How many Ju 52s did the Luftwaffe lose in the Stalingrad airlift?

In November 1942 the German Sixth Army was encircled at Stalingrad. The only way to sustain it was to supply it by air, and the burden of that task fell on the Ju 52, the Luftwaffe's basic transport. It was a rugged but slow aircraft: with a top speed of only 265 km/h, half that of a Hurricane of its time, it was highly vulnerable to fighters and needed escort whenever it flew over a combat zone.

Many Ju 52s were shot down by anti-aircraft artillery and Soviet fighters while carrying supplies in the final phases of the battle, during the winter of 1942-1943. Between 24 November 1942 and 31 January 1943, the loss of 488 aircraft was recorded. Of these, 266 were Ju 52s; the rest comprised 165 He 111s, 42 Ju 86s, 9 Fw 200s, 5 He 177s and one Ju 290, which shows the extent to which the Luftwaffe had to resort to bombers and aircraft from other roles to complete the airlift.

Stalingrad was not an isolated case. In Crete, in 1941, the Luftwaffe had lost 170 aircraft and 4,500 men in the airborne invasion, and in North Africa, in April 1943, the Allied air offensive against the airlifts to Tunis destroyed 11 Ju 52s in the air on the first day and left only 29 serviceable. Even before the encirclement, the Ju 52 had been decisive in Wehrmacht transport: in the 1940 Norwegian campaign it flew 3,018 sorties, 1,830 of them carrying troops, and transported 29,280 people and 2,376 tonnes of supplies. The Luftwaffe had acquired thousands of Ju 52s as its basic transport, and its main production version was the Ju 52/3mg7e.