Junkers Ju 87 Stuka

1. Lead

The Junkers Ju 87 Stuka was the German dive bomber of the Second World War, and one of the most recognisable aircraft of the conflict. Its inverted gull wings, fixed spatted undercarriage and the screaming wail of its sirens made it a symbol of the German Blitzkrieg in Poland in 1939 and in France in 1940, when columns of Stukas dived on enemy positions ahead of the advancing Panzer divisions.

The name “Stuka” comes from Sturzkampfflugzeug, the German word for dive bomber, and it was applied to the Ju 87 so often that the two became the same thing in the public mind. The aircraft was designed in the mid-1930s, entered service in 1937, and remained in front-line use until the end of the war in 1945, serving on every front on which Germany fought.

About 6,500 were built, and the Stuka sank more Allied shipping than any other German aircraft type, destroyed thousands of tanks on the Eastern Front, and became a byword for the terror of air attack — even though by 1940 its slow speed and light defensive armament made it dangerously vulnerable whenever enemy fighters were present.

The Stuka was never a great fighter, and it was never meant to be. It was a flying artillery piece, built to put a bomb on a target with a precision that level bombers could not match, and to do so in direct support of troops on the ground.

In a dive of 70 to 80 degrees, a Stuka pilot could place a 500 kg bomb within a few dozen metres of his aim point, and the psychological effect of the dive — the siren, the steep descent, the sudden explosion — was often as important as the physical damage.

That precision made the Stuka invaluable in the early campaigns, when the Luftwaffe enjoyed air superiority and German ground forces were advancing. It also made the Stuka dependent on that superiority: over Britain in the summer of 1940, and later over the Eastern Front as the Soviet air force recovered, Stukas that were caught without fighter escort were shot down in large numbers.

The history of the Ju 87 is therefore the history of the Luftwaffe itself — brilliant and terrifying in the early years, and increasingly desperate as the war turned against Germany.

2. Key Facts

Type	Single-engine dive bomber and ground-attack aircraft
Origin	Germany
Designer	Hermann Pohlmann (Junkers)
Manufacturer	Junkers Flugzeug- und Motorenwerke
First flight	17 September 1935
In service	1937–1945
Produced	1936–1944; about 6,500 built
Crew	2 (pilot and rear gunner/radio operator)
Length	11.1 m (Ju 87D)
Wingspan	13.8 m (Ju 87D)
Height	4.2 m
Empty weight	About 2,800 kg (Ju 87D)
Maximum take-off weight	About 6,600 kg (Ju 87D)
Engine	Junkers Jumo 211J inverted V-12, about 1,410 hp (Ju 87D)
Top speed	About 410 km/h (Ju 87D)
Cruising speed	About 320 km/h
Range	About 1,000–1,500 km depending on load and variant
Service ceiling	About 7,300 m (Ju 87D)
Armament	Two 7.92 mm MG 17 machine guns (wings); one or two 7.92 mm MG 15 in the rear cockpit; up to 1,800 kg of bombs
Notable feature	Jericho-Trompete sirens fitted to the undercarriage on many early aircraft

3. Background and Development

The dive-bomber idea

The idea of the dive bomber came to Germany from the United States in the early 1930s. German officers who had watched American naval dive bombers, and the German-American pilot Ernst Udet, who had seen Curtiss dive bombers demonstrated in the United States, argued that a bomb released in a steep dive could hit a small target — a bridge, a gun position, a ship — with an accuracy no level bomber could achieve.

The German Army, rebuilding after the First World War, wanted close air support for its fast-moving ground forces, and the new Luftwaffe, created in 1935, took up the idea. In 1933 the Reich Air Ministry issued a specification for a single-engine dive bomber, and Junkers, Heinkel and other firms were invited to compete.

The Junkers design, led by Hermann Pohlmann, won the competition, and the first prototype flew on 17 September 1935.

