Could the Luftwaffe have done a better job supplying the 6th army at Stallingrad

parsifal said:

I dont. but the DC-3 is available prewar, and could have been in mass production more or less instead of the Ju52. The Ju252 was however a new type, with all the development costs associated with that. Added to that is the fact that it was a wartime prototype, which adds to the cost and development issues that go with any new type.

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The Ju 52/1m Ju 52/3m was running about 1.5 maybe 2 years ahead of the DC-2 DC-3 in terms of first flight. The Ju 52 represented the end of the line of corrugated metal construction that Junkers had pioneered in WW1 and Junkers was already working on modern stressed skin aircraft. In fact Junkers single handedly developed all metal aircraft. The other thing to note is that Erhard Milch pushed the production of (about 800) Ju 52 as bombers at a time that Junkers had already established its smooth stressed skin technology in serveral aircraft (eg the Ju 86 almost a contemporary of the DC-3) simply because he though it could be easily built in such massive numbers despite its placement of main spar making for a poor bomber. The Ju 52 was very well established as a mass production item however the Ju 86 and several other modern smooth skin aircraft from other German makers, which were as up to date as the DC-2/DC-3 did not get such a large order.

There is no doubt the DC-3 or even DC-2 was a superior logistics platform but it would seem that the timming was just bad luck for the Germans. The Ju 52 entered service and performed extremely well in terms of reliabillity and its abillity to opperate in harsh weather often flyung to Britain in storms that shut down every other airline. The attempt to produce a more economic replacement just fell foul of other priorities and its replacement was continiously delayed by the RLM (this was not a commercial decision). It's worth noting the in the inter war period that Germany developed strong trade links to China and Sth America and German airlines were making inroads into the Sth American market. A hostile Roosvelt administration developed a Bill to subsidise US airlines to drive the Germans out of buisiness. This comes from Anthony Kay's "junkers aircraft and their engines". The subsidies proved unneccesary as the DC-3 better economics simply made airlines opperating 52 uncompetitive except on shorter routes. The opperating economics of the DC-3 were forged under commercial pressures. The economics of the Ju 52 and its lack of replacement were forged under the priorities of military expansion economics and opperating costs. Also note that a Ju 52 was fine for carry passegners from say Berlin or Hamburg to southern destinations such as Munich, Stuttgard, Zurich.

The Ju-52 was designed to carry 17 passengers. The DC-3 was designed to carry 21 passengers and cost twice as much. IMO that's not enough of a performance improvement to justify the cost increase. The U.S. Government subsidized American airlines but they certainly aren't going to subsidize Lufthansa procurement of the DC-3.

The Ju-252 was designed to carry 32 passengers. 52% more then a DC-3. Total aircraft payload was greater too and it had a proper rear cargo ramp. If 1930s German were serious about replacing the Ju-52 why not just begin Ju-77 / Ju-252 development two years early (1936 ILO 1938 ) and give the program proper financial support? It would probably enter service as early as a German copy of the DC-3 and you get a more capable transport aircraft. Germany would leap ahead of the competition rather then just strugging to keep up.

This tells me that the Ju52 was a successful airliner, though not as successful as the DC3. Saying that German industry of any kind was not subsidised whereas the US was subsidised is something i simply dont believe. Nazi Germany provided lavish subsidies to its various commercial enterprises (to the point of gross innefficiency and nearly bankrupted the country there were so many snouts in the trough), including the commercial airline, though I accept the Americans were at it as well.

However, commercial success is not a great way to measure the success of any given type from a military stanpoint. On that basis, the boeing 747 or the tupolev 141 should be considered the best military transports of the modern era, when clearly they are not. Neither is measuring the usefulness of a workhorse transport simply on the basis of its payload. thats a factor, and in fact from your own figures we now know the DC-3 could carry 25% more personnel compared to the Ju52. Other factors are just as important in determining the relative merits and capability of the transport. there are other factors to consider....its range reliability stol capability, performance, resistance to weather, to name just a few.

And i dont believe the Ju52 was half the price of a DC-3. To make that comparison, one would have to find a country that produced both types, and see which one was cheaper to build in that country. German economic management was so "out there that it is virtually impossible to make valid comparisons of unit costs. Perhaps if man hours per unit could be found, that might be a valid method of comparison.

I think it significant that both Japan and the USSR chose the DC-3 as their main military transport over the Ju52. Whatever the excuse, it shows that these military establishments at least thought the DC-3 a superior aircraft at the time of their decision.

Germany would leap ahead of the competition rather then just strugging to keep up.

