The Deadliest Plane Of 1940 — And Why It Suddenly Became A Sitting Duck !

In the summer of 1931, a roar echoed across Cleveland’s municipal airport.

A stubby biplane painted in brilliant colors clawed skyward before pitching into a near vertical dive.

The crowd gasped as the aircraft plummeted earthwood, screaming toward the ground at impossible angles.

Then, at the last possible moment, the pilot pulled back, the engine howling as the machine leveled off mere feet above the runway.

Among the spectators stood a man transfixed by what he had just witnessed.

Ernst Udet, Germany’s second highest scoring fighter ace from the Great War, had never seen anything quite like this.

The aircraft was a Curtis Hawk flown by former naval aviator Al Williams, and the maneuver was dive bombing.

To Udet, it was a revelation.

Little did the cheering crowd know that this single air show demonstration would change the course of aerial warfare and give birth to one of the most feared weapons of the Second World War.

The Ynas Ju87 Stooka Ernst Udet was no stranger to aviation excellence.

During the First World War, he had claimed 62 aerial victories, flying under the legendary Manfred von Richtoven in the famous flying circus.

After the war ended, Udet found himself a drift in a defeated Germany, bound by the harsh treaty of Versailles that forbade the nation from rebuilding its military air force.

So he did what any ace would do.

He became a stunt pilot, a barntormer, traveling the world performing deathdeying arabatic displays.

His life was one of parties, women, and adrenaline.

Politics held no interest for him until Cleveland, until that Curtis Hawk showed him the future.

The dive bombing demonstration haunted Udet.

The precision, the accuracy, the sheer psychological impact of an aircraft diving almost vertically at a target.

It was unlike anything horizontal bombing could achieve.

When a conventional bomber flew overhead and released its payload, the bombs followed a parabolic arc.

Their accuracy dependent on complex calculations of speed, altitude, and wind.

But dive bombing was different.

Point your aircraft at the target.

Dive straight down.

Release the bomb when you’re close enough to spit on your enemy, then pull out.

The bomb would follow the same path as your aircraft, striking with pinpoint accuracy.

It was devastating.

It was elegant, and Udet knew Germany needed it.

By 1933, the political landscape in Germany had shifted dramatically.

Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party had seized power and with them came Herman Guring, Udet’s former commanding officer from the war.

Guring was now building a new Luftvafer secretly at first in violation of the Treaty of Versailles and he wanted Udet’s expertise, but Udet resisted.

He loved his freedom, his carefree lifestyle.

So Guring made him an offer that was impossible to refuse.

two brand new Curtis Hawk biplanes shipped directly from America in exchange for Udet joining the Luftwaffer and taking charge of aircraft development.

Udet couldn’t say no.

In September 1933, Udet stood at the Curtis factory in Buffalo, New York, overseeing the disassembly and creating of two Curtis Hawk biplanes.

The money secretly wired by the German government had already been deposited.

Within weeks, the aircraft arrived in Germany aboard a luxury liner, and Udet immediately put them to work.

He assembled German military officials at airfields and demonstrated the Hawk’s diving capabilities.

The aircraft plunged from 12,000 ft at 290 mph, pulling out just 15 ft above the ground.

The demonstrations were spectacular, terrifying, and utterly convincing.

Dive bombing wasn’t just a novelty.

It was the future of precision air support.

But convincing the German military establishment was another matter entirely.

Many senior officers remained skeptical.

General Wolffrram vonishtoven, head of the technical office, argued that any aircraft diving below 6,000 ft into heavy anti-aircraft fire would be committing suicide.

Others pointed to the difficulty of the maneuver, the stress on both aircraft and pilot, the risk of structural failure at high speeds.

And they had a point.

Dive bombing was dangerous.

The forces involved were tremendous.

Pilots could black out from the gravitational stress.

Aircraft could disintegrate if not built to withstand the punishment.

But Udet persisted and fate would soon tip the scales in his favor.

By 1935, several German aircraft manufacturers were tasked with developing dive bomber prototypes.

