The RLM aircraft designation system was an attempt by the aviation bureaucracy of the Third Reich to standardize and produce an identifier for each aircraft type produced in Germany. It was in use from 1933 to 1945 though many pre-1933 aircraft were included and the system had changes over those years. A compiled list of the actual designations is here, the RLM-GL/C list. Mainly aircraft of the WW2 Luftwaffe, but also civilian airliners and sport planes. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the Nazi Party, with the Führer Adolf Hitler as dictator. ... This is a list of aircraft type numbers allocated by the RLM between 1933 and 1945 for German military and civilian aircraft. ...

The System

When the RLM (Reichsluftfahrtministerium "Reich Aviation Ministry") was given control of the country's aviation activities in 1933, it set out to catalog aircraft already in production by various manufacturers as well as new projects approved for development by the ministry. The RLM thus made necessary improvements to a designation system which had been set up in 1929/30 by the Heereswaffenamt (Army Weapons Office) in the Reichswehrministerium (Defense Ministry), together with other institutions related to the industry. The former system had caused confusion in the use of aircraft designations among the different manufacturers. For example, no less than six aircraft of different firms had carried the number 33: these were the Caspar C 33, the Focke-Wulf A 33, the Heinkel HD 33, the Junkers W 33, the Klemm L 33 and the BFW M 33. 1933 (MCMXXXIII) was a common year starting on Sunday. ... An aerospace manufacturer is a company or individual involved in the various aspects of designing, building, testing, selling, and maintaining aircraft, aircraft parts, missiles, rockets, and/or spacecraft. ...

The improved designation system was introduced in order to provide a simple and unambiguous identification of every airplane. The heart of the new system was a (theoretically) unique number assigned by the RLM. In internal paperwork, this number was simply prefixed "8-" (or, in the case of sailplanes, subject to a separate numerical list, "108-"), while "9-" indicated aircraft engines. Also, the new standardized type designation added two letters representing the relevant firm's name. Dornier (Do) and Rohrbach (Ro) had already done this for some time. The first of these two letters had to be shown in upper case, the second always in lower case, despite its origin Рthus, Fw for Focke-Wulf or Bf for Bayerische Flugzeugwerke. The very first exemption from this rule was granted several years later to Blohm & Voss when they renamed their aircraft manufacturing operation Рwhich had been split off from Hamburger Flugzeugbau (Ha) Рto Blohm & Voss and received the designation BV for their new aircraft, the first being the BV 138. Gliders are un-powered heavier-than-air aircraft. ... Messerschmitt-B̦lkow-Blohm (MBB) is a famous German aircraft manufacturer, known primarily for its World War II fighter aircraft, notably the Bf 109 and Me 262. ... On April 5, 1877, Hermann Blohm and Ernst Voss founded the Blohm & Voss Schiffswerft und Maschinenfabrik shipbuilding and engineering works as a general partnership. ...

Thus, the RLM internally referred to a Messerschmitt twin-jet fighter project as type "8-262", although the same aircraft in service would be more generally known as the "Me 262". See List of RLM aircraft for a full list of designations allocated by the RLM and the aircraft to which they corresponded. Originally, these numbers were assigned sequentially and wherever possible attempted to take into account the manufacturers' own in-house design numbers for types already existing in 1933. Duplication resulted from the fact that when one manufacturer abandoned a project, the same number was occasionally re-allocated, with an appropriate time delay, to another manufacturer. This is a list of aircraft type numbers allocated by the RLM between 1933 and 1945 for German military and civilian aircraft. ...

A list of the most common manufacturers and their letter designations is given below:

