Aircraft of World War II: Junkers Ju-88 (ePub)

The Junkers Ju 88 was a twin-engine low-wing multi-role bomber produced by the German Junkers GmbH from the mid thirties. It was one of the pillars of the Luftwaffe.
It was, in fact, used as a bomber, night fighter, Zerstörer, scout, dive bomber, attack aircraft and torpedo bomber. It was the most versatile aircraft German Air Force and, some say, of all the air forces involved in World War II.
The production lines were running continuously from 1936 to 1945 and a total of more than 14,676 aircraft were built in dozens of versions. Throughout this period, the basic structure of the plane remained virtually the same as proof of the exceptional validity of the original project.
The most popular and one of the most effective bombers assigned to the Luftwaffe during the conflict, the Ju 88 was designed as uniformly required to aircraft assigned to that role by Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM), to have capacity of dive bombers, as its predecessor Ju 87, but the overall weight, in this case much higher, posed considerable problems of structural integrity.
The problem was solved by changing the tactical objective by limiting to 60 degrees the dive angle.
Later, with the development of subsequent versions, the Ju 88 proved adaptable aircraft, medium bomber, reconnaissance plane, night fighter, torpedo bomber, with performance between 460 and 620 km/h.