What was Hitler's personal Ju 52 called?

Hitler had already used a Deutsche Luft Hansa Ju 52 for the 1932 German election campaign, because he preferred flying to traveling by train. After becoming chancellor in 1933, Hans Baur became his personal pilot and Hitler acquired a Ju 52 of his own. He named it Immelmann II, in memory of Max Immelmann, German aviation ace of the First World War, and it carried the registration D-2600.

As his power and influence grew, Hitler's personal squadron came to number nearly 50 aircraft, based at Berlin's Tempelhof Airport and made up mainly of Ju 52s, which also carried members of his cabinet and his staff. Tempelhof was then the hub of the Lufthansa network, whose fleet likewise relied on the Ju 52/3m: in 1938, around 75% of all its air traffic was flown with this model.

In September 1939, on Baur's suggestion, the Immelmann II was replaced by a four-engine Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor. The Ju 52 did not disappear from service: it remained the dictator's backup aircraft for the rest of the Second World War. The model, born as a 17-seat commercial airliner, was by then the Luftwaffe's basic transport, acquired by the thousands; its main production version was the Ju 52/3mg7e. In civilian use, the Ju 52 served with more than a dozen airlines, including Swissair, as a passenger and cargo aircraft. Tempelhof was also, much later, the scene of its farewell: a Ju 52 and a Douglas DC-3 were the last aircraft to take off from the airport before its closure, on October 30, 2008.