The Junkers Ju52/3m Project

A rare transport, and a classroom like no other.

On 1 November 2022 the Trustees and Volunteers were very excited and pleased to announce the acquisition of a C.A.S.A. 352L (Junkers Ju 52/3M) for the Museum’s ever-expanding collection of airframes.

The aircraft came from the RAF Museum, where it had been on display at the RAF Museum Midlands site at Cosford for some thirty to forty years. It was put up for transfer in 2021 and, after a bidding process and due diligence, ours was the successful bid.

Its move to a new home at Hawkinge was arranged for shortly after the Museum closed for the winter on Sunday 13 November 2022.

The Colour Scheme

This is the colour scheme chosen for the Junkers Ju 52/3M (C.A.S.A. 352L), to be applied once her existing paint had been stripped back to bare metal and the airframe repaired and primed.

The scheme was created by Museum Volunteer Clint Mitchell. Although fictitious, it is believed to closely represent an aircraft of 6./KGzbV1, one of the units that would have spearheaded Operation Sea Lion, the planned invasion of Great Britain by Nazi Germany. The text on the emblem, ‘Uns geht die Sonne nicht unter’, translates roughly as ‘The sun doesn’t go down for us’.

No transport units had undergone any preparation for Operation Sea Lion, but it is recorded that KGzbV1 and KGzbV2 were to move to France should the invasion become a real possibility.

Our Education Facility

The Trustees and Volunteers were also very excited to announce that the inside of the fuselage would become our brand-new Education Facility, available to visiting schools, colleges and groups from April 2023. Here they can be taught about the Battle of Britain and the possibility of Operation Sea Lion. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission was quick to ask whether it could use it for education as well! See Educational Visits for more.

About the Junkers Ju52/3m

In its time the Junkers Ju52/3m was rivalled as a transport aircraft only by the Douglas Dakota. It was used by the airlines of thirty countries and by several air forces, and a few examples still fly today with pleasure flight operators.

The Ju52 was the last in a series of corrugated metal-skinned Junkers aircraft. The first, fitted with a single engine, flew in October 1930; the first three-engined version, the Ju52/3m, flew in April 1932. Orders soon came in for this robust aircraft, which could carry 17 passengers or 18 troops, including an order for three from the pre-war British Airways.

By 1934 the newly formed Luftwaffe was flying the Ju52 as a bomber-transport, and the type was soon in action with the Luftwaffe’s Condor Legion, which fought on the Nationalist side in the Spanish Civil War. In August 1936 Ju52s carried out what was then the biggest air-transport operation ever mounted, carrying 14,000 of General Franco’s troops from Morocco to Spain.

In the Second World War the Ju52 became the Luftwaffe’s standard workhorse and was known affectionately as ‘Tante Ju’ (Auntie Ju). Flown mainly as a transport, it also served as an air ambulance and, more unusually, in mine clearance. For that role, known as Minensuch, it was fitted under the airframe with a current-carrying degaussing ring 14 m (46 ft) in diameter, energised by a motor to create a magnetic field that triggered submerged magnetic sea mines.

After the war it was built under licence by Construcciones Aeronáuticas SA, who continued production as the CASA 352 and 352L for use by the Spanish Air Force.