WWII MISTERIES: What happened with the JU390?

Oh...

Maximowitz said:

Sensitive type are you? I was merely pointing out that circular unprovable arguments such as displayed here can be found on any internet forum regardless of subject. More an observation on mankind in general whose main preoccupation appears to be "winning" as opposed to "learning."

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I am sensitive - and I don't like @sshole remarkes either. If you don't have anything productive to say I suggest keeping your mouth shut. And I do hope this is a LEARNING process for you!

Maximowitz said:

I was making a Socratic philosophical observation of the human condition.

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Keep that for another forum

Something to consider when comparing engine power values:
The BMW 801 G-2 used on later Ju 290 A variants and probably the Ju 390 had a take-off power of 1700 PS (= 1677 hp) at sealevel. The often used 1730 PS rating was available from about 600m to 1000m of altitude. There are also graphs floating around stating 1800 PS take-off power but thats overall engine power without subtracting the power needed to drive the cooling fan.

The serial production 801E was to have 2000 PS, similar to the 2000 PS 801S but with better altitude performance. It is possible the 801E saw some serial production, replacing some of the 801D-2 production very late in the war.

It's quite possible they would have used the turbocharged 801J due to the far better altitude performance although I don't know how much fuel they consumed.

That is why al sources should put the engine power in kW!
Just to get rid of the difference of PS and hp!

PS = 735.49875 W
hp = 745.6999 W

BMW 801 D-2 had 1272 kW

1272 / 0,73549875 = 1730 PS
1272 / 0,7456999 = 1705,78 hp

The turbocharged versions should have had significantly improved fuel consumption, particularly as turbocharged engine variants usually use lower speed (single speed) supercharger gearing. (so the SFC would probably be somewhat lower than the "normal" engine in low blower)


Edit: PS is also equivalent to Metric horsepower.

And Denniss, I though the 801 S used the same upercharger gearing as the E model, with similar altitued performance. (and an emergency rating of ~2,200 HP) Additionally its max rpm seems to be higher than the E.

Maximowitz said:

Interesting thread this one, the whole of the internet in a microcosm.

Someone starts a thread asking a question.

The resident forum experts reply in the negative.

Someone else replies in the positive.

The whole thing dissolves into pointless technicalities, argument and name calling.

Result. No one is any the wiser.

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There have been some very interesting and insightful stuff brought up in this forum

I do not see any of what you are describing.

If you do not like the thread, then why derail with such comments. Move on to another thread you like better, but do not derail it with useless comments, that have nothing to do with the thread.

The banter in this thread has been very tame compared to those in other threads when comparing specs betwen aircraft. Its been a much more valuable learning experience this time around.

What would the Walter 109-500 rocket engine (RATO unit) do for take-off and fuel consumtion at take-off?
Put 4 or 6 of these little engines on a Ju-390 (if possible) would help to reduce the needed runway length...they were planned for use on the Me-264 but never used on the Ju-390

A most interesting discussion on the 'rivets' in the system.

I think the question is more appropriatley answered philosophically rather then scientifically.

The Ju390 came about under a directive from the RLM and General Milch to develop an aircraft capable of delivering a 4,000 kg payload to a range of 12,000 km (I think the meeting in question was in early 42 - I have details at home)

The German aircraft industry responded as follows. Messershmitt offered a 6 engined Me264, Focke Wulf offered the Ta400, Horten offered the XVIII and Junkers offered the 390. The RLM decided to proceed with the Ju390.

It would be fair to assume that the Junkers engineers knew what they were doing in proposing this design as they had extensive knowledge of
Engine performance
Handling
Altitude
Fuel consumption
Speed etc
from their experience with the Ju 89, 90 and 290.

It therefore seems reasonable that a somewhat extensive test program would be run with the Ju 390 to establish all those facts which have been argued about over the preceeding pages, however the results of which are lost to us through the ravages of time and war.

So after you do all your testing - like running the engines for the required time on test rigs, climbing to altitude, flying in 'overload' condition - the usual stuff, you might be interested in actually 'flying the mission'. You replace the 4,000 kg bomb load with extra fuel (just to give you extra safety margin) and then you set off into the sunset one day to see how it goes.

The distance from Bordeaux to New York makes about at 11,500 km round trip over open water, you can literally turn back any time (when your fuel gauge or other information tells you to), so why not go for it ??

