The
Junkers Ju 52, affectionately known by those who flew
her as Iron Annie or Auntie you or simply Auntie.
The Trimotor transport, which also served as a bomber, was
to become a legend not only for her longevity but
also for her flexibility.
She was in fact as much a symbol of the
Luftwaffe as the Stuka and the 109.
They JU 52 was like the DC-2 and three I
would say and iconic aircraft because it's reliability and three
engineer both very very reliable and one wonders why there
wasn't more frequently used.
In.
The UK and the USA 3 engine layout, because it
was very common in Italy, was used quite widely in
Germany and but you just have rare cases of it
in the states like the time Marshall Ford.
But it's a great solution.
The JU 52 was constructed with the same corrugated material
that the Junkers company was relied upon for over 2
decades, going back almost to the Great War.
During this. Aircraft much larger than the 52, such as
the behemoth Yunker G38, also used the same cladding.
However, as the 30s came to a close, junckers corrugated
hallmark was starting to look a little tired, especially compared
with other foreign types like the American DC-2 and DC3.
Nevertheless, Auntie still stayed in service.
The Junkers company had in fact designed a replacement for
Auntie prior to the start of World War Two.
Although they still wanted to retain its trimotor configuration, it
was in most other respects a totally new aircraft.
Did you 252 it was a distinct difference from the
very famous Ju 52. It had a smooth freshwaters and.
A very large cargo fuselage, capacity 1. Main features about
it was. It had a wonderful loading map.
Which was operated hydraulically at the back end of the
airplane. Now this was a tailwheel airplane, but after landing
the rap could be operated and would come down and
raise their craft tail, and it was.
Absolutely top notch. And the incredible thing about it was
we actually did experiments to see how this thing would
react on the airplane and flight.
And.
At the large enemy aircraft exhibition in October of 1945
we flew this aircraft with the ramp fully open and
as a gimmick we had.
A chap sitting on one of the lower steps on
the ramp, obviously with a harness attached, but he was
sitting there pretending to smoke a cigarette. Well, it appealed
very heavily to the clouds and it was quite surprising
that this aircraft had this tremendous range of central gravity
and was very swimmable in that situation.
The JU 252 had a stablemate, the JU 352, which
was made largely of wood to reduce the use of
aluminum.
The JU 352 proved less successful, although they were the
first transport types to use a tailgate ramp that provided
a flat surface for loading.
Between the two models, only 65 examples were actually produced.
When Germany was attacked on 2 fronts in 1944, they
went out of production as the priority was more fighters
to defend the Fatherland.
Another military transport, which used a rare ramp, also came
from the drafting boards of Junkers.
The JU 290 evolved from the four engine Junkers 90
airliner, which showed great promise as an advanced design just
before the war.
The Ju 90 airliner, like most other aircraft of the
time, was a tail dragger, so when Junkers created a
transport version, they employed the same lifting tailgate developed for
the earlier 252.
For the time, the JU 290 transport was a large
aircraft when it first came into service in August of
1942.
When I flew to JU29J, I was very.
Impressed with it in the sense that it had a
lovely cockpit layout.
A very comfortable lead. It was obviously a civil aircraft
adapted to a military role.
Rather like the Focke-Wulf Wolf 200, it was almost similarly
armed. Not quite so heavily armed as the Focke-Wulf 200,
but.
Flew very nicely and.
I think it would have made a comfortable with a
little adaptation, a comfortable transatlantic.
Piston engine aircraft in the early days, and in fact
after the war, of course the Americans, they had a
group.
Like I had retrieving aircraft, German aircraft. After the war
they were called Watson Switzers.
And Colonel Watson actually flew the Gen. 290 back to
America via Bermuda.
And.
He was very impressed with it, as indeed I was
too.
It was certainly the largest land based powered aircraft in
the Luftwaffe a inventory.
The type was 8 foot longer than the airliner version,
had more powerful engines and a very considerable range.
It had been claimed, although never proven, that it made
direct flights between Germany and Japan.
There was also a need for smaller transports, even smaller
than anti you. This need was filled by the conversion
of a medium sized glider into a powered aircraft.
The Ghota 244 became available in 1943.
Created by the simple addition of two small radial engines
to a standard production glider.
The radials were actually made in occupied France and as
such had little impact on German war production.
About 130 of the type were made and proved useful
in moving small numbers of troops or light vehicles over
short distances.
Using the same glider to power plane conversion, the massive
Messerschmitt 323 was another attempt to maximize the
Luftwaffe's airborne assets.
The green guys I saw.
The four engine version and the 6th sense reversal began. In
fact, I taxed the six and it wasn't worth it, but it's actually just as a matter of interest. It
was a vast album called right across, and the one
I actually was the the deep model.
And they had six Gnome-Rhone engines.
And the four engine one had proved difficult and adequate
number of inventions and still had to have some assisted
takeoff such as jaito or rocket assistance on takeoff has
fewer gliders towed by.
Half up like the high school of 111 Zack and
they were a failure. In my opinion though you had
three hand corner aircraft.
