13 Facts About Wilhelm Messerschmitt

Wilhelm Emil "Willy" Messerschmitt was a German aircraft designer and manufacturer.

Wilhelm Messerschmitt was born in Frankfurt am Main, the son of Baptist Ferdinand Messerschmitt and his second wife, Anna Maria Schaller .

Harth joined the German army in 1914 and while he was away at war, Wilhelm Messerschmitt continued work on one of Harth's designs, the S5 glider.

At first, Wilhelm Messerschmitt built sailplanes, but within two years had progressed via motor gliders to small powered aircraft - sports and touring types.

Ties that Wilhelm Messerschmitt had formed with leading Nazis Rudolf Hess and Hermann Goring saved him from sharing the fate of Milch's other great enemy, Hugo Junkers.

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The following year, Wilhelm Messerschmitt incorporated many advanced design features of the Bf 108 into the Bf 109 fighter.

On 11 July 1938, Wilhelm Messerschmitt was appointed chairman and managing director of BFW and the company was renamed after him to Wilhelm Messerschmitt AG.

Wilhelm Messerschmitt saw his company through mergers first with Bolkow in 1968 and then Hamburger Flugzeugbau in 1969, at which point it became MBB with Wilhelm Messerschmitt as chairman until 1970 when he retired.

Wilhelm Messerschmitt died eight years later, on 15 September 1978 in a Munich hospital in undisclosed circumstances.

Wilhelm Messerschmitt's designs were characterized by a clear focus on performance, especially by striving for lightweight construction, but by minimizing parasitic drag from aerodynamic surfaces.

Wilhelm Messerschmitt's critics accused him of taking this approach too far in some designs.

Wilhelm Messerschmitt's falling out with Harth had been over designs Harth felt to be dangerously unstable, and the Me 210 displayed instability, too, which could be cured only by enlarging the airframe and the aerodynamic surfaces, increasing drag and weight.

Wilhelm Messerschmitt was appointed Honorary Professor by the Munich Technical College in 1930, and the Vice-President of the Deutsche Akademie fur Luftfahrtforschung .