Prototypes and teething troubles

The early prototypes had problems. The first aircraft, with twin tail fins, crashed during testing, and the design was reworked with a single tail fin and a stronger structure to survive the stresses of pulling out of a dive. The Ju 87’s most distinctive feature, its inverted gull wing, was chosen because it allowed short, strong landing gear legs — the undercarriage was fixed, with large spats over the wheels — and gave the pilot a good view of the ground.

The aircraft was fitted with dive brakes under the wings, perforated flaps that slowed the dive and kept the speed manageable, and with an automatic dive recovery system: the pilot set the release altitude, and after the bomb was dropped the aircraft pulled itself out of the dive, even if the pilot had blacked out under the g-forces.

This system was one of the Stuka’s most important features, because the forces in a steep dive could reach 6 g, enough to make an unaided pilot lose consciousness.

Spain and the Ju 87B

The Stuka’s first combat came in the Spanish Civil War, where a small number of Ju 87A aircraft served with the Condor Legion from 1938. The experience confirmed the value of the dive bomber and exposed its weaknesses: the early aircraft were underpowered, and the crews asked for a stronger engine and better protection.

The Ju 87B, which entered service in 1938, had the Junkers Jumo 211 engine of about 1,100 hp, a redesigned canopy, and the sirens that would make the aircraft famous. The sirens, known as the Jericho-Trompete, were small propeller-driven devices fitted to the undercarriage legs.

They were not part of the original design; they were added as a psychological weapon, to terrify troops on the ground, and they were fitted to many — though not all — early Stukas. By the later years of the war the sirens had largely disappeared, partly because they cost speed and partly because their effect had worn off, but the sound remains the Stuka’s best-known feature.

4. Design

Airframe and wing

The Ju 87 was a rugged, unglamorous aircraft, built for strength rather than speed. Its all-metal structure was designed to withstand the loads of a steep dive and a sharp pull-out, and its fixed undercarriage, though it added drag, was strong and simple and allowed the aircraft to operate from rough forward airfields.

The inverted gull wing, with its distinctive crank, gave the aircraft its silhouette: the wing dropped down from the fuselage and then rose again, placing the landing gear at the lowest point and keeping the propeller clear of the ground.

Under each wing was a dive brake, a slotted flap that opened to slow the aircraft in the dive, and the bomb was carried on a crutch under the fuselage that swung the bomb clear of the propeller arc before release — a necessary device, since a bomb dropped in a near-vertical dive would otherwise strike the propeller.

Crew and defensive armament

The crew of two sat in tandem under a long glazed canopy: the pilot in front, with the bomb sight and the dive controls, and the gunner in the rear, who operated the radio and the defensive machine gun. In the early aircraft the rear gun was a single 7.92 mm MG 15 on a flexible mount; later aircraft had twin guns, and the Ju 87D had better armour around the crew and the engine.

The pilot’s view forward and down was good, which mattered for a dive bomber, but the aircraft was slow — the Ju 87B had a top speed of about 390 km/h, and the later Ju 87D about 410 km/h — and it had almost no chance against a modern fighter.

Its defensive armament was light, its armour was thin by the standards of later ground-attack aircraft, and its fixed undercarriage made it slower still. Everything about the design assumed that the Stuka would operate where the Luftwaffe controlled the sky.

Engine and bomb load

The engine was the aircraft’s other limitation. The early Ju 87A used the Junkers Jumo 210 of about 640 hp, which was barely enough, and the Ju 87B and Ju 87D used the Jumo 211, rising to about 1,410 hp in the Jumo 211J of the Ju 87D. Even so, a fully loaded Stuka was heavy and sluggish in the climb, and it needed a long take-off run.

The bomb load grew over time: the Ju 87B could carry one 500 kg bomb under the fuselage and four 50 kg bombs under the wings, while the Ju 87D could carry up to 1,800 kg in total, including a 1,000 kg bomb.

