Planes and Choppers Photos

Focke-Wulf Flugzeugbau AG was founded in Bremen in 1924 by Prof. Henrich Focke and Georg Wulf. They had aleady produced a single-seat monoplane and a 2-seater Storch, on which basis the company was formed. Passenger transport aircraft soon followed, but then in 1927 Wulf was killed while testing a canard design. The company obtained a Cierva licence in 1931 and concentrated thereafter on rotating wings (as Focke-Achgelis). The Focke-Wulf company merged with Albatros-Flugzeugwerke of Berlin under German government pressure, also in 1931. Albatros-Flugzeugwerke engineer and test pilot Kurt Tank then became head of the technical department and started work on the Fw 44 Stieglitz trainer (Goldfinch). The company was reorganised as Focke-Wulf Flugzeugbau GmbH in 1936, the controlling shareholder being AEG. In 1938, the Fw 200 was the first aircraft to fly nonstop between Berlin and New York City. The Fw 190 Würger (butcher-bird), designed from 1938 on, and produced in quantity from early 1941–1945, was a mainstay single-seat fighter for the Luftwaffe during WW2. Focke-Wulf formally merged with Weserflug in 1964, becoming Vereinigte Flugtechnische Werke (VFW), which after several further mergers it is now part of European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company N.V. (EADS).