RLM aircraft designation system
The RLM made necessary improvements to a designation system which had been set up in 1929/30 by the Heereswaffenamt (Army Weapons Office) in the Reichswehrministerium (Defense Ministry), together with other institutions related to the industry.
The new standardized type designation added two letters representing the manufacturer; Dornier (Do) and Rohrbach (Ro) already used this practice.
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 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".
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 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.
Once accepted by Deutsche Lufthansa or the Luftwaffe, major variants of the aircraft were suffixed alphabetically with a capital letter.
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.
The Umrüst-Bausatz designation was used for smaller equipment changes like additional boost agents for the engine or a different main armament.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This format was also usually used for prototype aircraft if they did not bear a German national "D-xxxx" style civil registration.