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Would it? The DC-4/C-54/R5D flew only a few months after the Ju252.

DC-4.
4 x 1,450hp engines.
19,640kg empty weight.

Fw-200.
4 x 1,200hp engines.
17,005kg empty weight.

Ju-252.
3 x 1,322hp engines.
13,127kg empty weight.

I think the DC-4 was built for the same market as the Fw-200. I don't think either would make an effective tactical transport aircraft.

Just for fun...

Could the modern day Luftwaffe do any better? It's a foregone conclusion Typhoon fighter aircraft would sweep the VVS from the sky but does modern day Germany have enough transport aircraft to keep 6th Army supplied for three months?

There is a lot more to transport capacity than just comparing seat numbers. Airline economics come down to the cost per seat per mile. The DC-3 is widely known as the first airplane that could make money hauling passengers without a subsidy. Not only could it carry more passengers than a JU-52, it do it about 40/50% faster for about the same fuel burn. In a given period of time (week or month) it could make more trips making for a faster return on investment and on each trip it could carry more passengers and cargo for the same crew cost and fuel costs meaning higher profits per trip.
As a Military transport it could fly longer stages while caring the same or greater loads and fly more missions (subject to weather or mechanical problems) per day or week.
The JU-52 may have been an improvement on the Ford "tin goose" but is far from state of the art by the late 30s.
In 1939/40 initial design work was being done on the Lockheed Constellation. Not a combat transport but the idea that the JU-52 was a viable commercial aircraft in the late 30s is laughable. Many older planes do go on to perform well in "bush" service in extreme locals but they were purchased at low used prices and don't have to turn enough profit to repay the loans a new aircraft would have cost.

"... It's a foregone conclusion Typhoon fighter aircraft would sweep the VVS from the sky"

Is it? .... just asking

MM

davebender said:

I think the DC-4 was built for the same market as the Fw-200. I don't think either would make an effective tactical transport aircraft.

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The Fw-200 and Ju-252 were closer to the often ignored and very capable C-46 than to the the half generation better and historically significant C-54. A look at empty weight to max gross weight tells an important story for transports (load carrying is a range-cargo trade-off).
Fw-200 13k lbs
Ju-252 14k lbs
C-46 16k lbs
C-54 25k lbs
As for as tactical airlift, the Ju-252 certainly has an advantage due to its innovative loading system. However the much greater load carrying capability of the C-54 would reduce exposure significantly. There is no contest in regards to strategic airlift as proven at Berlin only a few years later.

When comparing the Ju52 and the DC3 its easy to think of things such as the number of passengers they could carry and payload, but the biggest difference is the space in the cabin. I have been in the Ju52 at Duxford and was horrified how small the cabin is. When you think of the things you could get inside a Dakota, the Ju52 isn't even close.
I would love to see someone try and carry a load of say mules in a Ju52 let alone a cut down 25pd gun or jeep.

michaelmaltby said:

"... It's a foregone conclusion Typhoon fighter aircraft would sweep the VVS from the sky"

Is it? .... just asking

MM

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If they had F15's

I will now hide in a deep hole

Are you suggesting the Eurofighter is no good?

I tried (and failed) to imply that if the VVS had F15s the Typhoon would would sweep them from the sky.

Glider said:

When comparing the Ju52 and the DC3 its easy to think of things such as the number of passengers they could carry and payload, but the biggest difference is the space in the cabin. I have been in the Ju52 at Duxford and was horrified how small the cabin is. When you think of the things you could get inside a Dakota, the Ju52 isn't even close.
I would love to see someone try and carry a load of say mules in a Ju52 let alone a cut down 25pd gun or jeep.

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There are pictures of both interiors on the internet and while the DC-3 was initially designed as a 21 seater later gross weight increases (and/or shorter stages) allowed for 28-32 seat interiors in airline configuration and not just troop transport. Dc-3 initially had 3 abreast seating 2+aisle+1 which with skinnier seats was changed to 2+2. No way was a Ju-52 going to 4 across and even 3 is doubtful.

Empty Weight.
6,510kg. Ju-52/3m
8,225kg. C-47B.
13,127kg. Ju-252A.

The Ju-52 was a relatively small aircraft designed in 1930 when engines produced 600hp. Nobody is suggesting it had any growth potential. The Ju-252 was twice the size with a cargo compartment large enough to take full advantage of engines producing 1,200+ hp.

There was no chance of going three across in a Ju52, I just wish I had taken some pictures inside it.

davebender said:

Empty Weight.
6,510kg. Ju-52/3m
8,225kg. C-47B.
13,127kg. Ju-252A.