Each individual prototype aircraft were suffixed with "V" (for Versuchs "prototype") and a unique identification number. So, for example, the Me 262 V3 was the third prototype of the Me 262 built. It should be noted, that V numbers were not used before February 1935. Look up Albatros on Wiktionary, the free dictionary For the article on the bird, see albatross The name Albatros may refer to— the sailing vessel Albatros which sank on May 3, 1961, due to a white squall and prompted the U.S. Sailing School Vessels Act of 1982. ... Walter and Reimar Horten were teenage air enthusiasts in Germany between the World Wars, a time in which the Treaty of Versailles limited the construction of military airplanes, and in which German military flying had gone underground, taking the form of civil clubs where students trained on gliders under the... Arado Flugzeugwerke was originally established as the Warnemünde factory of the Flugzeugbau Friedrichshafen firm. ... Henschel & Son, during World War II, was the primary manufacturer of the Panzer VI. Henschel aircraft and missiles included: Henschel Hs 117 Schmetterling (Butterfly), surface-to-air missile (rocket-engined) Henschel Hs 121, fighter + trainer (prototype) Henschel Hs 123, ground-attack (biplane) Henschel Hs 124, heavy fighter + bomber (prototype) Henschel... Argus Motoren was a German aircraft engine manufacturing firm, known for their series of small inverted_V engines and the pulsejet used on the V1 flying bomb. ... The Gerhard Fieseler Werke was a German aircraft manufacturer of the 1930s and 40s. ... Junkers & Co was a major German aircraft manufacturer. ... Bachem was a German company that built the famous Bachem Ba 349 rocket interceptor aircraft at the end of World War II. See also: RLM, List of RLM aircraft designations Bachem is actually a multinational biotech company see http://www. ... Klemm was a German aircraft manufacturer noteworthy for sports and touring planes of the 1930s. ... Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB) is a famous German aircraft manufacturer, known primarily for its World War II fighter aircraft, notably the Bf 109 and Me 262. ... Flettner was a German helicopter manufacturer during World War II, founded by Anton Flettner. ... Bücker-Flugzeugbau GmbH was a German aircraft manufacturer founded in 1932. ... Focke-Wulf Flugzeugbau AG was a German manufacturer of military aircraft used by the Luftwaffe during World War II. Many of the companys successful fighter aircraft designs were slight modifications of the Focke-Wulf Fw 190. ... On April 5, 1877, Hermann Blohm and Ernst Voss founded the Blohm & Voss Schiffswerft und Maschinenfabrik shipbuilding and engineering works as a general partnership. ... Gothaer Waggonfabrik (Gotha, GWF) was a German manufacturer of rolling stock established in the late nineteenth century at Warnemünde. ... The Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Segelflug, or DFS (German Research Institute for Sailplane Flight) was formed in 1933 to centralise all gliding activity in Germany. ... Hamburger Flugzeugbau was a Hamburg-Finkenwerder based aircraft company established as a subsidiary of Blohm + Voss in July 1933 to build seaplanes. ... Weser Flugzeugbau GmbH, known as Weserflug, was the fourth largest aircraft manufacturer in World War II Germany. ... Dornier logo. ... Heinkel Flugzeugwerke was a German aircraft manufacturing company founded by and named after Ernst Heinkel. ... Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH is a German company which, during the early 20th century, was a leader in the design and manufacture of rigid airships. ... Messerschmitt is a famous German aircraft manufacturer, known primarily for their World War II fighter aircraft, notably the Bf 109 and Me 262. ... Focke-Achgelis was a German helicopter company founded in 1937 by Henrich Focke, and Gerd Achgelis. ... Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH is a German company which, during the early 20th century, was a leader in the design and manufacture of rigid airships. ... SNCASO or Société Nationale de Constructions Aéronautiques du Sud Ouest was a French aircraft manufacturer, which originated on November 16, 1936, from the merger of the factories of Blériot of Suresnes, Bloch of Villacoublay et Courbevoie, SASO of Bordeaux-Mérignac, UCA of Bordeaux-Bègles, SAB... The Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbe (German: Swallow) was the worlds first operational jet-powered fighter aircraft. ...

Once accepted by Lufthansa or the Luftwaffe, major variants of the aircraft were suffixed alphabetically with a capital letter. For example, the major variants of the Me 262 were numbered Me 262 A, Me 262 B, and Me 262 C. Deutsche Lufthansa AG (ISIN: DE0008232125) (pronounced ) is the largest airline in Germany, and the second-largest in Europe (behind Air France-KLM, but before British Airways). ... The Deutsche Luftwaffe or   (German: air force, literally Air Weapon IPA: ) is the commonly used term for the German air force. ...

More minor variants were then suffixed numerically, beginning with -0 for pre-production evaluation versions. Thus, the first batch of Me 262 As supplied by Messerschmitt were designated Me 262 A-0, followed by production versions Me 262 A-1 through to (in the case of this particular aircraft) Me 262 A-5.

More minor variants still were given a lower case alphabetical suffix. When the Me 262 A-1a was to be experimentally equipped with different engines, in this given case the BMW 003 units, it became the Me 262 A-1b. The BMW 003 was an early turbojet engine produced in Germany during World War II. Work on its design began earlier than the contemporary Junkers Jumo 004 engine, but prolonged developmental problems meant that the BMW 003 entered production much later, and the aircraft projects that had been designed with...

