Flugmotorenwerke Ostmark
Coordinates: 48 ° 4 ′ 22 ″ N , 16 ° 19 ′ 28 ″ E
The Flugmotorenwerke Ostmark was a branch of the Junkers from 1941 to 1945 - and later the Daimler-Benz works. With Wiener Neudorf (then Greater Vienna ), Marburg an der Drau (Maribor) and Brünn (Brno), they had three production facilities for aircraft engines and parts, including Dubnitz an der Waag (today Dubnica nad Váhom ) in 1944 of Slovakia is to be counted. The area of the plant in Wiener Neudorf also included parts of the Lower Austrian communities of Biedermannsdorf , Guntramsdorf and Laxenburg .
The project
After the lost Battle of Britain in the autumn of 1940, the intensification of German air armament was ordered. In January 1941, the Reich Aviation Ministry (RLM) decided to finance a “1000-engine-per-month-plant” from Reich funds. With the Bank der Deutsche Luftfahrt (BDL) as the main donor, the “Flugmotorenwerke Ostmark GmbH ” (FO) was founded as a branch of the Junkers Group on January 14, 1941 . From the share capital of one million Reichsmarks (RM), the BDL contributed the majority of RM 900,000 to the business capital . For the first stage (500 engines per month) 265 million RM and for the second stage (1000 engines per month) 393 million RM were earmarked. In addition to the main plant in Wiener Neudorf, there was a branch in Brno, which was supposed to supply injection pumps and aggregates, and a plant that was soon relocated from Graz to Marburg an der Drau (today Maribor), which manufactured propellers with variable speed drives ( variable pitch propellers ). This production facility was, however, integrated into the VDM Group in 1941 and, with 4,000 employees, supplied 1,500 variable-speed gear units , 1,800 propellers and around 1,000 variable-pitch propellers per month to the FO, among others, from September 1941 to the end of 1944. Further suppliers were supposed to be located in the "Industriehorst Liesing" in Vienna-Liesing east of Brunner Strasse near ( Siebenhirten ), but in 1942 they were already a year behind with some buildings.
The Jumo 222 engine , which was already commissioned by Junkers in 1937 , a liquid-cooled in-line star engine with 24 cylinders and a starting power of 2000 HP (1471 kW), was to be built in the aero engine works in Ostmark . It was intended to drive the twin-engined B bomber advertised in 1939 , which Junkers had started to develop as the Ju 288 , Dornier as the Do 317 and Focke-Wulf as the Fw 191 . The development was under the direction of Ferdinand Brandner from Vienna . After the engine had completed its 100-hour run on the test bench in April 1941, the first deliveries were expected in August 1942. However, during trials there were constant engine malfunctions, bearing damage and corrosion, and the instruction to increase the power to 2500 hp (1839 kW).
The construction
The work planned by the architects Becvar and Ruschka was erected on an area of 250 hectares ; parts of the Wiener Neustädter Canal were also acquired with him . Construction began on July 25, 1941. Within eight months, 7,900 workers, mostly forced laborers and prisoners of war, had completed the plant. In addition to six halls measuring 150 × 100 meters, a power station, six blocks with twelve test stands each, two warehouses, a factory hall, 15 dining rooms and an administration building were built. Instead of the planned central kitchen, food was taken from the nearby St. Gabriel Monastery in Maria Enzersdorf. Since the plant was to be demolished again after the end of the war, it was built using the simplest construction method (concrete slab construction). 144 million RM had been invested by the topping-out ceremony on October 27, 1941. The start of production was now planned for June 1943, which was to be increased to 1200 pieces within two years. Damaged engines should be repaired before the start of series production.
The production
Since the problems with the Jumo 222 installed in test aircraft could not be resolved quickly enough, the Junkers company was withdrawn from the contract on December 24, 1941. The plant management was instructed instead as license to more sophisticated engine 603 Daimler-Benz DB to manufacture. This twelve-cylinder - V engine was constructed more simply and more durable. Under the designation 9-603, it became the standard engine for fighters and destroyers and - as a double engine DB 613 - also powered the controversial He 177 bomber . By 1944 it was brought up to a starting power of 2100 PS (1545 kW) with MW-50 injection.
