Junkers Ju 52
The Junkers Ju 52 was a German transport aircraft designed by Ernst Zindel. First flown in 1930 with a single engine, it became in its three-engine Ju 52/3m form the standard European airliner of the 1930s and the Luftwaffe's primary transport of the Second World War, carrying 17 passengers or three tons of freight. A total of 4,835 were built, and a handful still fly.
Why It Mattered
The Junkers Ju 52 was one of the defining transport aircraft of its age: a mainstay airliner of the 1930s that became the Luftwaffe's primary transport in the Second World War. Ernst Zindel designed the aircraft for Junkers, and the single-engine original made its first flight on 11 September 1930. The three-engine version that followed, the Ju 52/3m, could carry 17 passengers or three tons of freight, and airlines across Europe and Latin America adopted it in numbers. Crews nicknamed it "Tante Ju" — Auntie Ju — and loved it, as one account puts it, as a simple, straightforward aircraft they could count on. By the end of production 4,835 Ju 52/3ms were built, including license production in Spain and France.
Design Notes
The Ju 52 was a low-wing monoplane of all-metal construction, its skin the corrugated aluminum that became a Junkers trademark. The corrugations stiffened the thin metal skin: they enhanced airframe strength, albeit at the cost of increased drag. Zindel's 1930 original flew on a single engine; in 1932 the design gained two wing engines and became the Ju 52/3m, the version built in the thousands. The trimotor could carry 17 passengers or three tons of freight, and its three engines let it take off and land on small airfields, a quality airlines and air forces both valued.
Operational History
The Ju 52/3m took its maiden flight in 1932 — Vintage Aviation News dates it to 7 March — and entered service with Deutsche Luft Hansa, the airline Zindel had designed it for. Its first deployment came in the Spanish Civil War, where Ju 52s helped airlift Franco's Army of Africa from Morocco to the Spanish mainland in 1936. In the Second World War the type was the Luftwaffe's primary transport, deployed on virtually all fronts, its work including paratroop drops and supply transport. At Crete in May 1941 the cost showed: of the 22,750 troops flown in, most arrived aboard 493 Ju 52/3ms, and 170 aircraft were lost along with 4,500 personnel. Some Ju 52s were adapted as bombers, but it was the transport role that defined the type's war.
Afterlife
Spain kept building the type during and after the war until 1952, and its working life stretched well beyond the war's end. The Swiss Air Force retired its three Ju 52s in 1981, which for 42 years had hauled equipment, supplies and trainee paratroopers — and the Swiss air force museum at Dübendorf resolved to keep them in the air. A radio appeal raised the restoration money: in a single day, radio listeners pledged 600,000 Swiss francs. The museum-run airline that resulted, JU-AIR, offers sightseeing flights over the Alps, and in 2002 it flew 12,000 passengers. Lufthansa donated its restored Spanish-built CASA 352-L to the Smithsonian in 1987; it is displayed at the Udvar-Hazy Center. Today, a handful of Junkers Ju 52s remain airworthy.