Finally, special conversions of basic types were given the suffix R/ or /U followed by a number. R means Rüststand and was usually done with aircraft taken from the assembly line. The Rüststand designation was used for modification of basic types in order to be usable for a specific mission task like recon, fighter-bomber or bomber-destroyer. U means Umrüstsatz (conversion kit) and was done with aircraft taken from the assembly line but also in repair workshops with airframes already in use. The Umrüstsatz designation was used for smaller equipment changes like additional boost agents for the engine or a different main armament. For example, Me 262 A-1a/U3 referred to a small number of the standard Me 262 A-1a fighters that were modified by Messerschmitt as reconnaissance aircraft. The suffix trop (for "tropical") was applied to aircraft modified to operate in the hot and dusty North African and Mediterranean theatres, for example, the Bf 109 F-4 trop.

name changes and new constructors

In 1933 Germany's largest shipbuilder Blohm und Voss in Hamburg opened an aircraft subsidiary under the name of Hamburger Flugzeugbau. RLM awarded this factory the designation Ha. However the connection with 'Hamburgs tradition' Blohm & Voss was just too strong to be neglected and the aircraft comming from the Hamburger flugzeugwerke were commonly known as 'Blom & Voss type Ha xxx' . Finaly the RLM caved in to popular views and gave the factory its new designation BV for Blom & Voss. Blohm + Voss Schiffswerft und Maschinenfabrik is a German shipbuilding and engineering works. ... Hamburger Flugzeugbau was a Hamburg-Finkenwerder based aircraft company established as a subsidiary of Blohm + Voss in July 1933 to build seaplanes. ...

the Bavarian Aricraft Works Bayrische Flugzeugwerke was founded in 1926 out of the bancrupt remainder of former Udet flugzeugbau. Originaly producing its legacy of Udet-designed sportsplanes, it later went on to secure the services of Willy Messerschmitt, not as a chief engineer but as a free-lance designer. Thus BFW in Munich and augsburg would produce and distribute deswigns from Flugzeugbau Messerschmitt in Bamberg. For some reason, (and also in part because of a deep personal animosity between Willy Messerschmitt and State Secretary of Aviation Erhard Milch) the RLM awarded the manufacturers designation NOT to Messerschmitt but to BFW and thus Messerschmitts record sportsplane design M.37 was produced as the Bayrische Flugzeugwerke Bf 108. Dissatisfied with this settlement, Messerschmitt himself used the money from the sales of his designs to buy a tract of land in Regensburg, found the Messerschmitt GMBH aircraft factory and planned (or threathened) to start aircraft production on his own. Forced to choose between giving Messerschmitt his due and becomming a pure subcontractor, on 11 July 1938 the Bayrische flugzeugwerke took on Messerschmitt as chairman and managing director, took over the Regensburg plant and renamed itself the Messerschmitt AG. the RLM gave this 'new' factory the designation Me. The first aircraft to benefit from the change was the Me 210. Nevertheless the three aircraft Bf 108, 109 and 110 kept their Bf until the end. Ernst Udet (April 26, 1896 - November 17, 1941) was the second-highest scoring German flying ace of World War I. He was one of the youngest aces and was the highest scoring German ace to survive the war. ... Wilhelm Emil Messerschmitt (June 26, 1898 – September 15, 1978) (known as Willi or Willy) was a German aircraft designer and manufacturer. ... Erhard Milch (March 30, 1892 – January 25, 1972) was a German field marshal of Jewish ancestry who oversaw the development of the Luftwaffe as part of the re-armament of Germany following World War I. // Milch was born in Wilhelmshaven to a Jewish father and Christian mother. ...