Ardo, Hankl, Blur, and Voss, and Junkers all entered the competition.

But Junkers had a head start.

years earlier to circumvent the Treaty of Versailles.

The company had secretly established a facility in neutral Sweden.

There they developed the Junker’s K47, a heavily braced monoplane equipped with dive brakes and an automatic pullout mechanism.

Swedish test pilots performed hundreds of dives, refining techniques and proving the concept.

When the Nazi party came to power and the restrictions loosened, Joners was ready.

The man leading the design was Herman Pullman, taking over from Carl Plowth, who had died in a flying accident.

Pullman believed that any dive bomber needed to be simple and robust above all else.

Complexity was the enemy of reliability, and reliability was everything when you were diving vertically toward the Earth with bombs strapped beneath your wings.

So Pullman designed the Yner’s Dw 87 with ruggedness in mind.

It would be an all- metal stressed skin monoplane with inverted gull wings and a fixed spatted undercarriage.

The landing gear was one of the most distinctive features.

Retractable gear would have reduced drag and increased speed, but it also added weight, complexity, and potential failure points.

Pulman chose simplicity.

The prototype designated J87 V1 first flew in the fall of 1935.

Early tests were promising, but tragedy struck when the aircraft crashed after its rudder and stabilizer disintegrated during a steep dive.

Junker’s engineers quickly produced improved models, the V2 and V3, incorporating reinforced structures.

By January 1936, comparative testing began at Recklin airfield.

The competition was fierce.

Hankl’s H18 was sleek and graceful, initially appearing to be the favorite, but it had a critical flaw.

The H18 could not dive steeper than 50° without risking structural failure.

The D87, by contrast, could plunge at 80° nearly vertical.

The decision ultimately came down to Ernst Udet himself.

In June 1936, Udet took the controls of the He18 for a test dive.

Midway through the maneuver, the propeller sheared off.

Udet had to bail out, narrowly escaping death as the aircraft plunged into the ground.

It sung was a disaster for Hankl but a blessing for Yonkers.

Udet shaken but alive made his final decision.

The D87 would become the Luftvafer’s operational dive bomber.

Orders for 262 D87A1s were placed immediately.

The Stooker was born.

But what made the Stooker truly terrifying wasn’t just its diving ability.

It was the sound.

At Udet’s specific request, engineers mounted wind-driven sirens called Jericho trumpets on the aircraft’s fixed landing gear.

As the Stooka dived, air rushing past the sirens created a rising, shrieking whale that could be heard for miles.

The sound was psychologically devastating.

Soldiers on the ground hearing that unmistakable scream growing louder and louder knew death was coming, and there was nothing they could do to stop it.

The siren turned the stooker into more than just a weapon.

It became a symbol of terror, a harbinger of destruction, the sound of the blitz creek.

By 1937, the first Stookers were ready for combat.

Three87 A1s were sent to Spain where Germany’s Condor Legion was supporting General Francisco Franco’s nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War.

The aircraft proved devastatingly effective.

Flying against poorly defended targets, Stooker pilots achieved bombing accuracy that stunned observers.

Drops typically landed within 100 ft of the target with the best hits falling within 15 ft.

This was precision bombing beyond anything horizontal bombers could achieve, Republican anti-aircraft defenses were primitive, and with German B9 fighters controlling the skies, the Stookers operated with near impunity.

The lessons learned in Spain would shape Stooker tactics for years to come.

The D87B model, introduced in late 1937, became the definitive early version.

It featured a more powerful Junker’s Jumo 211 engine, improved armor protection, and enhanced bomb carrying capacity.

The aircraft could carry a single 500 kg bomb under the fuselage, and four smaller 50 kg bombs beneath the wings.

To ensure the bomb swung clear of the propeller arc during a dive, engineers designed a special crutch mechanism that swung the bomb forward and down before release.

The system worked flawlessly.

Perhaps the most critical innovation was the automatic pullout system.

When diving at 80° and speeds exceeding 350 mph, pilots experienced crushing G forces during the recovery.

