 262 A-1a fighters that were modified by Messerschmitt as reconnaissance aircraft. The suffix trop (for tropen "tropical") was applied to aircraft modified to operate in the hot and dusty North African, Mediterranean and southern Russian theatres, for example,

3782-558: Was used to "turn over" the Riedel APU, with no existing photos of either wartime or restored BMW 003s showing the "D-shape" pull handle so prominent on the noses of many museum-preserved Jumo 004's intake diverters. One late version of the engine added a small rocket motor (the BMW 109-718 ) at the rear and usually just above the exhaust of the engine, which added some 1,250 kg (2,760 lb) thrust each for three to five minutes, for take off and short dashes. In this configuration, it

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3844-430: Was usually on the fuselage sides, and also often repeated on the undersides of both wings, with the four letters spread out along the entire wing's under-surfaces. The code could also be placed on such things as the manufacturer's identification plate, and sometimes even the compass correction card for a particular aircraft. Note: Official RLM designations had the prefix "8-", but this was usually dropped and replaced with

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