My feeling is that this series of events is quite plausible.

The Ju 390 was designed to fly from Europe to New York and back - it was its raison d'etre.

It was an evolutionary design based on well known performance parameters from its long lineage of predecessors and design should therefore have been pretty spot on.

If you stay 'on mission' you can fly with 4,000 kg of spare fuel while still maintaining mission profile

The mission is low risk as its entirely over open water and you can easily turn back.

You would stay some miles offshore to prevent interception so the 12 mile approach seems reasonable

You would keep it secret - just in case you do want to fly it earnest.

Then you find your base gets overrun and you are out of range so the plan gets canned (there is no A-bomb in any case)

Ofcourse none of this is proof - but then what is ??

To conclude, in my opinion the alleged East Coast flight of the Ju 390 is likely to have been undertaken on the balance of probability and that i'm afraid is as good as it gets.

Cheers

Andreas from Australia

didn't they use 390s in the plan to get hitler to south america

the Ju 390 was developed at the start to support small stealth like units: FAGr 5 in the armed recon role along with working very closely with the KM U-Boot arm, nothing more and nothing less. The unit DID NOT make the travel to NY and back. if it would of have been we would have direct proof through FAGr 5's records as well as incredible amount of info detailing every aspect: times, route, crew, code of A/C during and after the flight being used as an incredible propaganda tool, hence the prop would of broadcasted to the US; we could hit/attack you any time we felt as you would not be able to intercept us.......blah, blah, blah

schwarzpanzer said:

The Ju290 was originally a Lufthansa airliner, converted for WW2 use IIRC?

(Like the Dakota and Condor)

The Ju390 may have been intended for the nuke?

- If so, it would have been shrouded in secrecy, even from Germans.

It would have been a pathetic bomber IMHO as it was very easy to shoot up, though it did carry extremely heavy armament IIRC?

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Nope schwarzpanzer the Ju-390 was not intended as a nuclear bomber.

Going back to the start it evolved from the J-89 Ural Bomber into the Ju-90. An RLM requirement for a trans Atlantic airliner designated "EF 53" resulted in a redesign which became the classic Ju-90.

From the Ju-90 V5 airframe onwards, it's wing shape changed radiacally from the earlier Ural Bomber plan form. The Ju-90 also evolved from underpowered BMW 132 engines to the Ju-90S until at Ju-90 V11 it got the BMW801C engines and became the Ju-290 transporter and maritime patrol aircraft.

There had also been issued an RLM requirement issued in 1940 for an "EF-100" trans Atlantic airliner able to fly 20,000kg over 9,000km issued in 1942. The Bv222 was favoured for the "EF-100" project. The Junkers design was in effect the forerunner of the Ju-390 design. Had Germany won the war it would have been designated as the Ju-390D model.

The "EF-100" requirement was abandoned in 1941, however RLM resurected the design study in 1942 for an "Amerika falls" design. For an aircraft able to reach landfall in America and return. The Me 264 and Fa400 were evolved to meet the revised military requirement.

Junkers developed the Ju-390 as a maritime patrol and as a transporter model. The Ju-390C model was to carry three Me-328 parasite fighters under the wings and fuselage in a bomber version however in 1944 testing of the Ju-390 wings concluded they were not strong enough to carry both the enormous fuel needed to reach USA plus the weight of parasitie fighters.

It is worth noting however that in 1969 the Junkers test Pilot Hans Joachim Pancherz gave an interview from his home in Barcelona to the Daily telegraph telling how in early 1944 he took a Ju-390 aircraft in company with a Ju-290 tanker on an air to air refuelling mission in which the Ju-390 flew to Capre Town and back.

Essentially the Ju-390 was a long range transporter and reconnaissance aircraft. Not a bomber. the long range bomber designs of the Luftwaffe would have been the He-177 A-7 or He-277 had they had time to play that role.

Denniss said:

Something to consider when comparing engine power values:
The BMW 801 G-2 used on later Ju 290 A variants and probably the Ju 390 had a take-off power of 1700 PS (= 1677 hp) at sealevel. The often used 1730 PS rating was available from about 600m to 1000m of altitude. There are also graphs floating around stating 1800 PS take-off power but thats overall engine power without subtracting the power needed to drive the cooling fan.

The serial production 801E was to have 2000 PS, similar to the 2000 PS 801S but with better altitude performance. It is possible the 801E saw some serial production, replacing some of the 801D-2 production very late in the war.

