Hamburger Flugzeugbau
In the postwar period it was revived as an independent company under its original name and subsequently joined several consortia before being merged to form Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB).
Its owners, brothers Rudolf and Walther Blohm, decided to diversify into aircraft manufacture, believing that there would soon be a market for all-metal, long-range flying boats, especially with the German state airline Deutsche Luft Hansa.
It was also thought that those planes would be seaplanes and flying boats as they could use the infrastructure and capacity of the seaports already in place, while land facilities at that time were unsuited to such large aeroplanes.
[1][2] In June 1933 the Blohm brothers appointed their brother-in-law and fellow B&V director Dipl-Ing Max Andreae and experienced aviator Robert Schröck to the board.
[4] The company offices at first occupied the top floor of the B&V administrative headquarters in the Steinwerder quarter of Hamburg, with manufacturing carried out in the under-utilised shipbuilding works.
[1] Meanwhile an inland airfield and final assembly building for landplanes were begun a few miles away at Wenzendorf Aircraft Factory, opened in 1935.
[5] During this period the ruling Nazi party was massively increasing the interwar German re-armament program which included the complete overhaul of the aircraft industry.
The bulk of the company's output would eventually turn out to be contract manufacturing of this kind, including many thousands of aircraft each for Dornier, Focke-Wulf, Heinkel, Junkers, and Messerschmitt.
On their recommendation the company offered the job of Chief Designer to Richard Vogt, who was then occupying that same position at Kawasaki in Japan and was experienced in all-metal construction.
Vogt proved highly innovative and many of his designs would have unusual features, from the very first incorporating a tubular steel wing main spar which also doubled as the fuel tank.
Despite its size, with four engines, it was designed to be launched from a shipborne catapult to help extend its range, and was successfully operated in small numbers by Deutsche Luft Hansa.
In 1939, with the shipbuilding work revived and production capacity fully utilised again, B&V moved its aircraft subsidiary, including both offices and seaplane manufacturing, to a purpose-built site on the shores of the river Elbe, at Finkenwerder.
The main works at Finkenwerder was still there and Hamburger Flugzeugbau GmbH (HFB) re-emerged in 1956, still under the ownership of Walther Blohm but no longer connected to B+V.
[9] As ever, the company's main work would turn out to be as subcontractor for various German – and increasingly European – aircraft projects, and to this end it would participate in a number of consortia.
Airbus has since built a significant presence around the original HFB team and operates the airfield privately as Hamburg Finkenwerder Airport.
[14] Many studies had unusual configurations such as asymmetry, novel multi-engine layouts and crew locations, wings swept forwards or back (or both) and sometimes tailless.