The Ju-52 was a relatively small aircraft designed in 1930 when engines produced 600hp. Nobody is suggesting it had any growth potential. The Ju-252 was twice the size with a cargo compartment large enough to take full advantage of engines producing 1,200+ hp.

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The problem with the 252 isnt so much with the design, though to my mind it is a half generation behind its contemporary US counterpart. The problem is in its timing and availability. To ,make a difference at Stalingrad, it had to be in quantity production, and a fully developed service type by the beginning of the war. Left any later, and it will simply get in the way and actually reduce LW transport capability because overall force size will be affected by production bottlenecks and possibly teething troubles. Given that it flew in either 1939 or 1940 (im reading conflicting reports) thats precisely what it would have done....got in the way and actually reduced overall LW capability.

To improve LW capability, a workable alternative to the Ju52 had to be in service, operational and in quantity production by 1939 at the latest. Any other suggestion is just wishful thinking.

That's not going to happen as production facilities had to be built from scratch during the 1930s. However there's no reason the Ju-252 couldn't enter mass production by 1941.

Production of Jumo 211 engines began during 1937. RLM could have ordered development of a new transport aircraft to take advantage of the powerful (for that time) new engine.

parsifal said:

The problem with the 252 isnt so much with the design, though to my mind it is a half generation behind its contemporary US counterpart.

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The Ju 252 had pressurisation and it had a rear loading ramp. Both were absent in the larger DC-4/C-54 both are critical advances.

The trimotor arrangment might make it look archaic but it is a configuration that works well from the point of view of engine safety and economics. I see no advantage to the lack of tricycle undercarriage unless you are planning on landing hot and hard due to a high wing loading and using brakes to stop.

The Germans seem to have invented the smooth stressed skin form of construction. Junkers has a history in currugated constrution going back to the first world war, however smooth skin construction was later widely used by the "Rhorbach" company and Dornier (Claudius was an ex Zeppelin emplyee). There was no underlying theory for smooth skin stressing or design (people winged it by testing) untill Herbert A Wagner developed the theory in 1929 and others added, thereby earning Rhorbach company enormous royalties. (German patent 547642). Wagners earlier theories and ideas had allowed Willy Messerschmitt to produce the succesfull M-18 in 1926 (which used smooth stressed skin construction).

One needs only to look at aircraft such as the He 111, Ju 86, the Me 108, Dornier flying boats, all of them from 1935 and contemporaires of the DC-3 and the only slightly latter FW-200 (a most elegant aircraft) to be puzzled as to the extraordinary longevity of the Ju 52, which surviced in French and Spanish production till 1953 or the fact that it wasn't replaced with something better in say 1937.

I suspect the answer lies in the Ju 52's relative ease of construction which kept costs down and made mass production easy. This then inspired Erhardt Milch to order some 800 of these airliners as bombers, to rapidly build up the Luftwaffe. These aircraft proved vulnerable and inadaquet aircraft during the Spanish Civil War however they could be turned into transports.

This no doubt rusted the Ju 52 on to the Luftwaffe. But which airforce had better logistics aircraft in 1940 than the Luftwaffe with several hundred Ju 52? Consider that the Ju 52 was introduced into service only 1 year after the Handley Page H.P.42.

One also only needs to look at the Ju 90, the spectacular Ju 290 (unmatched by any allied aircraft in all parameters AFAIKT) or the FW 200, the He 111 airliner, to see that the Germans could have come up with a spectacular design that could have been produced.

However Milch was pulling the shots at Lufthansa and latter the Luftwaffe.

The FW 200 was an outstanding transport, a little too optimised for long range work to be as ubiquitous as the DC-3 but certainly it would have been perfect for the Luftwaffes North African and Soviet/East logistics problems. It however had the advantage of being set into production.

This is the Ju 77, which was rejected as not enough of an advance on the Ju 52:
Junkers Ju-77 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

The bulky fueselage was probably designed for pressurisation but would also have provided plenty of volume, the rectangular planform wings, without taper, would have been easy to make.

Siegfried said:

I see no advantage to the lack of tricycle undercarriage unless you are planning on landing hot and hard due to a high wing loading and using brakes to stop.

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Tail dragger aircraft, although a norm during WW2 were inherently harder to fly and were and always will be subjected to higher accident rates. Their only advantage is better grass or dirt field handling. Wing loading or landing fast or braking has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that this configuration eventually went away on larger multi-engine aircraft after WW2 as it was safer to operate large multi-engine aircraft in a tri-cycle configuration.