How many Ju 52s were lost in the airborne invasion of Crete?

At the end of May 1941 Germany launched the Luftwaffe's largest airborne invasion of the entire Second World War against Crete. For it, 493 Ju 52/3m aircraft were used, carrying most of the 22,750 soldiers airlifted to the island. The Ju 52 could tow up to two DFS 230 gliders thanks to a hook built into the tail skid.

The Germans took the island, but the price was enormous: 170 aircraft and 4,500 men were lost. The sources consulted give that aircraft figure for the operation as a whole, without breaking down how many were Ju 52. The high proportion of losses had lasting consequences: it put an end to large-scale German paratroop operations.

The experience confirmed the Ju 52's great weakness in combat. It was rugged and reliable, but with a top speed of only 265 km/h, half that of a Hurricane of the period, it was highly vulnerable to fighters and anti-aircraft fire, and needed an escort whenever it flew over a combat zone. A year earlier, in the first days of the Netherlands campaign of May 1940, Dutch anti-aircraft fire had already shot down or damaged many of them: 125 Ju 52 were lost and a further 47 damaged. Crete repeated the lesson on a larger scale. In that Dutch campaign the Ju 52 had been the protagonist, in the Battle of The Hague, of the first large-scale airborne paratroop assault in history, and it had also landed directly in enemy territory to disembark assault troops, for example at Ypenburg airfield and on roads in the surrounding area.