In 1933, the RLM found that its aircraft production was concentrated too much in the South and West of the country and therfore asked Hanns Klemm to relocate his factory Klemm Flugzeugbau from Böblingen in Bavaria to the town of Halle in Saxony. Unwilling to leave his 'home turf' Klemm teamed up with financier Fritz Siebel and founded Flugzeugbau Halle: a completely new factory in Halle license-building Klemm designs under the RLM designation Fh. However by the time the first Halle design, the Fh 104 (That started its life on the drawign board still as the Klemm Kl 104) had flown in 1937, Siebel became majority shareholder of the new factory, bought in his own design team and renamed the factory Siebel Flugzeugwerke KG, henceforthe producing his own designs under the RLM letter designation Si. Klemm was a German aircraft manufacturer noteworthy for sports and touring planes of the 1930s. ... See also: Siebel Systems Siebel, originally Flugzeugbau Halle, was a German aircraft manufacturer. ... Klemm was a German aircraft manufacturer noteworthy for sports and touring planes of the 1930s. ... See also: Siebel Systems Siebel, originally Flugzeugbau Halle, was a German aircraft manufacturer. ...

Also in 1933, the glider schools of the Rhön-Rossitten Gesellschaft were incorporated into the Hitlerjugend, while its construction and research team continued as a pure experimental think tank under the name Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Segelflug or simply DFS. Although the DFS was a pure research facility and lacked the means of series production, several of its designs were license-built by various aircraft factories. Uncharacteristic for the RLM, this designs retained the 3-letter all-capital designation DFS Founded in 1924, the Rhön-Rositten Gesellschaft (Rhön & Rositten society) became the first official organization for glider and sailplane flying, training and research. ... The German Nazi party established the Hitler Youth (in German: Hitler-Jugend or HJ) in 1926. ... The Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Segelflug, or DFS (German Research Institute for Sailplane Flight) was formed in 1933 to centralise all gliding activity in Germany. ...

A list of the most notable changes in designation appears below:

On April 5, 1877, Hermann Blohm and Ernst Voss founded the Blohm & Voss Schiffswerft und Maschinenfabrik shipbuilding and engineering works as a general partnership. ... Messerschmitt is a famous German aircraft manufacturer, known primarily for their World War II fighter aircraft, notably the Bf 109 and Me 262. ... Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB) is a famous German aircraft manufacturer, known primarily for its World War II fighter aircraft, notably the Bf 109 and Me 262. ... See also: Siebel Systems Siebel, originally Flugzeugbau Halle, was a German aircraft manufacturer. ...

evolution of the designation system

By the time the second world war started, manufacturers increasingly built developments of successful existing types rather than completely new designs. To reflect the 'lineage' of those aircraft, the new types were numbered in steps of 100 above the number of the basic model they were derived from. Thus, the Junkers Ju 88 formed the basis for the Ju 188, Ju 288, Ju 388, and Ju 488. The Junkers Ju 88 was a WW2 Luftwaffe twin-engine multi-role aircraft. ... The Ju 188 Rächer (Avenger) was a high-performance medium bomber from Junkers, the planned follow-on to the famed Ju 88 with better performance and payload. ... The Junkers Ju 288 was a German bomber aircraft designed during World War II, but which only ever flew in prototype form. ... The Junkers Ju 388J Störtebeker (a famous German pirate of the Middle Ages) was a World War II heavy fighter based on the famous Ju 88 airframe. ... The Ju 488 was a proposed heavy strategic bomber, to be used by Germany in World War II, the project never got past the prototype stage. ...

Another change in the system was the gradual replacement of the two-letter prefix for the constructor with a prefix for the designer: Almost from the beginning the RLM used an elaborate system of licence-building and subcontracting to maximize its output of huge numbers of relatively few types of 'standard equipment' airplanes. Initialy, the factory that designed the plane maintained the bigest share of that planes production. With the war proceeding, the Luftwaffe's hunger for fresh airplanes quickly outpaced the capacity of the original manufacturers, certainly with its factories now regularly being bombed by the allies. As a result the connection between aircraft and original manufacturer eventually lost its significance: Aircraft were now built by a variety of factories often without any links to the constructor whose name it bore. Furthermore, aircraft engineers and designers, a hot commodity for a constructor and therefore agressively courted and headhunted, were famous for their tendency to leave one company for the next bigger one every few years. Finaly more and more of them started their own aircraft developement company under their own name. The RLM followed suit by giving their producs a two-letter designation reflecting the constructor's name rather then the constructor he (originally) worked for. To further complicate things, those new design bureaus were often assigned ranges of aircraft numbers formerly assigned to other consstructors but unused. Thus when Focke Wulf's chief constructor Kurt Tank founded its own design bureau he got assigned the prefix Ta and the numbers 151 through 154. As a result, the further developement of his Focke-Wulf Fw 190 became the Tank Ta 152 but remained commonly known as the Focke-Wulf Ta152. The Allies of World War II were the countries officially opposed to the Axis powers during the Second World War. ... Kurt Waldemar Tank, 1944. ... Focke-Wulf Fw 190 in flight. ... The Focke-Wulf Ta 152 was a WW2 Luftwaffe fighter aircraft. ...