The aircraft could also carry drop tanks for longer range, and the long-range Ju 87R version, with extra fuel tanks, was used over the Mediterranean and in the anti-shipping role. The Stuka was, in the end, a compromise: a design of the mid-1930s that was asked to serve throughout a war in which aircraft performance advanced far faster than the Ju 87 could be improved.

5. Variants

Variant	Years	Key features	Production
Ju 87A	1937–1938	First production model; Jumo 210 engine; served in Spain	About 260
Ju 87B	1938–1941	Jumo 211 engine; redesigned canopy; Jericho sirens; main early-war variant	About 5,600 (B and R combined, approximate)
Ju 87R	1940–1941	Long-range version of the B with extra fuel tanks; anti-shipping role	Included above
Ju 87C	1939–1940	Carrier version for the unfinished aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin; folding wings, arrester hook	A few prototypes only
Ju 87D	1941–1944	Improved model; Jumo 211J engine; better armour; up to 1,800 kg bomb load	About 3,300
Ju 87G	1943–1944	Tank destroyer; two 37 mm BK 3.7 cannon under the wings; flown by Hans-Ulrich Rudel	About 200 converted
Ju 87E	1944	Proposed torpedo bomber; not built	0
Ju 187	—	Proposed successor with retractable undercarriage; never built	0

The main production models

The Ju 87B was the Stuka of the Blitzkrieg years, and the Ju 87D was the Stuka of the Eastern Front. The D model, which entered service in 1941, was a thorough reworking: it had a more powerful engine, a redesigned airframe with better aerodynamics, heavier armour for the crew and the engine, and a larger bomb load.

It could also carry a wider range of stores, including drop tanks and, in the D-5 version, 20 mm cannon in the wings in place of the rifle-calibre machine guns. The Ju 87D remained in production until 1944, and it was the most numerous variant.

The Ju 87G, the tank-busting version, was a field conversion of the D model, fitted with two 37 mm BK 3.7 cannon in underwing pods, each with only 12 rounds. It was a difficult aircraft to fly and to aim, and only a small number of pilots mastered it, but in the hands of Hans-Ulrich Rudel it became one of the most effective tank destroyers of the war — Rudel is credited with the destruction of more than 500 Soviet tanks, a figure that rests on his own claims and on German records and that historians treat with caution.

Special versions and the unbuilt successor

The Ju 87C, the carrier version, is a reminder of the aircraft’s versatility and of the German Navy’s ambitions. It was designed for the aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin, which was laid down in 1936 but never completed, and it had folding wings, an arrester hook and a jettisonable undercarriage for ditching at sea. Only a handful were built, and they were converted back to land-based aircraft.

The proposed successor, the Ju 187, with a retractable undercarriage and a more powerful engine, never left the drawing board, and the Ju 87 remained in production long after it was obsolete, because Germany had no replacement ready and because the aircraft was still useful on the Eastern Front, where the Luftwaffe could still achieve local air superiority until 1943 and 1944.

6. Operational History

Poland and the Blitzkrieg, 1939–1940

The Stuka’s war began on 1 September 1939, when German aircraft attacked Poland. Stukas dived on Polish airfields, bridges, railway stations and troop columns, and their precision and their sirens spread panic among Polish troops who had never faced such an attack. The Polish Air Force was destroyed on the ground and in the air within days, and the Stuka operated almost unopposed.

The campaign lasted five weeks, and the Stuka’s performance seemed to confirm everything its advocates had claimed. In Norway in April 1940, Stukas supported the German landings and attacked British naval forces, and in France in May and June 1940 they were at the centre of the Blitzkrieg: they dived on French and British positions ahead of the Panzer divisions, attacked the bridges over the Meuse at Sedan, and harried the Allied troops retreating to Dunkirk.

At Sedan, the Stuka attack on 13 May 1940, combined with artillery, broke the French defences and opened the way for the German armour to cross the river — one of the decisive moments of the campaign.

