Word: messerschmitts
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Merger Drive. Europeans are not likely to see a Siddeley-Messerschmitt or a Rolls-Fiat company for some time, but, mergers within the British aviation industry itself are in the offing. The government hopes to induce a merger between the two big airframe manufacturers, British Aircraft Corp. and Hawker Siddeley, and perhaps even to try to unite the two proud jet engine builders, Rolls-Royce and Bristol Siddeley. The combined companies presumably would be able to lift productivity, which is only one-third as high as in the U.S. aerospace industry, and two-thirds as high as in the French...
There are specialists among them. Some, like Actor Cliff Robertson, are interested in refurbishing classic planes (he owns a Messerschmitt, is currently at work on a Spitfire). Others are hipped on "aerobatics," a term they prefer to "stunt flying," and are busy nostalgically building the nimble biplanes that only one commercial company makes any more. E.A.A. planes are "generally smaller, lighter and more sensitive than the factory-built jobs, and more responsive, which is part of the fun of flying," says St. Louis Chapter President Robert E. Gwinn, 41, an aeronautical engineer...
Merging his brainpower with somebody else's capital has already become a successful formula for Founder Ludwig Bölkow, 52, who designed Messerschmitt's earliest jet fighter during World War II. When Germany resumed aircraft and arms production in 1956, Bölkow lined up $306,000 in capital from a Hamburg banker, shifted his tiny Stuttgart engineering firm into the development of complete weapons systems. First came the Cobra, a tank-killer rocket that was adopted by the German army, was sold to Denmark and Italy, and got Bölkow into antitank and antiaircraft rocket...
...supersonic speed. Its designers admit that the vertical engines will be dead cargo most of the time, but they think vertical engines will have less effect on performance than dual-purpose engines that are too powerful for efficient horizontal flight. A German V/STOL, the Bölkow, Heinkel and Messerschmitt VJ-101C, varies the French formula slightly by having two main engines that are tiltable and supplementing their thrust with two vertical-lift engines. The VJ-101C has made many vertical takeoffs with successful transition to horizontal flight...
...Bremen outfits-Focke-Wulf and Weser-late last year merged to form the Vereinigte Flugtechnische Werke, now Germany's largest planemaking company (7,000 workers). Last week Claudius Dornier, 79, boss of his family-owned aircraft company, agreed to join the four leading planemakers in southern Germany-Messerschmitt, Siebelwerke, Heinkel and Bolkow-in establishing a joint company for research and development. The leading power in the new company is Ludwig Bolkow, 51, a wartime designer for Messerschmitt and a leading Eierköpfe, who in 1956 set up his aeronautical research outfit and began concentrating on electronics, advanced helicopter...