Erla machine works

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Erla Maschinenwerk GmbH
legal form Company with limited liability
founding July 18, 1934
resolution August 27, 1949
Reason for dissolution liquidation
Seat Leipzig , Germany
Branch Aircraft manufacturer

Erla built around a third of more than 33,000 Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter aircraft in Leipzig
The DKW Erla Me 5a as in September 1933 in L'Aerophile was presented
The DKW Erla Me 5a as in September 1933 in L'Aerophile was presented

The Erla Machinery GmbH was was established in 1934 aircraft manufacturer in Leipzig . That the district Heiterblick based company presented for the Air Force of the German Reich to 1945 a total of about one-third of more than 33,000  fighters of the type Messerschmitt Bf 109 ago. During the Second World War , the Leipzig company was the largest producer of the German Bf 109 standard fighter aircraft, alongside Messerschmitt GmbH in Regensburg and Wiener Neustädter Flugzeugwerke .

After the German surrender in May 1945, all Erla factories were dismantled as pure armaments companies and the company was deleted from the Leipzig commercial register at the end of August 1949 .

The factory settlement built in Leipzig- Thekla in 1937/38 , the streets of which bear Germanic god names, is still called the Erla settlement today.

history

In the early 1930s, the aircraft designer Franz Xaver Mehr developed the low- wing Me 5A with a water-cooled two - cylinder two - stroke engine (type FL 600 with 20 hp output) from the DKW brand , which was produced by the Zschopauer Motorenwerke (part of Auto Union from mid-1932 ) came from. His Me 4a motor glider remained a one-off. More cooperated with DKW owner JS Rasmussen , who wanted to have the small aircraft built as "DKW Erla Me 5A" in Erla in the Ore Mountains by Nestler  &  Breitfeld GmbH ( Eisenhüttenwerk Erla ), which belongs to his group . For this purpose, on September 16, 1933, the "Eisen- und Flugzeugwerk Erla GmbH" was entered in the commercial register of the Schwarzenberg / Erzgeb district court . registered. A demonstration of the DKW Erla Me 5a model aircraft with the registration D-2585 took place at Berlin-Tempelhof Airport on November 30, 1933 . The type was offered at the price of 3875  Reichsmarks , which, adjusted for inflation, corresponds to around 17,800 euros in today's currency.

However, since the aircraft construction department of the "Eisen- und Flugzeugwerk Erla" was increasingly getting into liquidation difficulties, at the urging of the directors of the plant in Leipzig-Heiterblick it was spun off into the Erla Maschinenwerk GmbH , newly founded on July 18, 1934 , and the plant in the Erzgebirge was re-established Erla GmbH renamed.

The main purpose of the new establishment, however, was not the construction of civil aircraft (even if officially declared as such), especially since it was clear that the Me 5a was out of the question as a training aircraft for the Air Force and that sales of the small aircraft to civilian buyers were slow. According to the ideas of the Reich Aviation Ministry , the Leipzig plant was commissioned from 1935 in the course of the armament of the Wehrmacht to build aircraft from other manufacturers under license : Arado Ar 65 (24 pieces, 1935), Heinkel He 51 (80 pieces, 1936) and in 1937 the Arado Ar 68 (76 units) and the Gotha Go 145 (106 machines).

In 1937 Erla built the first 157 Bf-109 fighter aircraft in version B. The other production figures were:

  • 1938: 319 B, D and E machines.
  • 1939: 545 Bf 109 E
  • 1940: 426 versions E and F
  • 1941: 697 version F
  • 1942: 973 versions F and G
  • 1943: 2011 version G
  • 1944: 4349 (ditto)
  • 1945: 1574 machines (until mid-April)

In addition, from 1939 to 1943 Erla supplied the MIAG and Luther-Werke (Braunschweig) as well as the Gothaer Waggonfabrik (Gotha) wing kits for the construction of the Messerschmitt Bf 110 .

In addition to the main plant in Heiterblick (Plant I; Wodanstrasse), other Leipzig locations were added: Mockau (Plant II; Vierzehn-Trees-Weg), Abtnaundorf (Plant III; Theklaer Str./Heiterblickstrasse) and, for parts production, Plant V (Pfaffendorfer Strasse 31 –33 north of the congress hall ), which was rented from the worsted spinning mill in Leipzig . Another supplier (Plant IV) was the closed factory in Johanngeorgenstadt of the piano manufacturer Hupfeld  &  Zimmermann AG , which was bought in September 1939 . There were u. a. Manufactured until September 1941 for the cargo glider DFS 230 wings and fuselages, which were transported to Plant I (Wodanstrasse) in Leipzig and finally assembled there. At the end of 1940 Erla had 9,316 employees, 6719 of them in Leipzig and 700 in Johanngeorgenstadt, where later u. a. Bf-109 tail units were built. Another 757 people repaired damaged machines in the two Erla plants in Belgium: Brussels (Plant VI, end of 1941: 1,025 people) and Antwerp (Plant VII, end of 1941: 2,525 people). In early 1942, the VIa plant in Mechelen (Belgium) was added. Plant VIII in Mielec (Poland, then General Government ) was closed again in December 1941.

From March 1943 to April 1945, the Leipzig-Thekla subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp belonging to Erla was used to accommodate the forced laborers ; In addition, front companies set up additional warehouses at various outsourced production facilities such as Flöha ("Fortuna GmbH", fuselage construction ) or Mülsen St. Micheln ("Gross GmbH", wings ). In 1944, with the forced deployment of forced labor and " Eastern workers " and decentralized manufacturing, the maximum of around 4,300 machines was reached, which corresponds to an average of twelve aircraft per day. Despite the air raids on Leipzig and increasing problems with transport to and from the relocation sites, the final assembly was able to be continued on five places. In addition to the conversion work for the production of the Focke-Wulf Ta 152 H-1 / R11, the series production of which was to begin in March 1945, around 1,600 Bf 109s were built by April 1945. On April 18, 1945, units of the 1st US Army occupied Leipzig and surrendered the city to the Red Army on July 2, 1945 .

By order of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD), all Erla locations were dismantled from November 1945 and the real estate was transferred to the city of Leipzig in 1947.

source

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ This figure was based on the template: Inflation determined, rounded to 100 EUR and applies to the previous January.