AGO aircraft works

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AGO Flugzeugwerke GmbH
legal form Company with limited liability
founding 1911 (in Munich as Gustav Otto Flugmaschinenwerke )
resolution 1945
Seat Oschersleben , Germany
management
  • Herbert Alberti
Number of employees around 4500
Branch Aircraft manufacturer

The AGO Flugzeugwerke Oschersleben was a German aircraft company to 1945th The term AGO had successively different meanings. Most recently it stood for Apparatebau GmbH Oschersleben . At its peak, the company had around 4,500 employees.

history

Ago water biplane (1915-1918)
AGO Ao 192 "The Courier" (1939)
Henschel Hs 123 (1936)
Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter plane (1939)
Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter plane (1944)

The company was founded in Munich in 1911 as Gustav Otto Flugmaschinenwerke by the son of the inventor of the four-stroke engine , Dr. Nikolaus Otto , the aviation pioneer (aircraft license No. 34) and engine builder Gustav Otto , together with another aviation pioneer, Herbert Alberti. As was customary at the time, there was also a flying school, which included Ernst Udet as a flight student. His chief designer Gabriel Letsch designed a biplane with a rear-mounted pressure screw and a lattice fuselage, which soon became the standard aircraft of the Bavarian Air Force. For the drive he used one of the engines of his own construction of 100 HP, which he called AGO (for aviator Gustav Otto ). In 1912 he founded a branch at the Johannisthal airfield near Berlin , which soon became an independent company called AGO Flugzeugwerke under the direction of the directors Elisabeth Woerner and Hermann Fremery . At the beginning of the First World War, AGO tried to get armaments contracts by constructing observation aircraft. The first model was the AGO CI double-decker from designer August Haefeli , which continues to be driven by a pressure screw . It was produced in a small series in the Berlin-Johannisthal branch . The most successful aircraft was the AGO C.IV from 1916, built in around 70 copies, but it was extremely unpopular with pilots.

Two years after the outbreak of World War I , Gustav Otto Flugmaschinenwerke went bankrupt and the bankruptcy assets were then merged with Rapp Motorenwerke GmbH to form Bayerische Flugzeugwerke AG (BFW) in 1916 . This later resulted in BMW .

In the same year Otto founded a new company AGO (now for Aktiengesellschaft Gustav Otto ) together with Josef Schnittisser in Oschersleben , where he manufactured aircraft parts for other manufacturers until the end of the war.

After the collapse, he tried his hand at automotive engineering with Otto-Werke GmbH . In 1919 the Berlin company was closed and Otto also left the Oschersleben company. He retired to Lake Starnberg , where he died in 1926. His business went bankrupt in the same year and the 20 hectare site was acquired by Sudenburger Maschinenfabrik und Eisengießerei AG and initially expanded. But already in 1928 this company had to close and on June 30, 1930 the foreclosure auction took place.

Production was suspended for a few years until the Reich government acquired the halls and set up a company for the construction of aircraft under the cover name Apparatebau GmbH Oschersleben . From 1934 a state-of-the-art factory was built for this, including a settlement for the workers and their families. It was recognized as a NS model company.

The first orders for the new plant were for 36 Arado Ar 65 Jäger , 197 Arado Ar 66 advanced training aircraft and 77 Heinkel He 51 Jäger , of which the first aircraft, probably an Ar 65, had its maiden flight on May 1, 1935. This was followed by an order for 140 Henschel Hs 123 dive combat aircraft , with which the all-metal construction also found its way into AGO. They were delivered by the end of 1937. Then it was the turn of 241 Gotha Go 145 training aircraft and 223 Arado Ar 96 aircraft . The company also received an order for 150 Henschel Hs 126 reconnaissance aircraft in 1937, which was increased to 390 in the summer of 1938. Production of the Hs 126B ended in May 1941 with the delivery of the last of a total of 380 machines. Between March 1937 and the same month of the following year, 121 Focke-Wulf Fw 44 training aircraft also left the AGO factory.

At the beginning of 1938 the first Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter aircraft came into production, initially in the D version (128 units), then E and F, until finally, from October 1941, the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 in its continuously improved versions (A-2 series to A-8) formed the main part of production. By April 1945 around 3,500 Fw 190 had left the AGO works in Oschersleben.

In 1934 his own design office was founded, in which Paul Klages took over the position of chief designer in the spring of 1935. The Ao 192 Kurier touring aircraft from 1935, developed in competition with the Siebel Fh 104 , has become famous , but only seven of which were built. A destroyer project with the designation Ao 225 was also worked out, but did not get beyond wind tunnel model investigations. The RLM number 225 was passed on to Focke-Achgelis .

Several hundred prisoners of war as well as women and men from countries occupied by Germany had to do forced labor in the plants , with at least 71 losing their lives.

From July 1943 to June 1944 there were repeated heavy American air raids on Oschersleben . The production of the various assemblies of the Fw 190 was increasingly decentralized and underground (old potash and rock salt pits) in branch plants such as Hadmersleben and Bleiche . Only the final assembly was carried out under the most difficult conditions at the main plant in Oschersleben itself. The production of Focke-Wulf fighters continued until a few days before the occupation of Oschersleben by the US Army on April 11, 1945.

At the end of the war, the work was severely damaged, 80% of it was destroyed. This was followed by dismantling under the direction of the Red Army , which had replaced the American occupation in early July 1945. The main plant and the undestroyed branch plants were affected. By 1947 the remains of the factory halls were blown up by Soviet soldiers and the AGO company was also formally wound up in 1950.

Aircraft types

literature

  • René Scheer: AGO aircraft works. From the lattice hull to the Me 262. Ziethen, Oschersleben 2014, ISBN 978-3-86289-078-1
  • Peter Supf : The Book of German Flight History , Volumes I and II
  • Uwe Schmidt: AGO-Flugzeugwerke Oschersleben
  • Aircraft delivery schedules of the RLM LC II
  • Heinz Nowarra: Airplanes 1914–1918 , Munich 1959

Web links

Commons : AGO Flugzeugwerke  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rene Scheer: AGO aircraft factories . Ziethen-Verlag, Oschersleben 2014