Junkers Ju 52/3mge

The Ju 52/3mge was the first sub-type of Junkers' trimotor to be built in large numbers. Compared with the Ju 52/3mde, 3mce and 3mfe that came before it, it adopted three BMW 132A-1 radials, German licence-built derivatives of the Pratt & Whitney Hornet, and was laid out as an airliner for a crew of three and seventeen passengers. According to the Spanish-language Wikipedia it was also the first version modified for bombing: the then clandestine Luftwaffe's assessment of the aircraft's military potential led to an interim bomber based on the 3mge, followed by the more developed Ju 52/3mg3e. The conversion barely changed the aircraft's outline and could be produced without altering the existing assembly lines, so the civil and military versions came off the same jigs.

The variant found customers outside Germany. Belgium's SABENA needed a replacement for its ageing Fokker F.VIIs and, according to the German-language Wikipedia, bought eight Ju 52/3mge before the war (Belgian Wings gives nine Ju 52/3m in all, the first delivered to Evere in 1936). They flew on the airline's European network, where two were lost in accidents. On 16 November 1937 OO-AUB crashed near Ostend while trying to land in bad weather, killing the family of the Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse. On 14 March 1939 OO-AUA, serial number 5815, built in 1937, came down on a night mail flight from Croydon to Brussels-Haren: after crossing the aerodrome at about 50-60 metres it sank to 10-20 metres, went around and crashed into a field at Sint-Stevens-Woluwe, killing its three crew. The Belgian inquiry blamed pilot error: he had tried to land without facing into the wind and aborted the landing with flaps down while already losing speed.

When the Second World War broke out, SABENA grounded its Ju 52s so that Allied fighters would not mistake them for Luftwaffe aircraft. They were given large Belgian markings, with "Belgique" on the fuselage and the tricolour on the rudder and wingtips, and sent to the Belgian Congo: three in 1939 and three more in January 1940. There the airline kept services running throughout the war; from 1941 it also chartered aircraft and crews from BOAC and bought two Ju 52/3m from British Airways. The Force Publique regularly used at least OO-AGU, OO-AUF and OO-AUK to support Belgian troops in the Ethiopian campaign and to ferry pilots between Egypt and central Africa. Keeping the fleet flying meant cannibalising some airframes for spares, and the airline's last two Ju 52s were struck off the register in 1946.

In Poland, LOT took delivery on 16 November 1936 of a Ju 52/3mge with serial number 5588 and registration SP-AKX; as part payment it returned its nine Junkers F 13s to Dessau. The aircraft flew first on the Berlin route and later on the Rome service. On 12 September 1939, with the country under invasion, it was evacuated to Bucharest, where the Romanian authorities seized it.

One example identified as a Ju 52/3mge, T-158, survives in storage at the Museo Nacional de Aeronáutica de Argentina in Morón, Buenos Aires.