RLM Aircraft Designation System - Evolution of The Designation System

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.

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. Initially, the factory that designed the plane maintained the biggest share of that planes production. With the war proceeding, the Luftwaffe's need 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 aggressively courted and headhunted, were famous for their tendency to leave one company for the next bigger one every few years. Finally more and more of them started their own aircraft development company under their own name. The RLM followed suit by giving their products a two-letter designation reflecting the constructor's name rather than 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 constructors but unused. Thus when Focke-Wulf's chief constructor Kurt Tank founded his own design bureau he got assigned the prefix Ta and the numbers 151 through 154. As a result, the further development of his Focke-Wulf Fw 190 became the Tank Ta 152 but remained commonly known as the Focke-Wulf Ta 152.

(*) 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. (For see the RLM airplanes arranged by manufacturer, see RLM aircraft by manufacturer)