The Battle of Britain and the Mediterranean, 1940–1941

Over Britain in the summer of 1940, the Stuka’s luck ran out. The Royal Air Force’s Hurricanes and Spitfires were faster, more manoeuvrable and better armed, and Stukas that were sent against British airfields and radar stations were shot down in large numbers.

On 18 August 1940, “the Hardest Day”, the Luftwaffe lost heavily, and the Stuka units suffered badly; within days the Ju 87 was withdrawn from the Battle of Britain, and it never returned to operations over southern England. The lesson was clear: the Stuka could only operate where the enemy had no effective fighters. In the Mediterranean, where the Luftwaffe still had the advantage, the Stuka remained effective.

From bases in Sicily and North Africa, Ju 87s attacked British shipping in the Mediterranean, and they sank more Allied merchant ships and warships than any other German aircraft type. The Ju 87R, with its long range, was used in the anti-shipping role, and Stukas supported the German and Italian forces in North Africa, in Greece and in Crete, where their attacks on British ships during the evacuation of Crete in May and June 1941 sank several warships, including three cruisers and six destroyers.

The Eastern Front, 1941–1945

The Stuka’s longest and most intense service was on the Eastern Front. In Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, Stukas supported the German advance into the Soviet Union, attacking Soviet airfields, bridges and troop concentrations, and they remained in action for the rest of the war.

As the Soviet air force grew stronger and the German advance stalled, the Stuka’s losses rose, but the aircraft adapted: the Ju 87D, with its better armour and heavier bomb load, was used as a ground-attack aircraft, and the Ju 87G, with its 37 mm cannon, was used against Soviet tanks.

Stukas flew in direct support of the army groups advancing on Leningrad, Moscow and the Ukraine, attacking Soviet columns and river crossings as a routine part of the German advance in 1941, and they were still flying close support missions during the German offensives of 1942, when the Luftwaffe could still concentrate its aircraft over a chosen sector.

The tank destroyer and the long retreat, 1943–1945

Hans-Ulrich Rudel, the most famous Stuka pilot, flew more than 2,500 sorties — a figure that is itself extraordinary — and his unit, Schlachtgeschwader 2, became the most decorated ground-attack unit in the Luftwaffe. The Stuka also served in the defence of Germany’s allies: it supported the Romanian and Hungarian forces, and it fought in the siege of Leningrad, at Stalingrad and at Kursk, where in July 1943 Stukas attacked Soviet armour in support of the German offensive. By 1944 the Stuka was increasingly replaced by the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 in the ground-attack role, but it remained in service until the end of the war, flying its last sorties in the defence of Berlin in 1945.

7. Performance and Specifications

Specification	Ju 87B-2	Ju 87D-1
Engine	Junkers Jumo 211D, about 1,200 hp	Junkers Jumo 211J, about 1,410 hp
Top speed	About 390 km/h	About 410 km/h
Cruising speed	About 310 km/h	About 320 km/h
Range	About 1,000 km	About 1,000–1,500 km
Service ceiling	About 8,000 m	About 7,300 m
Bomb load	Up to 1,000 kg	Up to 1,800 kg
Forward armament	Two 7.92 mm MG 17	Two 7.92 mm MG 17
Rear armament	One 7.92 mm MG 15	Two 7.92 mm MG 15
Crew	2	2
Number built	About 5,600 (B and R)	About 3,300

Bomb load, range and the dive

The Ju 87’s performance in the dive was the reason it existed. With the dive brakes open, the aircraft entered a dive of 70 to 80 degrees and held a steady speed while the pilot aimed through his bomb sight; the bomb was released at low altitude, the crutch swinging it clear of the propeller, and the automatic recovery system pulled the aircraft out of the dive.