Tests showed that at 8 1/2 gs, pilots could endure only 3 seconds before blacking out.

Above 6 G’s, 50% suffered visual problems or lost consciousness entirely.

The automatic system ensured that even if a pilot blacked out from target fixation or gforces, the aircraft would still recover from the dive.

The technical specifications of the Stooker were modest by later standards, but revolutionary for their time.

The B1 variant measured just over 11 m in length with a wingspan of 13 1/2 m.

Empty, it weighed around 2,400 kg with a maximum takeoff weight of 4,300 kg.

The inverted gull wings weren’t just for aesthetics.

They allowed the fixed landing gear to be shorter while still providing adequate propeller clearance, reducing drag compared to longer struts.

The wings also incorporated dive brakes, perforated metal flaps that deployed during the dive to limit the aircraft’s terminal velocity and give the pilot more time to aim.

Inside the cockpit, the stucular pilot had a relatively straightforward instrument panel.

An altter, air speed indicator, dive angle indicator, and bomb release controls were the primary instruments.

The gun site was simple but effective for the dive bombing role.

Behind the pilot sat the rear gunner.

Operating a single 7.9 mm machine gun on a flexible mount.

The canopy provided reasonable visibility, though the long nose limited forward vision during taxiing and takeoff.

Communication between pilot and gunner was critical during combat with the gunner warning of approaching fighters and providing suppressive fire during the vulnerable pullout phase.

The typical stooker attack was a carefully orchestrated ballet of destruction.

A formation would approach the target area at around 4,000 to 5,000 m altitude.

High enough to avoid most light anti-aircraft fire, but low enough to maintain visual contact with the target.

Upon identifying the target, the flight leader would waggle his wings, the signal to prepare for the attack.

Each aircraft would then roll inverted and pull through into a near vertical dive.

This wasn’t a gentle descent.

It was a controlled plunge toward the Earth.

The aircraft’s nose pointed almost straight down.

As the stooker accelerated, the dive brakes deployed automatically, slowing the descent from what he would otherwise be a terminal velocity dive.

The pilot kept his eyes locked on the target through the gunsite, making minute adjustments with stick and rudder to keep the aircraft aligned.

The air speed built rapidly, 200, 250, 300 mph.

The wind roared past the canopy.

The Jericho sirens streamed their rising whale.

The altimeter unwound at a terrifying rate.

At around 1,200 to,500 ft depending on the target and terrain.

The pilot pressed the bomb release.

The crutch swung the bomb clear and immediately the automatic pullout system engaged.

The nose came up gently at first, then more aggressively.

The G-forces built, pressing the pilot deep into his seat.

Two G’s, 3, 4, 5.

Vision narrowed to a tunnel as blood drained from the head.

Some pilots grayed out, their vision fading to black and white.

Others lost consciousness entirely, slumping forward against their harnesses.

But the automatic system didn’t care if the pilot was conscious.

It continued the pull out, bringing the aircraft level at treetop height, often no more than 50 to 100 ft above the ground.

The pilot, if conscious, would then add to the wall for the throttle and race away at maximum speed, jinking left and right to throw off anti-aircraft gunners.

The rear gunner would be blazing away with his machine gun, spraying the target area to keep defenders heads down.

The entire attack from roll in to escape took perhaps 30 seconds.

But in those 30 seconds, the Stooker delivered its payload with an accuracy that horizontal bombers could only dream of.

Hit rates of 25% were common for average pilots.

Skilled crews could achieve 50% or better.

This was revolutionary.

A single stooker could accomplish what an entire formation of conventional bombers might fail to do.

Destroy a specific bridge, eliminate a single tank, or obliterate a command post with one perfectly placed bomb.

When Germany invaded Poland on the September the 1st, 1939, the Stooka led the assault.

Three aircraft piloted by Lieutenant Bruno Dilly and his wingman struck the Dersha Bridge over the Vistula River 11 minutes before Germany officially declared war.

It was the first combat mission of the Second World War and it set the tone for what was to come.

