Together with his brother Rudolf (1885-1979), Walther Blohm (1887-1963) took over the management of the Blohm & Voss shipyard after the end of the First World War in 1918. By then he had completed his years of apprenticeship, studying engineering in Munich and at the TU Berlin, of which he became an honorary senator in 1960, as well as military service. The brothers took over their father's inheritance at a time of technical upheaval in which high-risk decisions had to be made, new types of propulsion systems for passenger ships had to be developed and they had to be built with economic efficiency in mind. While Rudolf was more responsible for external representation of the shipyard, Walther took care of internal matters.
The brothers' view of work and duty as well as their entrepreneurial spirit in technical and economic areas shaped the shipyard. Walther Blohm placed high demands on himself and the shipyard workers: punctuality, hard work and a sense of duty were paramount. Every day his route took him through the shipyard. He was interested in the work, the working conditions and the progress of the work, and his unusually good memory and technical expertise helped him greatly. It was no coincidence that working at Blohm & Voss was considered a “bone grinder”. The Blohm brothers saw the good training of the workers as the basis for the high quality of their ships.
By its 50th anniversary in 1927, the shipyard had built 429 merchant ships and naval vehicles, including 35 ships for HAPAG 29 for the Hamburg-Süd 22 for the Woermann Line and 20 for the East Africa Line. By the end of World War II, Blohm & Voss delivered 238 submarines and 17 more were under construction. From 1942 onwards, submarines were also built.
The crisis in shipbuilding prompted Walther Blohm to look for new fields of activity in the 1930s and to look intensively at the future possibilities of air transport. Charles Lindbergh completed the first solo transatlantic flight in 1927. And as early as 1929, after the American liner “Europa” was put into service, Blohm & Voss had built a Heinkel swivel catapult on the chimney deck, from which mail planes were catapulted off board 1,200 km off the coast - a time gain of at least a day.
Because of the economic risk for the shipyard, Walther Blohm founded the Hamburg aircraft manufacturer in 1933, initially as a subsidiary of Blohm & Voss. By 1945, this had acquired a leading position in the construction of seaplanes, so that the lack of a runway in Finkenwerder was no disadvantage.
For Walther Blohm, not every technical development was synonymous with progress. He only saw progress if development also served people.
After the Second World War, the Allies banned ship and aircraft construction at Blohm & Voss and blew up the large halls in 1946. Total dismantling began in 1948. The shipyard's machinery, equipment and furnishings were distributed to 15 nations of the victorious powers - right down to the cooking pot in the factory kitchen. The same thing happened to the destroyed halls of the aircraft factory. A trial followed in December 1949 against the owners and directors of the shipyard for failure to comply with the dismantling regulations. At this point, the West German shipyards were already building new ships in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement.
With persistence and idealism, Walther Blohm and his brother made a new beginning. In order to keep the few remaining employees, they founded new companies (Bau & Montage GmbH in 1948 and Steinwerder Industrie AG in 1950) before the first ship repairs were approved by the English occupying forces in January 1953. The high capital requirement that the reconstruction of Blohm & Voss required forced the Blohm brothers to give up their independence and merge with Phoenix-Rheinrohr AG (Thyssen family) to form a stock corporation. Blohm & Voss was no longer a private shipyard.
The reconstruction of aircraft construction in Hamburg Finkenwerder did not take place until 1954. Initially, the Nord N 2501 Noratlas transport aircraft were built under license for the Bundeswehr. With the development of the “Hansa Jet” HFB 320, aircraft construction in Finkenwerder finally reached its peak for Walther Blohm.
Walther Blohm always paid attention to the quality of the work. He saw the key to this in the skilled workers and in the training of young talent. Blohm & Voss sustainably promoted the latter in aircraft construction, mechanical engineering and shipbuilding. Walther Blohm also called for lifelong learning for engineers and promoted this, for example, through special leave to attend conferences of the Shipbuilding Technical Society.