Immelmann D-AHIT Junkers Ju52-3mge radio-controlled model airplane (Denis Hefford)

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Exhibit

Immelmann D-AHIT Junkers Ju52-3mge radio-controlled model airplane (Denis Hefford)

Junkers Ju52, D-AHIT, angle view.jpg (i)
BTMM map 071.gif
location:

Arch One , Area 71
Arch One, Overhead


Underside view

Underside view [image info]

The front of the JU52 model, showing the nose engine

The front of the JU52 model, showing the nose engine [image info]

Installation, January 2016

Installation, January 2016 [image info]

Installed overhead in the museum lobby, where it's being engaged by two Spitfires

Installed overhead in the museum lobby, where it's being engaged by two Spitfires [image info]

A very large radio-controlled model of a 1930s Junkers Ju-52/3mge three-engined aircraft, Immelmann, numbered D-AHIT (aircraft #4053), carrying Luftwaffe markings, and built by Denis Hefford.

The model is due to go on display in January 2016 as one of the museum's new set of 25th anniversary exhibits, suspended overhead in the museum lobby and being attacked by the museum's two large overhead Spitfires.

Adolf Hitler's aircraft

Named after WW1 ace Max Immelmann, this was used by Adolf Hitler for his 1932 campaigning and then as a personal transport plane, and carried a variety of registration numbers, including Hitler's favourite airplane registration number, D-2600. Hitler later had other JU25's, Immelmann II and Immelmann III.

The Ju-52

The 1931 Junkers Ju-52 was originally intended to be a single-engine aircraft, but poor performance, not helped by the additional drag of its unusual corrugated skin, meant that from 1932, the planes ended up being fitted with an additional two wing-mounted engines (gaining the suffix "3m"), which solved the problem, boosting the plane's power-to-weight ratio by a factor of around 1.7. With its three engines, the Ju52 was now a very useful passenger/cargo plane, to the extent that both Hitler and Goering adopted JU52's as their personal aircraft.

With the advent of World War 2, the Luftwaffe used the Ju52 as a transport plane.

Although it was never an especially sleek aircraft, this also meant that, never having had particularly fashionable look, or having used any especially date-specific technologies or construction methods, the "thrown-together" design also didn't really "date", and JU52's continued to be built right up until 1952, with some staying in service until the 1980s. Significant numbers of JU-52's are still out there in airworthy condition, and some can be chartered for tourist flights.

Not to be confused with...

... Hermann Goering's transport plane, another Ju52 that carried the D-AHIT registration, but which was called "Manfred von Richthofen", and crashed in 1943.

External links

Hitler's JU52s
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