What did the USSR use captured Ju 52s for after the war?

The Ju 52 was the Luftwaffe's basic transport and was built by the thousand, so when the Second World War ended many examples remained in the hands of the victors. The Soviet Union found a practical use for the captured aircraft: it assigned them to its Civil Air Fleet.

There they proved especially well suited to carrying sulphur from the Karakum Desert. It was a job that matched the qualities that had made the type famous: a sturdy duralumin structure with corrugated skin, three engines that gave a margin in case of failure, and the ability to operate from poorly prepared airstrips with bulky loads. Several Soviet agencies kept using the Ju 52 until 1950.

The USSR was not an isolated case. After the war, Ju 52s remained in military and civilian use in numerous countries. Production continued in France, where Avions Amiot built it as the AAC.1 Toucan, and in Spain, where CASA built it as the CASA 352. Short Brothers, in Northern Ireland, rebuilt some captured aircraft for civilian service. The Portuguese Air Force used it from 1956 as a paratrooper-dropping aircraft in Angola and other African colonies until gradually withdrawing it in the 1960s, and the Swiss Air Force kept it in service from 1939 to 1982. The fact that so many were available is explained by its role in the war: the Luftwaffe had acquired thousands of Ju 52s as its basic transport, with the Ju 52/3mg7e as the main production version. Slow, with a top speed of only 265 km/h, half that of a Hurricane, it had suffered heavy losses in operations such as the Stalingrad airlift, where 266 Ju 52s were lost between November 1942 and January 1943.