Focke-Wulf

Focke-Wulf Flugzeugbau AG was a German manufacturer of civil and military aircraft before and during World War II. It was founded in Bremen on 24 October 1923 as Bremer Flugzeugbau AG by Henrich Focke, Georg Wulf and Werner Naumann. Almost immediately, they renamed the company Focke-Wulf Flugzeugbau AG (later Focke-Wulf Flugzeugbau GmbH).
Focke-Wulf merged, under government pressure, with Albatros-Flugzeugwerke of Berlin in 1931. The Albatros-Flugzeugwerke engineer and test pilot Kurt Tank became head of the technical department and started work on the Fw 44 Stieglitz (Goldfinch).
The Focke-Wulf Fw 61, the first fully controllable helicopter (as opposed to autogyro), was shown in Berlin in 1938. The four-engined Fw 200 airliner flew nonstop between Berlin and New York City on August 10, 1938, making the journey in 24 hours and 56 minutes. It was the first aircraft to fly that route without stopping. The return trip on August 13, 1938 took 19 hours and 47 minutes.
The Fw 190 Würger (Shrike/butcher-bird), designed from 1938 and produced in quantity from early 1941–1945, was a mainstay single-seat fighter for the Luftwaffe during World War II. Repeated bombing of Bremen resulted in the mass-production plants being moved to eastern Germany. Those plants used many foreign and forced labourers, and from 1944 also prisoners of war. Focke-Wulf's plant at Marienburg produced approximately half of all Fw 190s and was bombed by the Eighth Air Force on October 9, 1943.
After the war many Focke-Wulf workers, including Kurt Tank, worked at the Instituto Aerotécnico in Córdoba, Argentina between 1947 and 1955. Others, like Henrich Focke, went to Brazil's Department of Aerospace Science and Technology, helping Brazil's effort to build Embraer.
After the war Focke-Wulf began to make gliders in 1951, and motorised planes in 1955. In 1961 Focke-Wulf, Weserflug and Hamburger Flugzeugbau joined forces to form the Entwicklungsring Nord (ERNO) to develop rockets. Focke-Wulf formally merged with Weserflug in 1964, becoming Vereinigte Flugtechnische Werke (VFW). In 1969 VFW started a joint venture with Fokker, VFW-Fokker, which lasted untill 1980. In 1981 VFW was taken over by Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB), which was taken over by DASA in 1989. In July 2000 DASA merged with Aérospatiale-Matra and CASA to form EADS, which was reorganised as Airbus in 2014 and 2015.

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Focke-Wulf FWP.149D

The German Air Force selected the Italian Piaggio P.149 as aircraft for a training and utility role. Piaggio delivered 72 aircraft to Germany (serials between 250 and 325), and another 190 were built under licence in Germany by Focke-Wulf as the FWP.149D (serials 001 to 190).

Focke-Wulf FWP.149D, registration D-EFTU, built ????, serial number 091
Vliegbasis Volkel (UDE/EHVK), Uden, Netherlands, 13 June 2018

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