The cost of this precision was paid in every other measure of performance: the fixed undercarriage and the drag of the dive brakes limited the top speed to about 410 km/h, the climb was slow when the aircraft was fully loaded, and the range of about 1,000 km on internal fuel meant that Stukas operating over the Mediterranean or the Eastern Front often needed drop tanks or forward airfields.

The long-range Ju 87R carried extra fuel and could reach targets far beyond the standard aircraft’s radius, which made it useful in the anti-shipping role, where targets were often hundreds of kilometres from the nearest airfield.

The Stuka against its rivals

Compared with its contemporaries, the Stuka was slow but accurate. The American Douglas SBD Dauntless, the U.S. Navy’s dive bomber, had a similar top speed of about 410 km/h but carried a smaller bomb load and had a retractable undercarriage; the Japanese Aichi D3A “Val” was faster, at about 430 km/h, but was more lightly built.

The Stuka’s advantage was not speed but precision and ruggedness: it could dive more steeply than either, it could carry a heavier bomb, and its automatic pull-out system made the dive safer for the pilot. Its disadvantage was that it was designed for a war of short campaigns and air superiority, and it had no answer to a modern fighter.

The Luftwaffe knew this by 1940, but it had no replacement in production, and the Stuka’s replacement — the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 in the ground-attack role — did not arrive in numbers until 1943 and 1944.

8. Operators

Germany: the Luftwaffe’s dive-bomber wings

The Ju 87 was used above all by Germany, by the Luftwaffe’s dive-bomber wings (Sturzkampfgeschwader) and later by the ground-attack wings (Schlachtgeschwader). At the height of the Blitzkrieg the Luftwaffe fielded several Stuka wings, including Sturzkampfgeschwader 2 “Immelmann”, Sturzkampfgeschwader 77 and Sturzkampfgeschwader 1, each organised in groups that could be moved quickly to support an army offensive. The wings fought on every front, from Poland and France to North Africa and the Soviet Union, and as the war went on many of them were converted into ground-attack wings, trading the dive-bombing role for low-level attack with cannon and bombs. The Stuka’s units were among the most heavily engaged in the Luftwaffe, and their losses, especially after 1942, were correspondingly high.

Exports, allies and captured aircraft

The Stuka was also exported, in small numbers, to Germany’s allies and to other countries. Italy received Ju 87B and Ju 87D aircraft, known in Italian service as the Picchiatello, and used them in North Africa and in the Mediterranean; Romania and Hungary received Stukas and used them on the Eastern Front; Bulgaria received a small number; and Japan bought two Ju 87A aircraft for evaluation in 1940, though it never adopted the type.

After the war, a few Stukas remained in service briefly in the Balkans, and the Yugoslav Air Force used captured aircraft for a short time. The Stuka was never a major export aircraft: it was a weapon of the Blitzkrieg, and its usefulness depended on the Luftwaffe’s way of war.

9. Legacy and Influence

The sound of the siren

The Stuka’s legacy is the sound of its siren and the image of the dive. No other aircraft of the Second World War is so closely identified with a single sound, and the Stuka’s siren — whether or not it was fitted to a particular aircraft — became the sound of air attack in films, in newsreels and in the memory of the war.

The Stuka also left a technical legacy: it showed that a dive bomber could deliver bombs with a precision that changed the way armies thought about close air support, and its automatic dive recovery system and its dive brakes influenced the design of later dive bombers, including the American SBD Dauntless and the German Henschel Hs 129.

The image of the diving Stuka became one of the most reproduced images of the war, used in German propaganda at the time and in countless books, films and documentaries since.

A cautionary tale

But the Stuka’s deeper legacy is a cautionary one. It showed that an aircraft designed for one kind of war — a short war, fought with air superiority, against an enemy with no effective air defence — could become a liability when the war changed.

The Luftwaffe’s failure to replace the Stuka, and its continued reliance on an aircraft that was obsolete by 1940, is one of the reasons the German ground-attack force declined in the second half of the war, even as the Soviet and Allied ground-attack forces grew stronger.

