The Junkers Ju-52/3m was a transport and passenger aircraft developed at the Junkers company in 1932. Its creation was the result of the gradual evolution of the first all-metal monoplane J 1, designed by Professor Hugo Junkers in 1915. The first variant of the new machine was the single-engine Junkers Ju 52, developed in 1930, which carried 15 passengers.
The following year, work began on replacing the unsuccessful enormous Junkers L 88 engine with three smaller Pratt & Whitney Hornet radial engines. The prototype of this version, the Ju 52/3m (3 Motoren = three engines), was first flown in March 1932, after which aircraft of this version were delivered to Lufthansa, as well as to airlines in Sweden, Finland and Bolivia. Like its predecessors, the Ju 52/3m was a typical Junkers all-metal construction with a stressed skin of corrugated aluminium alloy sheet and had Junkers’ patented “double wing” — flaps and ailerons separated from the trailing edge along the entire wingspan. In Germany, the new aircraft quickly gained the nickname “Tante Ju” (Auntie Ju).
Ju 52/3m aircraft were used by airlines in many countries. Various engines were installed in them — Pratt & Whitney Hornet and Wasp, BMW 132, Bristol Pegasus, Alfa Romeo 126, Piaggio Stella, and even inline Hispano-Suiza 12N and diesel Junkers Jumo 205. From 1936 to 1939, Polish Airlines LOT operated one Ju 52/3m aircraft with the registration SP-AKX. Passenger Ju 52/3m aircraft delivered to Bolivia were used during the Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay in 1932-35. They were preceded by a few weeks in the military transport role by three examples of the Colombian Air Force, used during the conflict with Peru.
In 1934, mass production began on orders from the Luftwaffe, in whose units the Ju 52/3m became the first bomber type. The Ju 52/3m g3e variant carried six 250 kg bombs in the fuselage and was equipped with gun positions on the dorsal spine and under the fuselage (the so-called “dustbin”) with MG 15 machine guns cal. 7.92 mm. When the Spanish Civil War broke out on 18 July 1936, Germany sided with the right-wing nationalists of General Franco. Within a week, 20 Ju 52/3m aircraft (including one Ju 52/3m Wasser floatplane) were sent to Spanish Morocco, from where an “air bridge” was established.
By mid-October, the Junkers had transported 14,000 soldiers and 500 tonnes of armament to the Iberian Peninsula. In August, Ju 52s of the German Condor Legion, commanded by General Hugo Sperrle, made their debut as bombers. In the strength of three squadrons of Kampfgruppe 88, they carried out raids on Republican-held Mediterranean ports and supported the nationalist forces in the land battle for Madrid. By mid-1937, they were considered obsolete as bombers, but continued to be used for transport and bombing tasks by both the German air force and the Spanish nationalists until the end of the war. After the war, Spain produced 170 Ju 52/3m aircraft under licence as the CASA 352. Licensed versions of the American Wright Cyclone engine were used to power these machines — Soviet M-25s or Spanish Elizalde B3s.
The Ju 52/3m subsequently became the “workhorse” of the Luftwaffe on all fronts of World War II. It appeared in the bomber role only twice more, and the target of the raids in both cases was Warsaw (in September 1939 and during the liquidation of the ghetto in 1943). One of the more famous actions was the participation of 490 such aircraft in the German airborne assault on Crete in 1941. Later, Junkers maintained “air bridges” for besieged German forces at Demyansk, Stalingrad, the Kuban, Tunisia, Budapest and Wroclaw. There was also a version for naval mine countermeasures, equipped with a dural magnetic ring and an additional engine driving an electrical generator. The flow of current through the ring generated a strong magnetic field, sufficient to detonate mines during the aircraft’s low-level flight over a body of water. In total, German factories produced 4,187 Ju 52 aircraft of all versions between 1932 and 1944.
During World War II, Germany used various aircraft factories in occupied Europe to produce its own aircraft. For example, 24 Ju 52/3m were built at the Hungarian Manfred Weiss factory, but at the French Amiot factory in Colombes, renamed Ateliers Aeronautiques de Colombes (AAC), as many as 602 such aircraft were produced during the war with BMW 132 engines manufactured by SNECMA. After the war, a further 415 examples were built under the designation AAC.1 Toucan. These aircraft were used by the French Air Force during the conflicts in Madagascar, Indochina and Algeria from 1947 to 1960.
The museum example was produced at the AAC factory in 1946. Until 1960, it was used by the French Air Force. In December 1960, it was part of a batch of 16 aircraft sold to the Portuguese Air Force, which operated it until 1971 with the side number 6 316.
In 1973, it was donated to the British Imperial War Museum in Duxford, where it underwent two overhauls. After the first, it was painted to represent example 1Z+NK from the 2nd Squadron/KGzbV 1, from the period of the Crete airborne operation. During the second overhaul (2002), it received the markings of example 4V+GH from the transport squadron 1/KGrzbV 9, operating on the Eastern Front in 1942. In 2012, the aircraft was put up for sale, and from among the potential buyers, the British chose the offer of the Polish Aviation Museum. In May 2013, the Museum team brought the aircraft to Krakow.
| Wingspan | 29,21 m |
| Length | 18,90 m |
| Takeoff weight | 11030 kg |
| Maximum speed | 286 km/h |
| Ceiling | 5500 m |
| Range | 1500 km |
| Armament | – |
| Engine | 3x 9-cylinder radial BMW 132T-2 (SNECMA), 830 hp |
