Monday, 2 November 2015

Hansa-Brandenburg W.29 - Foreign Users Part one

Today, we take some rest from the French SPADs and we start another project that, hopefully, won't take too long.

The Hansa-Brandenburg W.29 was a German monoplane floatplane fighter that served in the closing months of the Great War.
Designed originally to replace the W.12 it proved to be a successful design with less drag and much more speed than the W.12. It was designed by Ernst Heinkel, the founder of Heinkel aviation company.

It was much more used after the war as it was developed in Norway, in the Kjeller factory and was manufactured under license in many parts of the world.

  • Austro-Hungarian Empire: Ordered 25 W.29 to be built at UFAG factory in Budapest. Only one was completed. As we couldn't find graphical info, the best we could do with the colours was to speculate about them.
  • Denmark: Bought one from Germany, and manufactured under license another 15 more, used by the Royal Danish Navy. It featured a locally produced engine and it's local designation was HM.1. They remained in active service until 1930.
  • Finland: Apparently the Finnish air service had one in commission during 1920. As we couldn't find graphic info about this one, we are speculating about it's colours.
  • Hungarian Soviet Republic: When the Hungarian Soviet Republic was declared the W.29 that was completed to serve with the K.U.K. was pushed into service with their new owners. It was based at Cspel, near Budapest.



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