Messerschmitt M 20

The Messerschmitt M 20, also written BFW M.20, was a German single-engine, high-wing monoplane airliner designed by Willy Messerschmitt at Bayerische Flugzeugwerke in the late 1920s. It grew out of the eight-seat M 18d and was built mainly for Deutsche Luft Hansa, which ordered two before the first flight. The first aircraft flew on 26 February 1928 but was lost when the pilot, Hans Hackmack, bailed out at low altitude and was killed after the surface came off part of a wing. A second aircraft flew in August 1928, and Luft Hansa then ordered twelve enlarged M.20b aircraft that carried ten passengers. The type entered service in 1929 on routes from Switzerland through Germany to the Netherlands and from Stuttgart via Marseille to Barcelona, and two were still flying in 1942. Hackmack was a friend of Luft Hansa chief Erhard Milch, and his death is blamed for Milch's lasting hostility to Messerschmitt and for the cancelled contracts that pushed BFW into bankruptcy in 1931.