A list of the most important designer-namegivers appears below:

(*) Although Hütter never worked for Heinkel, his only aircraft project, the Hü 211 was a development of the Heinkel 219 with a new high-ratio high-performance wing. Gothaer Waggonfabrik (Gotha, GWF) was a German manufacturer of rolling stock established in the late nineteenth century at Warnemünde. ... Alexander Lippisch earned his PhD in 1943 at the University of Heidelberg. ... Kurt Waldemar Tank, 1944. ... Focke-Wulf Flugzeugbau AG was a German manufacturer of military aircraft used by the Luftwaffe during World War II. Many of the companys successful fighter aircraft designs were slight modifications of the Focke-Wulf Fw 190. ... The Hütter Hü 211 was a prototype long-range reconnaissance and heavy night fighter commissioned by the Reich Air Ministry in late 1944. ...

There is no single "master list" of designations that holds true throughout 1933-1945; the sequence is particularly muddled at the beginning and end of the list. To see the RLM-GL/C list in a numerical table, go to List of RLM aircraft
To see the RLM airplanes arranged by manufacturer, go to RLM aircraft by manufacturer This is a list of aircraft type numbers allocated by the RLM between 1933 and 1945 for German military and civilian aircraft. ... // RLM aircraft by Manufacturer (Not Totally Updated Yet) Albatros Albatros Al 101, L 101, two-seat sportsplane + trainer, 1930 Albatros Al 102, L 102, two-seat sportsplane + trainer, 1931 Albatros Al 103, L 103, two-seat sportsplane + trainer, 1932 Arado Arado Ar 64, fighter (biplane) Arado Ar 65, fighter/trainer...

Related content

• List of RLM paint designations
• List of Aircraft of the Akademische Fliegergruppe Akademische Fliegergruppe (University Flying Group)
• WW2 Luftwaffe aircraft engines
• WW2 Luftwaffe aircraft weapons
• RLM aircraft by manufacturer

RLM-FS List. ... This is a list of all German Motors including all aircraft engines, rocket motors, jets and any other powerplants, along with a very basic description. ... List of weapons of World War II Luftwaffe Aircraft: In World War II, The German airforce, the Luftwaffe, used a variety of weapons to keep their aircraft equipped with the most modern weaponry available at that time, until later in the war when resources got thin. ... // RLM aircraft by Manufacturer (Not Totally Updated Yet) Albatros Albatros Al 101, L 101, two-seat sportsplane + trainer, 1930 Albatros Al 102, L 102, two-seat sportsplane + trainer, 1931 Albatros Al 103, L 103, two-seat sportsplane + trainer, 1932 Arado Arado Ar 64, fighter (biplane) Arado Ar 65, fighter/trainer...

See also

• Common WW2 Weapons
• List of aircraft of the Armée de l'Air
• BMW 801
• BMW 003
• List of Sailplanes
• RLM numbering system for gliders and sailplanes

This page lists the common infantry weapons used by the various armies engaged in World War II. // Handguns Enfield Revolver No. ... Aircraft of the French Armée de lAir during the Battle of France in 1940. ... The BMW 801 was a powerful German air-cooled radial aircraft engine built by BMW and used in a number of German military aircraft of World War II. The engine’s cylinders were in two rows of seven cylinders each, the bore and stroke were both 156 mm, giving... The BMW 003 was an early turbojet engine produced in Germany during World War II. Work on its design began earlier than the contemporary Junkers Jumo 004 engine, but prolonged developmental problems meant that the BMW 003 entered production much later, and the aircraft projects that had been designed with... List of Gliders Göppingen Gö 1 Wolf I, 1935 Göppingen Gö 3 Minimoa, 1936 Göppingen Gö 4 Göppingen Gö 5, 1937 DFS Hangwind, 1927 DFS Einheitsschulflugzeug Einheitsschulflugzeug (standard flight trainer), 1931 DFS Rhönbussard Rhönbussard, 1933 DFS Habicht DFS Kranich External link A large list... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

External links

• Virtual Aviation Museum
• German Military Aircraft Designations (1933-1945)