Junkers Ju 52/3mg4e

The Ju 52/3mg4e grew out of a practical lesson: the trimotor the Luftwaffe had ordered in bulk as a stopgap bomber was far more useful as a transport. According to the German Wikipedia, 1027 auxiliary bombers were delivered between 1934 and 1937, after which production switched to the g4e transport; in that same year of 1937 Weserflug was also contracted to rebuild 404 of those bombers as transports. The history page of the IL-2 Sturmovik simulator, which covers this sub-variant on its own, puts the start of production earlier, in 1935; the sources disagree on the date and both are given here.

The changes compared with the g3e concerned mainly ground handling and the cargo hold. The tailskid, which made taxiing on grass fields awkward, gave way to a tailwheel, the detail that the English, French and Spanish Wikipedias single out as the mark of this version. The undercarriage legs and the cargo-compartment floor were strengthened, and a large side hatch plus a second hatch in the cabin roof were cut to load bulky items. Power still came from three BMW 132A radials, and manufacture was shared between the Junkers works at Dessau and ATG in Leipzig.

The cabin was designed to change roles quickly. The IL-2 page gives it room for 18 passengers, 12 paratroopers or 12 stretcher cases, and it could carry ten MAB 250 supply containers released through the left cargo door; to drop troops or loads in flight that door had to be removed beforehand. Defence was a single MG 15 machine gun in the dorsal position. This interior layout became the pattern for the later military versions, from the g5e onwards.

The first g4e aircraft to see action did so in Spain with the Condor Legion, flying alongside the g3e as bombers and as troop and cargo carriers. When the Second World War began, IL-2 gives the Luftwaffe transport fleet as 552 Ju 52/3m, including 59 civil aircraft taken over from Lufthansa, 57 g3e and the g4 machines. The sources consulted do not break the great airborne operations of 1940 and 1941 down by sub-variant, but they were flown by that transport fleet. On 9 April 1940, 52 Ju 52s carried a company of paratroops and an infantry battalion to northern Jutland and seized Aalborg airfield, a key to the Norwegian campaign. In May some 500 aircraft were readied for the assault on the Low Countries, dropping paratroops around The Hague and landing assault troops at Ypenburg and on nearby roads. At the end of May 1941, 493 Ju 52s flew in most of the troops the Luftwaffe sent to Crete in its largest airborne invasion of the war.

Abroad, Bulgaria received two g4 aircraft in 1939, and in the same year the Swiss Air Force bought three Ju 52/3m to train observers. Serialled A-701, A-702 and A-703, the Swiss trio served until September 1982 and then gave the variant a second, civilian life: that year Ju-Air was formed, a volunteer association based at Dübendorf that raised donations to move them onto the civil register as HB-HOS, HB-HOT and HB-HOP. HB-HOS and HB-HOP began pleasure flights in 1983, and HB-HOT, the former A-702, followed in 1985. On 4 August 2018 HB-HOT crashed almost vertically into a shallow basin south-west of Piz Segnas at about 2470 metres, killing all 20 people on board. The investigators found serious damage in the airframe, although they did not regard it as the cause of the crash; the two sister aircraft were grounded for inspection, and on 12 March 2019 the Swiss civil aviation authority withdrew Ju-Air's permit for commercial flights. In August 2024 plans to return HB-HOP to the air were abandoned.

Several g4e aircraft survive: FAC-625 at the Colombian Aerospace Museum in Tocancipá; 6134 at the Technikmuseum Hugo Junkers in Dessau, the town where the type was built; 6693 with the air transport heritage group at Wunstorf; 6821 at the Technik Museum Speyer; and 6657 in the Norwegian Armed Forces Aircraft Collection at Gardermoen. A-701 and A-703 are being restored to flying condition by Ju-Air at Dübendorf.