Junkers Ju 87 Stuka
Some classic airplanes -- like the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka -- simply look their part. This large, angular monoplane seemed absolutely ominous in flight or at rest. Of all the many attack planes of World War II, none so captured the terror of dive-bombing as did the dreaded Stuka.
Classic Airplane Image Gallery
 The first Junkers Ju 87 Stukas flew in 1935. Although the Stuka became the most famous as a dive bomber, it also achieved considerable success as a tank buster on the Eastern front. See more classic airplane pictures. |
The Stuka name derived from Sturzkampfflugzeug, the generic German word for dive-bomber. So famous was the Junkers Ju 87 that the term Stuka came to be identified with it in Western eyes.
The Stuka's
first advocate was pilot Ernest Udet, who, with 62 victories in World
War I, was the highest-scoring German ace to survive, and a national
hero. Udet was a formidable aerobatic pilot (albeit a terrible
technician) who pressed the Luftwaffe to adopt dive-bombing as a principal means of attack.
 Skilled pilots helped the slow Junkers Ju 87 Stuka excel as a tank killer. |
The Stuka was equally effective in the Western campaigns, where it served as mobile artillery, moving through France in close coordination with the Panzer columns. An all-metal, gull-wing aircraft with fixed gear and lots of drag, the Stuka proved too slow and too ill-armed to fight over England and was withdrawn from service there.
The Stuka was very effective in the early years of the African campaigns, however, and through nearly all of the fighting with the Soviet Union in the East.
The Stuka was perfectly suited to the opening days of the war, when the Germans had air superiority. What is surprising, and in its way, noble, was that the Ju 87s and their crews fought on bravely when the tide of war had turned against them.
Length: 37 ft. 8-3/4 in. Height: 12 ft. 9-1/4 in. Empty Weight: 8,683 lbs Gross Weight: 14,565 lbs Top Speed: 255 mph Service Ceiling: 15,520 ft. Range: 510 miles Engine/Horsepower: One Junkers Jumo 211J-1/1400 Crew: 2 Armament: Two fixed forward-firing 7.9-mm MG-17 machine guns or two 20-mm MG 151 cannons and a twin 7.9-mm MG81z machine gun in rear cockpit; one 3968-lb bomb (short range) or one 551-lb bomb under fuselage and four 110-lb bombs under wing (a wide variety of loads could be carried) |
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