RLM aircraft designation system

The Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM) had a system for aircraft designation which 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. See also List of RLM aircraft, the RLM-GL/C list. Mainly aircraft of the WWII Luftwaffe, but also civilian airliners and sport planes.

The system

When the RLM ("Reichsluftfahrtministerium"; German for "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.

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 – thus, "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 – which had been split off from Hamburger Flugzeugbau (Ha) – to Blohm & Voss and received the designation BV for their new aircraft, the first being the BV 138.

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.

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

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

Related content

*List of RLM paint designations
*WW2 Luftwaffe aircraft engines
*WW2 Luftwaffe aircraft weapons
*RLM numbering system for gliders and sailplanes
*RLM aircraft by manufacturer

ee also

* Common WW2 Weapons
* List of aircraft of the Armée de l'Air
* List of Sailplanes

References

External links

* [http://www.luftfahrtmuseum.com/htmi/general/i.htm Virtual Aviation Museum]
* [http://www.designation-systems.net/non-us/germany.html German Military Aircraft Designations (1933-1945)]