Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft

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Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft GmbH
Type	Private
Genre	Shipbuilding
Founded	1838
Founder	August Howaldt and Johann Schweffel
Headquarters	Kiel, Germany
Industry	Shipbuilding
Products	Passenger ships Cargo ships U-boats Warships
Owner	ThyssenKrupp
Employees	2,400
Parent	ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems
Website	www.hdw.de

View on HDW-shipyard at Kiel

The Brandtaucher in the museum in Dresden

Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft (often abbreviated HDW) is a German shipbuilding company, headquartered in Kiel. Today it is the largest shipyard in Germany and has more than 2,400 employees and has since 2005 been part of ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems owned by ThyssenKrupp. The name comes from the 1968 merger with Hamburg-based Deutsche Werft.

1 History
2 Ships built by HDW (selection)
- 2.1 Civilian ships
- 2.2 Naval ships
3 External links

[edit] History

HDW was founded October 1, 1838 in Kiel at the Bay of Kiel of the Baltic Sea by the engineer August Howaldt and the Kiel entrepreneur Johann Schweffel under the name Maschinenbauanstalt und Eisengießerei Schweffel & Howaldt, initially building boilers.

The first steam engine for naval purposes was built in 1849 for the Von der Tann, a gunboat for the small navy of Schleswig-Holstein.

In 1850, the company built an early submarine, Brandtaucher, designed by Wilhelm Bauer. This was somewhat of an accident: during the First Schleswig War, Danish forces had advanced too close to Rendsburg where construction of the boat had been intended, and so the task was shifted to Kiel.

The first ship built under the company's new name Howaldtswerke was a small steamer, named Vorwärts, built in 1865. Business expanded rapidly as Germany rose to a maritime power, and by the turn of the century some 390 ships had been completed.

In 1892 the company started a subsidiary in Austrian-Hungarian Fiume on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. The activity was closed down by the company in 1902. The shipyard still exists, today under the firm 3. Maj.

With Kiel being one of the two main bases of the Kaiserliche Marine, the shipyard also benefited much from navy maintenance, repair and construction contracts. During World War I the company also built a number of U-boats.

In 1937 the company, by then having yards in Kiel and in Hamburg, was taken over by the Kriegsmarine. During World War II, Howaldtswerke in Hamburg built 33 VIIC U-boats and Howaldtswerke in Kiel 31 VIIC U-boats.

After the end of World War II, Howaldtswerke was the only major shipyard in Kiel that was not dismantled. The yard flourished during the post-war "economic miracle" of the 1960s, with the construction of freighters and tankers, and again expanded by opening a shipyard in Hamburg.

In 1968 Howaldtswerke merged with Deutsche Werft in Hamburg, and the company took the new name Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft, or HDW for short. After falling on hard times under the pressure of cheaper competition from Japan and Korea, the Hamburg operations were closed down in 1985.

Today HDW is a subsidiary of ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, a group of European yards, including Kockums of Malmö and Hellenic Shipyards Co. of Skaramangas, Greece. The group employs about 6,600 staff in Germany, Sweden and Greece.

HDW has recently worked with Kockums and Northrop Grumman to offer a Visby class corvette derivative in the American Focused Mission Vessel Study, a precursor to the Littoral combat ship program.