Astra Aircraft Factory
Romanian aircraft manufacturer
The Astra Aircraft Factory (Romanian: Fabrica de avioane Astra) in Arad was the second Romanian factory to build aircraft. Its activity took place between 1923 and 1925, producing four models of aircraft: Astra-Șeșefschi, Proto 1, Proto 2 and Astra-Proto.
History
From 1915, the Marta factory had been producing Austro-Daimler aircraft engines. After the war, the factory was merged with the Weitzer wagon factory, becoming Uzina de Vagoane Astra Arad (the Astra-Arad Wagon Factory).
In 1923, Comandor Andrei Popovici, former commander of Grupul 2 Aeronautic (2nd Aeronautical Group) became the director of the factory, around the same time the construction of an aircraft prototype began. Conceived and designed by engineer Stanislav Șeșefschi, the aircraft was called Astra-Șeșefschi. Next came the production of Proto 1 and Proto 2 airplanes.
In 1925, Astra built the prototype Astra-Proto, after the design by Major Ștefan Protopopescu. This machine did not reach serial production. That year, airplane production ended because the plant and personnel were transferred to the new IAR. The Astra factory continued to make railway rolling stock, but it also produced 250 hp Martha-Benz aircraft engines.
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This entry incorporates text from “Astra Aircraft Factory” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.