This rescheduling resulted in Brno for the conversion of production at Bosch - injection pumps for Daimler-Benz aircraft engines and in Marburg (Drava) on VDM propeller. In addition, Junkerswerke withdrew from Flugmotorenwerke Ostmark, whose GmbH shares were taken over by Daimler-Benz. In November 1941, 15,000 workers had already been deployed to set up the three group plants, of which 1,900 were prisoners of war and at least 2,000 were forced laborers . At the end of January 1942, Wr. Neudorf 8,278 employees. The camps Griesfeld 1 and 2, Mitterfeld, Brunn am Gebirge and Guntramsdorf were built to accommodate them .
Due to a lack of machine tools, skilled workers and fixture makers, production was inadequate. When Hermann Göring visited the Wiener Neudorf plant on May 5, 1943, a scandal broke out in view of the fact that only a few dozen engines had been manufactured and around 100 units repaired. Plant management was withdrawn from Daimler-Benz, and Georg Meindl , Chairman of the Board of Management of Steyr-Werke , was appointed acting head of the FO. His analysis: The remaining executives at Junkers had sabotaged the switch to the "foreign" DB engine, the low work ethic of the (initially still mostly voluntary) foreigners was also complicit. Meindl, in consultation with the RLM, established the head of the Daimler-Benz engine plant in Genshagen near Berlin as head of production in Vienna and Brno, but stayed in Steyr himself. On August 4, 1943, satellite camps of the Mauthausen concentration camp were set up in Guntramsdorf and Hinterbrühl . The camp in Wiener Neudorf provided workers for the FO, the one in Hinterbrühl for the underground Heinkelwerk in the Seegrotte . An average of 2,500 men were deployed in the plant, mainly on the night shifts. Nevertheless, by the end of 1943 just 515 engines had been delivered.
The bombing war and the relocation of production
On August 27, 1943, the first heavy air raid on targets in the area of the Vienna basin took place (see also air raids on Vienna ). It met Wiener Neustadt , but also had indirect effects on the FO. An air raid shelter for the factory workers was created on Jennyberg near Mödling . On November 12, 1943, the Reich Ministry of Aviation gave the order to relocate production at the Wiener Neudorf plant to the northwestern Slovak town of Dubnitz, where a huge multi-storey bunker (320 × 125 m) was available. Before 1938, the Czechs had planned to relocate weapons production in the event of a German attack. The relocation proved to be successful, production was continuously increased, with 300 motors already being delivered to the cell manufacturers in Dubnitz in June 1944.
When the plant was attacked directly from the air for the first time on July 8, 1944, there was damage, but no production losses. The staff shortages were also low because a large number of protective systems had already been set up. In another attack on July 16, three halls were destroyed, but two of them were already empty. Another heavy attack took place on July 26, 1944, in which Halls 9 to 14, the company building, two test stands and two cooling towers were damaged. The bombs not only hit the plant, but also the camp of the concentration camp prisoners deployed there. 31 of them were killed. Since their accommodations were also destroyed, the surviving prisoners had to be moved to a new camp in the municipality of Wiener Neudorf (Mitterfeld) the next day. But the American bombers also suffered heavy losses. A bomber unit of 26 aircraft, for example, shot down eight machines in Styria and three in Lower Austria within a few minutes, with 66 crew members dying and 43 others being captured. As early as May 29, 1944, the suppliers in the Liesing industrial base had been a target of the bomber fleet.
At the suggestion of Director Meindl, responsibility for production in Dubnitz was now transferred to Skoda , which had been made a subsidiary of Reichswerke AG “Hermann Göring” in Linz. Meindl connected this with the intention of keeping the Wiener Neudorf plant, which with its remaining capacity had become a supplier for Steyr, including its skilled workers and machines in Austria.
When the Slovak uprising broke out on August 29, 1944 , the headquarters of the insurgents was less than 100 km from Dubnitz; an end to production in Slovakia was therefore foreseeable. Production was now relocated to an underground facility near Obrigheim am Neckar (code name “Goldfisch”) and which functioned as the Neckarelz concentration camp , where the Daimler-Benz engine plant in Genshagen had already been relocated. However, this measure could only be partially implemented.
