German Plane Builders

West Germany has won its airline; soon it will have its planemakers at work. Focke-Wulf, famed for its fighters, hopes to be the first to take off; it announced last week that it will start immediate production of Germany's first postwar powered aircraft: the Bl 502, a small single-engined liaison plane.

Grounded by Allied decree since the war's end, the planemakers got permission to build aircraft (except strategic bombers and guided missiles) when Germany regained its sovereignty last May. The industry is badly hampered by a lack of capital and by the fact that many of its big plants and best brains are in East Germany. In the beginning, it will concentrate on small planes and components, building many under license from U.S. and other foreign manufacturers. To help one another through the rough early years, German planemakers are forming four cartel-like groups, through which they will work together and divvy up orders.

Among the planemakers likely to play big roles in the reborn industry: P:Fighter Designer Willy Messerschmitt, who has kept busy repairing U.S. Army trucks, making midget cars (TIME, Sept. 19) and sewing machines while running an aircraft-designing bureau in Spain, is readying his Augsburg plant (sewing machines) for plane production. He has several planes on his drawing board, including a four-engined cargo carrier, hopes within a year to be employing 2,500 in aircraft alone v. 2,100 in all his ventures now.

P:Bomber Builder Claudine Dornier, whose plants employed over 15,000 in 1944, has also been making midget cars while he stayed airborne with a design company in Spain. It has designed and built prototypes of the Do 27, a light observation plane for the Spanish government. In about a year, Dornier plans to start producing the Do 27 in Germany for the private plane market.

P:Ernst Heinkel, who had lost all but one of his plants when the war ended, has been turning out small motors, midget cars. He has started hiring back some of his old designing staff, including Siegfried ("Dixi") Gunther, who designed the dread He 110 twin-engined fighter-bomber.

P:Bayerische Motoren Werke, which built the world's first mass-produced jet engine during the war, since then has rebuilt U.S. Army vehicles, now produces motorcycles and passenger cars. Last year B.M.W. set up a division to study jet propulsion; it has now gathered together all its old planning, design and production teams, hopes to start by producing U.S. jet engines under license.

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