Playing around with this all, all the large dead and
all of them, the whole thing was a very dicey
operation indeed.
But once you got the six engine version going, it
was practicable. But of course.
Everything a lot sluggish out.
Because of its great size and slow speed, the ME323
was a sitting duck and many were destroyed by the
allies.
But when escorted by fighters, its ability to carry large
loads was much valued by the vermark, especially in the
mayhem that became the Eastern Front.
Blohm and Voss built another remarkable transport aircraft, a long
range flying boat named the Viking.
The BV222 story is not unlike the Ju 90s.
It was originally ordered as a commercial flying boat.
However, as the war approached, the Viking evolved into a
large military transport which also performed some patrol duties. 6
powerful engines propelled the Viking. At first they were fueled
with gasoline, but the BV222 was intended to be refueled
at sea by submarines. Since U boats are driven by
diesel, the practical solution was to convert the Viking to
diesel engines.
Bloom and Voss had another prototype flying boat that was
even more advanced. The BV238 was designed to cope with
harsher sea conditions than the Viking could handle.
Working only with U boats, it was expected to go
on very lengthy missions.
It was designed to be almost self supporting and able
to deal with many types of heavy cargo. To assist
in loading the 238 it was equipped with a massive
forward waterproof door in the bow.
This could be employed in a similar manner to landing
craft on a beachhead.
What you see here is only a service hatch set
within the waterproof door.
To assist in handling cargo, there were derricks and winches
located on the hull, making the BV238 more like a
merchant ship than an aircraft. There was also a tunnel
which ran the length of both wings, providing internal access
to the six engines even when the flying boat was
in the air.
Only one, BV 238, was completed. It was destroyed by
Allied fighters just before the end of the war.
The final example of Luftwaffe gigantism came in the form
of the Junkers 390.
A stretch 290 with a very capacious 110 feet long
fuselage.
Propelling this enormous aircraft would require two more engines than
the JU 290 and a much greater wing over 160
feet in span.
The extra wing length actually required an additional set of
wheels on each side to support the craft as it
landed.
Only two Younkers, three 90s, were ever built.
But even these required enormous resources, both in labour and
material.
After the war, only one of the JU Three 90s
was ever accounted for.
This led to speculation as to what happened to the
other aircraft, as the type had more range than any
other German plane.
When they already had a proven workhorse in the JU
52, why did the Third Reich become so preoccupied with
limited numbers of large transport aircraft? One possibility was that
Germany had not prepared for a long war. The premise
of Blitzkrieg was achieving quick victory by lightning attacks.
The English Channel stymied blitzkrieg against Britain.
With the rapid fall of France, crossing the channel became
the Vermark's primary objective.
This could partially be achieved by gliders which led to
large transport planes like the gigant.
Often overlooked, there was one other design that evolved in
the fatherland during those turbulent years, the Arado 232, sometimes
called the millipede. Just after Germany invaded Poland, the Air
Ministry issued a request for a replacement for the Ju
52. It must be equipped with a rare entry ramp
and would employ 2 of the recently developed BMW 801
radial engines.
Aradu designers quickly came up with a brilliant design that
embraced all the latest thinking in transport aircraft.
It had a rare loading ramp, but unlike most other
medium sized transports of the time, it used a tricycle
undercarriage.
This type of wheel arrangement would not usually work in
rough terrain. However, a Rado engineers solve the problem by
placing a row of small rollers under each side of
the fuselage.
If necessary, the main gear could be adjusted to kneel
the plane down. The 232 would then simply crawl over
obstacles on its many rollers, which led to its nickname,
the Millipede.
At the end of World War Two, we were of
course interested in bringing quite a lot of heavy stuff
back from Germany.
Like wind tunnel gear and even aeroplanes.
And we were looking for cardinal planes. We used a
German aircraft for their other 232 I known as the
millipede because of the large number of burger feels that
said had and as part of its undercarriage layout. And
this was a most effective system of operating on grass
airfields which are bounded in certainly in the early stages.
And where traction was very difficult to find under adverse
weather conditions.
The millipedes level loading ramp made it ideal for all
types of cargo, but the Arado 232 had a major
problem. It came in the form of this plane, the
very successful Focke-Wulf 190, known as the Butcher Bird.
The 190 used the same BMW 801 radial engines envisioned
for the new Arado transport. After the German failure at
the Battle of Britain, there was no doubt that the
new FW90 had priority for the BMW engines.
The ERADO would have to look elsewhere for suitable power
plants, but there were none with the same power as
the BMW 801.
To solve this problem, A4 engine millipede was proposed with
a larger wing.
This change led to delays. The end result was that
possibly the best military transport of the Second World War
was limited to a production run of less than 20
examples, leaving Auntie to soldier on their own.
Eventually almost 5000JU50 twos were made.
Many continue to fly around the world for a number
of years after the war, including some with the RAF.
But Auntie was not there. Only Luftwaffe transport 2 Arado
232 millipedes were also flown by the Royal Air Force.