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Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June , plans were made to connect Germany and Japan by air using Luftwaffe aircraft modified for very long range flights. Commercial flights to the Far East by Lufthansa were no longer possible, and it had become too dangerous for ships or U-boats to make the trip by sea. Field Marshal Erhard Milch authorised a study into the feasibility of such direct flights.
Various routes were considered, including departing from German-occupied Russia and Bulgaria. Nautsi, near Lake Inari in the north of Finland , was finally selected as the optimum starting point for a great circle route along the Arctic Ocean then across eastern Siberia, to refuel in Manchuria before completing the flight to Japan. Three Ju A-9s works numbers , and were modified for long-range work at the Junkers factory in March The plan was eventually put on indefinite hold after the Japanese failed to agree on a route, as they did not want to provoke the Soviet Union by an overflight of Siberia, and the three aircraft were eventually transferred to KG without any attempt at a long-range flight to Japan.
Ju A-3, no. The aircraft was destroyed on 3 May as British troops arrived. Their best-known Ju mission was flown on the night of 27 November KG pilots Braun and Pohl flew a Ju from Vienna to a position just south of Mosul , Iraq, where they successfully air-dropped five Iraqi parachutists. Staging through the island of Rhodes, which was still under German occupation, they evacuated some thirty casualties from there to Vienna.
On 26 November , Ju A-5, no. Hitler was impressed by its potential and told Goering that he wanted a Ju for his personal use. Hitler's pilot, Hans Baur , tested the aircraft, but Hitler never flew in it.
A special escape hatch was fitted in the floor and a parachute was built into Hitler's seat; in an emergency it was intended that he would put on the parachute, pull a lever to open the hatch, and roll out through the opening. This arrangement was tested using life-size mannequins. Hans Baur flew the aircraft to Munich-Riem airport on 24 March , landing just as an air-raid alert was sounded. He went home after parking it in a hangar but on returning to the airport, he discovered that both hangar and aircraft had been destroyed by American bombers.
The long range of the Ju made it a good candidate for further development concerning the Amerika Bomber project, competing with the three airworthy examples of the Messerschmitt Me , the never-built Heinkel He and Focke-Wulf Ta designs, and as a result, the six-engined Ju , based directly on the Ju airframe with even longer range was built in prototype form, two airframes being completed and test-flown. In late Field Marshal Milch ordered that the possibility of increasing the fuel capacity of the Ju to enable it to perform the Amerika Bomber mission itself.
The draw backs were twofold, first the initial rate of climb would be very poor, and the fully loaded airplane could only operate out of two fields in France. At first a He Z was tried but the Ju was predicted might be unstable in such an instance so plans were changed to use two Ju s instead. Both the Ju A-8 and Ju A-1 were each intended to use two of the under-development, Borsig-designed Hecklafette HL V quadmount tail turrets each armed with four Rheinmetall-Borsig MG machine guns apiece , with one turret in its originally intended role for rearwards defence and, one in the nose, adapted for forward defence.
Despite the end of reconnaissance operations from France and the Amerika bomber program, starting in September three more Ju s were constructed for "special purposes" by Junkers.
Their works numbers are unknown. What those "special purposes" were, or if they ever came to be, is unknown. A number of Ju s survived the war, the Allies evaluating at least three examples, none of which was known to have survived intact into the 21st century. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Main article: Amerika Bomber. The Hugo Junkers Homepage. Archived from the original on October 27, Retrieved Retrieved: 4 June Retrieved June 18, Heinkel HE , , Shrewsbury, England: Airlife Publishing.
Heinkel He — — Shrewsbury, UK: Airlife Publishing. Air Enthusiast , No. Junkers aircraft and engines, — 1st ed.
London: Putnam Aeronautical Books. German aircraft of the Second World War 7th impression ed. London: Putnam. The warplanes of the Third Reich 1st ed. London: Doubleday. Deist, Wilhelm , Maier Schreiber, et al.
Germany and the Second World War. Berlin: Aviatic-Verlag, Green, William. Warplanes of the Third Reich. London: Macdonald and Jane's Publishers Ltd.
Griehj, Manfred Luftwaffe Over Amerika. Hitchcock, Thomas H.
Junkers Monogram Close-Up 3. Boylston, Massachusetts: Monogram Aviation Publications, Kay, Antony L. Junkers Aircraft And Engines, — London: Putnam Aeronautical Books, Nowarra, Heinz J. On the outbreak of war, the Luftwaffe took over Lufthansa's Ju90 aircraft for transport work with the fourth prototype having the BMW MA engine installed as the BMW had been abandoned, soon followed by the fifth prototype. The original Ju90 designation was therefore changed to Ju, especially as a whole host of minor modifications were incorporated to the wing, fuselage and tail, changes developed on the seventh prototype and which cured the instability suffered from the first two BMW-engined prototypes.
It was from this point that the Luftwaffe began considering the aircraft for maritime reconnaissance. The final development machine for the Ju programme was the eleventh prototype, which was re-designated the Ju V1.
It was originally intended to be a transport aircraft for the Luftwaffe and had an increased span, new angular fins and rudders and square fuselage windows. It was followed by two preproduction JuA-0 aircraft equipped with 1,hp BMWL engines that were themselves followed by five JuA-1 armed transports in Two were used in the attempted relief of Stalingrad but one crashed on takeoff.
The JuA-2 was an armed maritime reconnaissance aircraft that carried additional radio equipment, an extra dorsal turret and FuG search radar. It was to replace the increasingly vulnerable Focke-Wulf FwC Condor, with three aircraft being delivered in the summer of and was followed by five JuA-3 aircraft having the new low-drag Focke-Wulf dorsal turrets and 1,hp BMW D engines. It was finally scrapped in Spain in the mids due to lack of spares.
Three JuA-9 aircraft were built as ultra-long-range maritime reconnaissance aircraft with increased fuel capacity and a reduced armament to facilitate their long-range duties. The JuB-1 was the last version to be constructed, with only a single prototype flying in This was designed as a high-altitude, fully pressurised bomber with work starting in This aircraft dispensed with the loading ramp and had nose and tail turrets each fitted with four 13mm 0. A number of additional variants were proposed C, D and E but construction finally petered out in the autumn of due to a shortage of suitable materials, with a total of fifty aircraft being built.
It was essentially a scaled-up Ju with a wing span of ft 7. With the German declaration of war on the United States in December , the RLM was forced to consider a number of existing proposals for a bomber capable of reaching New York, if not the entire Eastern Seaboard, from bases in Europe the Amerika Bomber project. The resultant specification called for a six-engine design which brought forward designs from Focke-Wulf Ta , Messerschmitt MeB and Junkers Ju Of the three, the Ju was the easiest to produce as it made use of a large number of Ju components.
Sources conflict as to how many aircraft were built and what their operational record was. Most state that a total of three aircraft were built, with the first two prototypes being the ones that flew. Another source states that a total of eleven aircraft were built as Ju aircraft were conducting missions across Europe that would have been extremely difficult for just two aircraft to cover.
This source states that an aircraft presumably the first prototype , flying in a round trip between the 27th and 29th August , flew from Norway across the Atlantic and part of Canada to take pictures of American industrial plants in Michigan. This proved that the specification for a bomber capable of attacking New York from European bases was entirely feasible but the scheme did not proceed any further.