Blohm und Voss built Ju W 34s

[Tom1UK]

Hi

I am trying to tie down the Production W/nrs of the Ju W34hi & hau built by Blohm und Voss from 1936 to 1938.

On the German Wikipedia site 'Hamburger Flugzeugbau' the following W/Nr information is given for 34 aircraft

Ju W34hi 139 to 147
154 to 170
173 to 180

To confirm this information they also give the licence Production W/Nrs of the Do 23G as

115 to 138

This is correct. So I am just wondering if the other info for the Ju W34s is also correct.

Can anybody please confirm this?

I have dataplate info that W/nr.0142 was built by Weser. But this could be a wing dataplate as the wings were built by Weser for Blohm und Voss production.

If someone can help confirm this then I will be most grateful. Thanks

Regards

Tom Willis

[Seaplanes]

According to my information Blohm & Voss delivered a total of 69 W 34hi and 192 W 34hau. The only W.Nr. block I can confirm is for 53 W 34hau W.Nr. 917 - 975 delivered from mid May 1937 to July/August 1937.

[Tom1UK]

Hi Seeaplanes

Thanks for the reply

I have confirmations that the B&V W/nrs for the W34hau went much further than 975

I will contact viaemail

Thanks

Regards

Tom Willis

[Stig Jarlevik]

Guys

If B & V were building aeroplanes already in 1937 with WNr in the 900 range, why did they turn backwards and produce the BV 138 batch 367-391 in 1940??

Why should the W 34 batch be given such high WNr? Makes no sense to me, unless you explain what all those numbers in between were....

Cheers
Stig

[Seaplanes]

My information is from the original Flugzeugübergabescheine (Aircraft delivery forms) available at the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv in Freiburg in the RL 3 record series. These forms give the name of factory, W.Nr., normally also registration in the D- range, date of delivery etc. The reason for using W.Nr. blocks out of secuence with the Blohm & Voss production of its own designs is not known to me, but it seems that this was common practice in order to avoid duplications of W.Nr. for a specific aircraft type. The W 34 was produced by a number of licenced factories apart from Junkers itself and it is easy to understand that the risk of W.Nr. duplications was high.

[Günther Ott]

Again, Blohm & Voss W.Nr. 139 to 147, 154 to 170 and 173 to 180 can be confirmed as licence built Junkers W 34 hi within the regular Ha and BV W.Nr. series.

This was starting with W.Nr. 101 for the first Ha 135 D-EXIL and ending according to my knowledge with W.Nr. 442 initially assigned to BV 222 V6 but only to be delivered in 1942 with new W.Nr. 222 000 006 in a separate block for BV 222s. This procedure of re-issueing a separate type related W.Nr. block was also applied for other types, i.e. BV 141, and might explain for some gaps in the range of W.Nr. 392 to 436.

The system of type related W.Nr. blocks had already been introduced earlier on demand of RLM for series production of licence built aircraft. This is what it is all about with the B & V built W 34 hau with W.Nr. in 900 and 1000 blocks as well as Ju 86 with W.Nr. in 4000 block.

Regards,

Günther Ott

[Stig Jarlevik]

Thanks Guys

Must admit I have never paid much attention to the "responsibillity" of license manufacturing in Germany. Can either Gunther or Seaplanes advise how the production procedure was handled in Germany during the mid 30's and onwards?

My own thought was that if lets say Junkers was awarded a contract for any number of W.34 then they in their turn sub-contraced to other companies if they were unable to complete the job in the stipulated timeframe. That is the way I felt things happened in the 1920's... The sub-contractor then issued their own WNr and that was it! During the early 1930's that process seems to have continued since B&V gave the early license built W.34 their own WNrs.

At some point during the expansion of the Luftwaffe and the radically increased production I suppose the RLM must have stuck its nose in and started to try and run things a bit more efficiently.

The question then is, did RLM issue an instruction to the companies that, when sub-contracting, company XX had to issue WNr for the sub-contractor as well, so all the aeroplanes of the same type ended up in the same blocks? Or did RLM themselves, already at this stage, issue WNr block(s) along with the contract?

I also have a feeling that sub-contracting was a bit of a hot potatoe! The company who owned the design rights must have been eager to protect their rights and various patents and also wanting to cash in on royalties etc. How was that handled by the RLM?

At one point (Was that after WW 2 broke out or before? See above.) the German aeroplane manufacturers must have been forced to abandon their own WNr systems, since we know that these numbers were issued centrally and given to the companies, no doubt at the same time as the manufacturing contract itself. Do we have anything like a fixed date when this happened?

Final question, did RLM at any time during the war abandon the sub-contracting method and issue production orders to others without going via the designing manufacturing company? How did they handle the royalty question? Huge Government manufacturing plants were constructed during the war, and I find it hard to believe that they were begging for license deals from any of the big companies, like Heinkel or Messerschmitt. Of course the icon Junkers was already in Government hands but still...?

Cheers
Stig

PS: One more thing. Why didn't RLM revert to the practice of the Luftstreitkräfte of WW 1 and use a serial number system? The complex and elaborate WNr system would then never have had to be developed...