Focke-Wulf began with light aircraft in Bremen and expanded through military orders. Its history includes wartime forced labour and a postwar return to aircraft production.
Henrich Focke and Georg Wulf met in 1911 and developed light aircraft together. Their A VII Storch received approval for public aviation in May 1923. Bremen merchants financed their move into commercial production.
Bremer Flugzeugbau became Focke-Wulf Flugzeugbau AG in January. Focke led design, Wulf tested aircraft, and Werner Naumann managed commercial affairs. The company built the A 16 passenger aircraft at Bremen airport.
Wulf died on 29 September during a test flight of the F 19 Ente, an experimental aircraft with a forward horizontal control surface. The company retained his name.
Focke-Wulf absorbed Albatros in 1931. Kurt Tank became technical director in 1933 as Henrich Focke left the management board. Nazi rearmament and Air Ministry financing drove expansion into additional Bremen factories.
The Fw 190 prototype first flew on 1 June 1939. Development addressed serious radial-engine cooling problems. Deliveries to JG 26 began in 1941; the later A-8 combined a BMW 801 engine with two fuselage machine guns and four wing cannon.
Focke-Wulf used forced labour, including civilians deported from occupied Europe and Soviet and French prisoners of war. In Bremen, workers were housed in camps and compelled to work at the company's factories. Forced labour also supplied its subcontractors.
At Aslau, now Osła in Poland, prisoners of the Gross-Rosen concentration-camp system assembled Focke-Wulf fighters for Concordia-Werk. The museum records at least 616 prisoners and at least 90 deaths during the camp's existence and evacuation.
Focke-Wulf's Bremen factories were heavily destroyed by the war's end. The Allied occupation prohibited powered-aircraft manufacture in Germany. The company turned to household goods and, later, gliders.
Focke-Wulf built Weihe 50 and Kranich III gliders. After restrictions on powered aircraft ended in 1955, it returned to military aviation, producing Piaggio P.149 trainers and participating in licensed Noratlas transport production.
Focke-Wulf and Weser Flugzeugbau combined as Vereinigte Flugtechnische Werke. VFW later partnered with the Dutch company Fokker, then became part of MBB. These successor businesses entered the industrial lineage of Airbus.
Jann Raveling, 4 March 2024; draws on the published history of Bremen's aviation industry.
Local historical account citing Herbert Schwarzwälder, Geschichte der Freien Hansestadt Bremen, volume IV. The article's wartime merger statement is not used here.
The museum identifies Concordia-Werk as the employer and Focke-Wulf fighters as the product; it does not identify an aircraft variant.
Aircraft development chronology and A-8 specifications.
Jann Raveling, 13 March 2024. The chronology follows the industrial succession through VFW and MBB.
The archive dates the combination with Focke-Wulf to 1963. Other institutional histories date the formal merger to 1964; the timeline presents 1963–64.