It's quite possible they would have used the turbocharged 801J due to the far better altitude performance although I don't know how much fuel they consumed.

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The BMW801E differed from the BMW801D only in that it had a different gearing ratio for the turbo charger delaying the turbocharger from kicking in until a higher altitude. This gave the aircraft greater fuel economy.

Unfortunately on the BMW801D the turbocharger cut in automatically at 21,000 feet creating more than double the fuel consumption. The Ju-390 with BMW801D engines at LR cruise revolutions @ 20,000ft could manage 55 US gals per hour per engine.

Erich said:

I had heard some 5 years ago from a German contact who was friends with several survivng members of FAGR 5, that the vets themselves were writing the history of their Gruppe. I wish them a huge success becuase once it is written we will then be able to put the New York flight story to rest and find out about other very stealth operations the gruppe was involved in besides their prime mission of suporting the Kriegsmarine U-boot arm.

did you know the unit flew recon ops in the Arado 234 towards wars end in the spring of 1945. so as many books have said that FAGr 5 was dissolved and obsorbed by KG 200 and disbanded this is not quite true

E

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The Ju-390 aircraft operated briefly in 1944 by FAGr.5 at Mont de Marsan was undoubtedly the Ju-390 V1 aircraft however I am confident that the stammkennzeichen for this aircraft was RC+ DA. We can tell this because it had the shorter airframe. We know the Ju-390 V2 had a longer fuselage and comparing photos proves GH + UK had the longer airframe and therefore must have been the V2 transporter.



Just because FAGr.5 flew one of the two Ju-390 aircraft at the time of the New York flight does not put to bed controversy.

At the time of the New York flight the V-2 aircraft was being trialed with long range air to air refuelling missions by Junkers company test pilots and therefore it is not even relevant that KG200 was not operating a Ju-390.

Long prior to publishing his book in 1972, William Green was the editor of the RAF Review and was privy to several RAF intelligence reports. He wrote in the RAF Review about the Ju-390 in 1959 and received correspondence by a former Luftwaffe airman whom he has never named.

One of the RAF Intelligence reports which he was privy to was based upon interrogation of a Luftwaffe airman captured in April 1944 who described Polar flights from northern Finland to Japan. Albert Speer in his memoirs described a flight to Tokyo via the polar route flown by civilian test pilots.

The true original source for claims of flights to New York and for Ju-290 flights to Manchuria was a captured Photographic technician, Unteroffizer Wolf Baumgart, and another unnamed officer in his unit.

Baumgart was interrogated by the US Ninth Air Force and his testimony was recorded by the A.P.W.I.U. Report 44/1945. In that report Baumgart is quoted claiming that a Ju-390 flew from Mont de Marsan, France, to within 12 miles of New York city. He further stated that photographs were taken of the city's skyline. The same A.P.I.W.U report also references corroboration by a more senior Luftwaffe officer, who added that the Ju-390 had an in-flight endurance of 32 hours.

I read recently (can't remember where) that one Ju390 was flown to Argentina where it was eventually broken up and buried on German owned land.

fly boy said:

didn't they use 390s in the plan to get hitler to south america

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Probably because he was evacuated from Berlin on the night of 27 April 1945 and flown via Prague to Barcelona. Arrived in Madrid according to Franco's personal driver on 30 April and lived at the presidential palace until a massive coronary in the early hours of 2 November 1947.

The Ju-390 flight to El Palomar airbase Buenos Aires in May 1945 is documented in official Argentine Intelligence files which were declassified at Congressional hearings of the Argentine Government in 1993. That official report which had been kept secret for decades claimed the Ju-390 arrived in a flight from Villa Cisneros.

From Buenos Aires the Ju-390 was flown north to an airstrip in Entre Rios Province to unload an undisclosed cargo after which it was ferried a short distance to a German ranch near Paysandu Uruguay to be dismantled.

Five days ago* I got an email from my friend Harry Cooper, president of Sharkhunters International, a group for Uboat crew veterans. He said this to me:

I have been to South America five times thus far and this past February visited the estancia where JU 390-V2 landed and interviewed many people. While they all knew OF this landing, we did interview one 94 year old lady who actually heard the big plane as it flew overhead on its landing approach. We also pin-pointed the wooded area where the Germans set up an RFD station to guide "the Truck" as it was known, to the area

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*(17 July 2016)

These are RLM's own figures for the Ju390's performance:

Reichsluftministerium (RLM) performance specification for the Ju-390 required carrying 10,000kg (22,000lb) payload over 8,000 kilometres.

