Clint
Good point about the CL.II, which
does give us a time frame.
While the Frontflieger.de site is pretty good, it lacks enormously in detail.
The date listed for Halberstadt for instance cannot have anything to do with them opening up their own civil flying school. Neither am I at all convinced about the existance of many schools having the same FEA number.
Also if you look at the dates (or rather the
non-existance of them) when the so called Werks Fliegerschulen were created, you will see he basically have no dates anywhere. Halberstadt is pretty much the only company where he actually states a date at all!
I have no idea what the date 19.9.1914 actually is, but there is no way a civil flying school would open up one month plus after WW 1 had begun in earnest and set almost all of Europe ablaze. Possibly the date may relate to when the German Army took control of it. Also if you check the site, there is basically no details about that school what-so-ever.
Every pre-war German major aircraft manufacturer opened up a flying school (and so did everyone else in Europe). To attract customers, teach them how to fly, and after that hopefully sell their own product was basically their only way to survive, unless someone was willing to showel out money just for the fun of it. Halberstadt started up their business in 1912, and it would surprise me enormously if they did not open up some sort of school shortly after. All they had to do was to look and learn how everyone else did it. It is up to you if you accept the date 14.9.1914 as a date when Halberstadt opened up a "civil school", but I don't. I don't know in detail how these Werke schools operated, but I am totally convinced they were controlled by the militaries, even if nominally led by a civilian (owner).
Nothing strange that FEA 5 (which was based in Hannover) had nothing to do with the Halberstadt school (based in Halberstadt no doubt) since they must have been 30 - 40 miles apart. No idea why the site we refer to keeps saying that the Halberstadt school also was known as FEA 5. Makes no sense to me and I need far better proof than such a statement to believe that. Document please!
So far, you have not produced one convincing aspect to the odd Bestellnummer, visible on the Rumpler C.I and DFW C.V aircraft. They are actually my main interest in this album, since the aircraft without Bestellnummer can be readily explained, as we (you) already have done.
So for the time being I still believe these C-types were operated by some training unit
outside the mainstream German Army ones. So not FEA 5 at Hannover! Which one, I have no idea, your guess is as good as mine, perhaps even better
Cheers
Stig