Junkers Ju 52: A History 1930-1945 Book Review

By David L. Veres

Review

“Tante Ju”. “Aunt Ju”. Or “Iron Annie”.

Nazi Germany’s iconic workhorse finally enjoys exhaustive, English-language treatment in Classic Publishing’s splendid Junkers Ju 52: A History 1930-1945. – available in North America from Specialty Press.

Consider the subtitle your carte du jour: “Airliner Bomber Transporter Ambulance Minesweeper Seaplane”. Junkers’ corrugated combatant did it all.

And Classic – now a Crécy imprint – certainly offers a supremely sumptuous smorgasbord. Text traverses 330 pages, 14 chunky, chronological chapters, appendices, annotations, sources, selected bibliography and index.

It doesn’t demand sequential reading, either. I happily and hungrily devoured initial and concluding chapters – then filled-in the rest. This encyclopedic account utterly encourages sampling and savoring.

I especially enjoyed coverage of Ju 52 development and bomber employment – and later sections on design iterations, late-war use and postwar service.

Ju 252s and Ju 352s? French bombers in Indochina? Dig in!

The book’s main course proved similarly satisfying – but largely familiar, I suspect, to most Luftwaffe aficionados. That’s where you’ll gorge on details of Tante Ju’s World War II airborne assault, transport, cargo carrier and ambulance roles. Additional sections survey Ju 52s in floatplane, mine sweeping, training and courier tasks.

Hundreds of photos – including dozens of detail shots – flavor this fulsome feast. Maps, archival art and extended captions further season the spread. And Tim Brown’s color profiles provide plenty of modeling inspiration. But their printing proved, in some cases, somewhat diffuse – with strange color streaking and little definition between RML 70 and 71 camouflage tones.

Luftwaffe enthusiasts will love this mouthwatering monograph. Grab it now. Just remember that Jaime I was a Spanish Dreadnaught – not a “cruiser”!

Highly recommended!

My sincere thanks to Specialty Press for this review sample!