What nickname did the Ju 52 have in the Spanish Air Force?

In Germany, the Ju 52/3m earned the affectionate nickname Tante Ju, "Aunt Ju," and in the English-speaking world, Iron Annie. In Spain, where the aircraft arrived in the summer of 1936, the Air Force called it "Pava" and kept it in service well into the 1970s.

The first Ju 52s arrived in Spain in the summer of 1936 to airlift the Army of Africa from Morocco to the mainland, and the Condor Legion also used them as bombers until May 1937. After the Second World War ended, production of the Ju 52 continued outside Germany: in France, Avions Amiot produced it as the AAC.1 Toucan, and in Spain Construcciones Aeronáuticas SA (CASA) built it as the CASA 352. Sixty-four examples of the CASA 352L version, fitted with ENMA Beta B-4 engines of 578 kW, were made; in the Air Force it received the designation T.2B.

Among the surviving aircraft are CASA 352Ls; one of them, T.2B-148, is on display at the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada in Winnipeg. In Switzerland, a CASA 352 still flies alongside Swiss Ju 52s on sightseeing flights. The type, with its corrugated duralumin skin and three radial engines, remains one of the most recognizable silhouettes of interwar aviation. Its longest military career was not in Spain but in Switzerland: the Swiss Air Force operated it from 1939 to 1982. Several examples are still flying in the 21st century in air shows and sightseeing flights, and in April 2022, 90 years after the Ju 52/3m's first flight, the Swiss company Junkers Flugzeugwerke AG announced a successor, the Ju 52 New Generation.