EugeneBazaroff

The Chairxpert and Hetmanist
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So, Austrians had Italian fighters Fiat CR.32 but why they didn't decide to develop their own fighters?


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Here's the pic of an Austrian CR. 32
 
Austria was prohibited to operate military aircraft at the end of WW1. The Fiats were actually purchased clandestinely.
 
They basically haven't any aviation industry left. Lohner went back to manufacturing trams, Oeffag started making car bodies for Austro-Daimler, and Phönix simply dissapeared. The designers and engineers left for other countries, so even brain power wasn't available. WKF was bought by Österreichische Waffenfabriks-Gesellschaft and was too used for vehicle subasembly.

Other than the Peace treaty prohibiting manufacturing military aircraft, Austria was also badly hit by the postwar economical depresion, so even companies who tried to shift to civilian aviation couldn't survive, especially when there was so much civilianised military aircraft the various airlines could use. Altough I don't even know any that tried it.

The only companies I found that existed during the 1920s were Flugzeugbau Hopfner and Ramor Flugzeugwerke, both making only few prototypes in the early 1930s. They simply lost the touch with the technology and progres, lost manpower, and even after the treaties weren't strongly enforced, the competition from other countries was too strong so any new company couldn't even emerge without massive backing or without finding some very specific niche.

Thus Austria haven't any aicraft industry during the 1930s, except for few tiny companies like Pinsch, who made few German Tigerschwalbes, or Wiener Neustädter Flugzeugwerke, which actually finished the last Hopfner, the HV-15, and made several sports types.
 
... just as addendum - after connection of Austria to the "Third Reich" (1938) the Wiener Neustädter Flugzeugwerke became the largest Me 109 manufacturing plant of the whole "Reich".
 
Erich Meindl was one of the few engineers who tried to start a company in the mid 1920s, Meindl Flugzeugbau Linz. Together with Wilhelm van Nees, they probably only built few light aircraft prototypes, of which only Meindl A.III and Meindl A.VII is known to me. Both engineers were among the people who starte the Wiener Neustädter Flugzeugwerke in 1935, and this company built another as A.VIIb with different engine (Walter Minor 4 instead of AS Gennet). WNF seems to acquire several more local engineers and aviation experimentators, and by the way, the guys who started the company were Austrian fighter aces Julius Arigi and Benno Fiala von Fernbrugg.
So if in some alternate reality some company in Austria started making fighters, it would be WNF, probably of Meindl's design, and probably that beauty Hesham just posted.
 
Quite interesting... I can make alternate versions for this plane such as monoplane version with Hispano-Suiza or Daimler Benz engine.
 
There were plenty Austrian companies making airplnes in the interwar: Albert Kalker, Guritzer-Van Nees, Hopfner, Lampisch, Meindl (M-1 to M-12), Pintsch, Siedek, for example. And surely several others.

But as for this thread's topic, AFAIK they did not manufacture fighters before the Anschluß with the IIIrd Reich.
 
Didn't Austria take part in a Greek design? (Or was it maybe an Austrian designer that came up with the design?)
 

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