As the example of FO shows, it was not the destruction of the production facilities that paralyzed the Air Force . It was the offensive against the fuel industry that began in 1944, the production facilities of which were more difficult to outsource.
A comparison of the manufacture of the most important aircraft engines
The Jumo 213 and DB 603 engines were interchangeable as unitary engines with standardized connections. These were water-cooled twelve-cylinder V-engines with "hanging" cylinders ( crankshaft on top).
| Manufacturer | product | piece | power |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daimler Benz | DB 601 | 19,000 | 1175 PS / 864 kW (601 Aa, Ba) to 1350 PS / 993 kW (601E / F) |
| Daimler Benz | DB 603 | 8758, of which FO: 2890 |
1750 PS / 1287 kW (603 A, C, E) to 2800 PS / 2059 kW (603 N) |
| Daimler Benz | DB 605 | 42,400 | 1475 PS / 1085 kW (605 A) to 2000 PS / 1471 kW (605 DC) |
| Junkers | Jumo 211 | 68,200 | 1200 PS / 883 kW (211 B, D, H, G) to 1500 PS / 1103 kW (N) |
| Junkers | Jumo 213 | 9100 | 1750 PS / 1287 kW (A-1, E) to 2000 PS / 1471 kW (213 S) |
| BMW | BMW 801 | 21,000 | 1560 PS / 1147 kW (801 A and B) to 2270 PS / 1670 kW (801 TQ) |
| total | all works | 168,458 |
End of war and post-war period
At the end of the war in 1945, the Red Army confiscated the site as German property, dismantled the few remaining machines and destroyed the rest. Today, despite the heavy construction, remains of the bunker systems are still reminiscent of the plant.
With the conclusion of the state treaty in 1955, all company shares went to the Republic of Austria , and the "Flugmotorenwerke Ostmark Ges.mbH" emerged again as a legal entity. About fifty creditors filed claims in the amount of 300 million schillings (ATS). This contrasted with corporate assets of 3 million schillings and a valuable area worth 20 million schillings. Finally, the state of Lower Austria took over the public administration of the FO and was able to agree with the creditors on a settlement of ATS 34 million. On October 31, 1964, the two national companies NEWAG and NIOGAS took over most of the shares in FO in equal parts. In 1968 the state of Lower Austria became the sole owner.
The decision to use the site as an industrial park was made while the area was still under public administration. This marked the birth of the industrial center south , which is now managed by Eco Plus .
credentials
- ↑ Norbert Schausberger : Armaments in Austria 1938-45: a study on the interaction between economy, politics and warfare. In: Publications of the Austrian Institute for Contemporary History. Volume 8. Hollinek, Vienna 1970. pp. 83 and 108.
- ↑ Meeting of Jägerstab June 15, 1944, BA / MA Freiburg, RL 3/8 fol. 4505 f.
- ↑ Wiener Neudorf - Flugmotorenwerke Ostmark ( Memento of the original from March 6, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Website www.geheimprojekte.at, accessed on December 27, 2014
- ^ History of the Wiener Neudorf subcamp ( Memento from December 26, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), website www.mauthausen-memorial.at, accessed on April 19, 2018
- ^ Major attack by the 15th US Air Force on Eastern Austria on July 26, 1944 - overview of the losses of the 301st bomber group , website regiowiki.at, accessed on December 26, 2014
- ^ Norbert Schausberger: Armor. Pp. 150-151.
- ^ Heinz J. Nowarra: The German Air Armament 1933-1945. Munich 1977.
literature
- Walter Stastny, Peter Krause: Flugmotorenwerke Ostmark. (ÖFH special issue No. 19 as the most important source).
- Ferdinand Brandner: A life between the fronts. Catfish 1975.
- von Gersdorff, Grasmann: The German aviation. Volume 2: Aircraft engines and jet engines, Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-7637-5272-2 .
- Norbert Schausberger: Armaments in Austria 1938–1945. Publications of the Institute for Contemporary History, number 8. Vienna, Hollinek publishing house, 1970
- Heinz J. Nowarra : The German Air Armament 1933-1945. Munich 1977.
Web links
- Guntramsdorf / Wiener Neudorf Concentration Camp Memorial Association
- Secret projects. At (Austria's history in the Third Reich) on the subject