The Soviet Il-2 Sturmovik, built in far larger numbers and armoured against ground fire, and the Allied fighter-bombers that followed, showed the direction ground attack actually took: fast, heavily armed aircraft that could fight their way to the target and survive over the battlefield. The Stuka pointed the way to close air support, but it was not the aircraft that carried it into the future.

10. Surviving Examples

The two complete survivors

Only two complete Ju 87 aircraft survive, and both are in museums. The best known is a Ju 87G-2 at the Royal Air Force Museum in London, at Hendon, which was captured by British forces in 1945 and brought to Britain for evaluation; it is displayed in the museum’s collection and is one of the most photographed aircraft in the museum.

The other is a Ju 87R-2 in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, in the United States, which was also captured in 1945 and brought to America. Both aircraft were flown to Britain and America as war prizes in 1945, evaluated by the victors, and then preserved rather than scrapped, which is why they survive when almost all of the 6,500 Stukas built were destroyed in combat, abandoned on retreating airfields or broken up after the war.

Wrecks, parts and replicas

A third aircraft, a Ju 87D-3, was recovered from the Mediterranean and is held in parts, and several wreck sites on the Eastern Front and in the Mediterranean have yielded components that are held in museums and in private collections.

Replicas and full-scale models of the Stuka appear in films and at airshows, but the two surviving complete aircraft are the only ones that visitors can see in their original form. Wreck recovery continues to add to the record: parts raised from the sea and dug from former battlefields have helped historians and restorers understand how the aircraft was built and how it was modified during the war, even where no complete airframe survives.

Museum displays of the two survivors, with their inverted gull wings and spatted undercarriage, still give the clearest sense of what made the Stuka so recognisable in the air.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does “Stuka” mean?
“Stuka” is short for Sturzkampfflugzeug, the German word for dive bomber. The name was applied so often to the Ju 87 that it became the aircraft’s common name.

What was the Jericho siren on the Ju 87?
The Jericho-Trompete was a small propeller-driven siren fitted to the undercarriage legs of many early Ju 87 aircraft. It made a screaming sound in the dive and was intended as a psychological weapon to terrify troops on the ground.

How many Ju 87 Stukas were built?
About 6,500 Ju 87 aircraft were built between 1936 and 1944, in the A, B, R, D and G variants.

Why was the Stuka withdrawn from the Battle of Britain?
The Stuka was slow and lightly armed, and RAF Hurricanes and Spitfires shot down large numbers of them in the summer of 1940. The Luftwaffe withdrew the type from operations over southern England because its losses were unsustainable without air superiority.

Who was Hans-Ulrich Rudel?
Hans-Ulrich Rudel was the most famous Stuka pilot, credited with more than 500 tank kills in the Ju 87G on the Eastern Front and with flying more than 2,500 sorties. His claims rest on German records and are treated with caution by historians.

Where can I see a Ju 87 today?
Two complete Ju 87 aircraft survive: a Ju 87G-2 at the Royal Air Force Museum in Hendon, London, and a Ju 87R-2 at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

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Sources

1. Wikipedia, “Junkers Ju 87” — first flight, production of about 6,500, specifications, variants and operational history.
2. Peter C. Smith, Stuka at War (Ian Allan, 2011) — development, the Spanish Civil War, the Blitzkrieg and the Eastern Front.
3. John Weal, Junkers Ju 87 Stukageschwader 1937–41 (Osprey Publishing, 1998) — the early campaigns and the Battle of Britain.
4. John Weal, Junkers Ju 87 Stukageschwader of the Russian Front (Osprey Publishing, 2008) — the Eastern Front and the Ju 87G tank destroyer.
5. Manfred Griehl, Junkers Ju 87 Stuka (Airlife, 2001) — design, variants and specifications.
6. The Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon, “Junkers Ju 87G-2” — the surviving aircraft and its history.