In the reconnaissance role the (75,510kg Gross Weight) Ju-390 A-1 had fuel tanks for 30,400kg / 67,020lb of fuel (11,170 US Gallons / 42,283 Litres).

In the transport role the (75,510kg Gross Weight) Ju-390 A-1 carried 17,170kg / 37,853lb of fuel (6,308 US Gallons / 23,878 Litres) with 9,530kg Payload

In bomber role the (75,510kg Gross Weight) Ju-390 A-1 carried 25,180kg / 55,512lb of fuel (9,252 US Gallons / 35,022 Litres) with 4,440kg bombs

All theories and myths...

Perhaps that Ju390 is buried alongside those Spitfires in crates!

Find the Ju390 and you'll find the Spitfires!

The soviets discovered the half burned remains of Hitler and his consort, Eva Braun.

The story of the body makes interesting reading in which the conspiracists have a field say.

known facts are that on the morning of May 2, Ivan Churakov, a private in the Soviet Army, noticed an oblong patch of recently turned soil as he and the 79th Rifle Corps searched the Chancellery. He began to dig, thinking he might uncover some hastily buried Nazi treasure. Instead, his shovel hit bone.

Reportedly he said to his commanding officer: "Comrade Lieutenant Colonel, there are legs here" . An exhumation was ordered and the soldiers dug up the bodies of two dogs (thought to be Blondi, Hitler's pet German Shepherd, and one of her pups) and the badly burnt remains of two people. An autopsy was performed, and a few days later, confirming the identity. Soviet soldiers moved Hitler's body to a different gravesite outside of Berlin proper. This would be just one of several moves the corpse would make in the next few decades.

In early June that year, the Soviets re-buried the body in a forest near the town of Rathenau. Eight months later, they moved it again—this time, to the Soviet Army garrison based at Magdeburg. There it remained until March 1970, when the Soviets decided to abandon the garrison and turn it over to the East German civilian government.

Under Soviet control, Hitler's remains could be kept secret, and physical access to them severely limited. Soviet leaders did not want the body being used as some macabre focal point for all the neo nazi goof heads starting to kick around from about that time onward. Soviet secrecy was unsuccessful, the rumours that Hitler had survived abounded and thrived in the climate ignorance that existed at that time.

After the abandonment of the Madgeburg garrison site, the KGB exhumed the body and re- buried it somewhere else under their watchful eye. They had moved hitlers remains, or so they thought. At some point after this second move KGB director Yuri Andropov decided that the remains should be destroyed and authorized an operation to dispose of the body. The only things that were kept were fragments of a jawbone and skull, which were stored in government buildings in Moscow. (DNA testing recently revealed that these pieces did not belong to Hitler's body, but were of female origin. Russian officials rejected that conclusion.)

Andropov selected a KGB officer named Vladimir Gumenyuk to pick a secret final resting place for Hitler's remains and lead a three-man team in taking the remains there for destruction. The Soviet garrison was surrounded by German-built high-rise buildings, so Gumenyuk's team pitched a tent over the spot where the bones had been buried to avoid being seen. After some digging with no results, the team realized they had counted 45 meters instead of 45 paces from a secret coordinate while following the directions to the corpse. They put the dirt back, moved the tent, and started again.

With what they thought were hitlers remains in their possession, the team disguised themselves as fishermen and drove into the mountains, stopping at a cliff along a small stream. There, in a spot screened by trees, they lit two campfires. One was to make soup. The other, to further burn the remains.

Gumenyuk has called the second cremation a waste of a can of gasoline, but the remains were finally burned to ashes. They collected these in a rucksack, which Gumenyuk took onto the cliff and opened up into the wind. With that, one of history's greatest monsters disappeared, a brown cloud of dust in the wind.

It is obvious the Soviets goofed up the final disposal of the body, but the evidence that hitler died on the 30 April 1945 remains overwhelming. Like all things to do with the regime there is a hell of a lot of room for rumour and myth and more than enough people gullible or willing enough to believe it.

You know the truth is, that he escaped to the secret Nazi UFO base in the antarctic - all the rest of these stories are a smoke screen to lead people astray...