2/21/2023 0 Comments Tank buster japanese wav![]() ![]() ![]() Republican anti-aircraft artillery was pretty primitive, so the Stukas bombed at will-as they were intended to-and even the worst drops typically landed within less than 100 feet of the target. When Bf-109Bs arrived on the scene, the Nationalist rebels soon claimed control of the air. The Spanish war did make it plain that the Ju-87 would be a useful weapon. Had Stukas been used to bomb the important bridge that was the primary target of the raid, the world would have long ago forgotten Guernica. It’s hard to cast a kindly light on any bomber, but the Ju-87 was designed to attack and destroy specific military targets, not civilians. The small Spanish market town of Guernica, the subject of Pablo Picasso’s famous antiwar painting, was bombed by Heinkel He-111s and Junkers Ju-52s, horizontal bombers heedlessly killing civilians as they carpet-bombed, exactly the kind of mission the Stuka was not intended to fly. Even Spanish Nationalist pilots weren’t allowed near them, since they were still considered to be secret weapons. Nine Ju-87s were also used at one time or another during the Spanish Civil War, but they were operated only occasionally and conservatively. The Stuka’s ugly reputation was also influenced by the fact that the airplane is often envisioned-and frequently depicted in newsreels of the day-pummeling Warsaw and the Low Countries, its “Jericho Trompeten” sirens wailing. Who needs elliptical wings, stylish P-51 radiator doghouses or retractable landing gear on a bomb truck intended to fly to a target little farther away than its pilot can see, do a job and rumble back home again? The Rolls-Royce Kestral-powered Ju-87 V-1 prototype first flew on September 17, 1935. But that same straightforwardness made the Stuka easy to manufacture, repair and maintain. One Stuka admirer calls it “a flying swastika,” thanks to its angularity and coarseness. Granted there have been inexcusably ugly aircraft, but like so many designed-for-a-mission utilitarian airplanes-the Consolidated PBY comes to mind-the Ju-87 looks better the longer you consider its rugged lines. That’s 5½ years of nonstop combat by an airplane adjudged by some to be too primitive, too slow and too vulnerable before the war even began. The very last propaganda film made by the Luftwaffe showed Stukas attacking Soviet tanks on the outskirts of Berlin, smoke streaming from their big antitank cannons. ![]() But hard as they tried, the Germans never came up with a Stuka successor, so the angular, archaic “little bomber,” as the Luftwaffe called it, was the airplane that on September 1, 1939, dropped the first bombs of the war, and on May 4, 1945, flew the final Luftwaffe ground-assault mission. ![]() No surprise, since typically an air force begins development of the next-generation aircraft the instant the current machine goes into service. Even as Germany invaded Poland and triggered World War II, its Ministry of Aviation ( ministerium, or RLM) was hard at work on a replace- Reichsluftfahrtment for its dive bomber, and the early Ju-87B was intended to be the last model made. Never has a warplane so obsolete, vulnerable and technologically basic wrought so much damage to its enemies as did the Junkers Ju-87 Stuka. Screaming Birds of Prey | HistoryNet CloseĪlthough obsolescent even before World War II began, the Ju-87 Stuka terrorized ground troops and found a late-war niche as a tank-buster. ![]()
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