Over the next four weeks, 319 Stookers operated across Poland, destroying tanks, airfields, bridges, artillery positions, and troop concentrations.

They sank nearly every Polish warship.

The loud siren spread panic among Polish forces and civilians alike.

Outnumbered and equipped with outdated weapons, Poland fought gallantly but stood no chance against the coordinated onslaught of panzas, infantry, and screaming dive bombers, German propaganda minister Yseph Gerbles declared the Stukco invincible.

The aircraft became a symbol of Nazi aggression alongside the Panzer tank.

The Blitzkrieg rolled west in May 1940.

German forces smashed into Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg with overwhelming force.

Stooka spearheaded the assault, acting as flying artillery for advancing ground troops.

At the Battle of Sedan, Stooker units pulverized French defensive positions, allowing panzas to cross the Muse River and break through Allied lines.

The psychological effect was as devastating as the physical destruction.

French troops hearing the approaching scream of diving stookers often broke and fled before the bombs even fell.

The aircraft seemed unstoppable, a harbinger of Germany’s supposed invincibility.

Naval warfare proved another arena where the Stooker excelled.

During the Norwegian campaign in April 1940, Stookers targeted the Royal Navy with lethal precision.

On April 10th, Stooker sank the destroyer HMS Girka.

Over the following days, they damaged or sank several more British warships.

The attacks were relentless and devastating.

At the port of Narvik, Stookers caught British destroyers in confined waters, diving through intense anti-aircraft fire to place their bombs with surgical accuracy.

The destroyer HMS Hardy was crippled and run ground.

HMS Hunter sank after multiple hits.

The aircraft carrier HMS Glorious would later fall victim to surface ships, but Stuka attacks had already demonstrated that even the most powerful warships were vulnerable to precision dive bombing.

The typical attack method was brutally effective.

Stookers would approach at altitude, often around 13,000 ft, then roll into their dive.

The aircraft’s small size and high speed made it difficult for anti-aircraft gunners to track and hit.

A diving stooker presented a tiny, rapidly moving target, plunging at speeds that made accurate fire nearly impossible with the fire control systems of the era.

Pilots would release their bombs at around 12,200 ft, pull out hard, and race away at treetop level.

The rear gunner would spray the target area with machine gun fire, suppressing defenders and paving the way for the next stooker in the formation.

Ship captains quickly learned to fear the sound of approaching sirens, knowing that evasive maneuvers were often futile against such accurate bombing.

But the tide was turning.

While the Stooka dominated in Poland, France, and Norway, where German fighters controlled the skies and opposition was disorganized or overwhelmed, it began showing fatal weaknesses when faced with organized aerial opposition and modern fighter aircraft operating from established bases with effective command and control.

The Battle of Britain would expose those weaknesses brutally.

On August 13th, 1940, during the opening phase of the air campaign against Britain, the Luftvafer threw massive formations at Royal Air Force targets.

Among them were stuckers escorted by BF-1009 fighters.

The results were catastrophic.

On that single day, six of nine U87 rupees from a squadron were shot down with one damaged.

The longrange variant burdened with external fuel tanks was even more unwieldy than the standard model.

British fighters, particularly the Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Huracan in tore through Stooka formations with shocking ease.

The Stooker’s maximum speed of around 230 mph made it the slowest operational aircraft in the battle.

It had only two forward firing machine guns and a single rear-facing gun.

Against a Spitfire armed with eight machine guns and capable of speeds exceeding 350 mph, the Stooker was helpless.

Worse, the BF- 109 escorts, forced to fly at lower altitudes and slower speeds to stay with the Stookers, were deprived of their greatest advantages, speed and height.

They had to zigzag to maintain formation, burning precious fuel.

It was a tactical nightmare.

On August 18th, 1940 came what would later be called the hardest day.

Two entire Luft Flottton concentrated on British sectors, airfields.

The largest concentration of Stookers ever assembled for a single raid descended on targets across southern England.

The carnage was immense.

RAF fighters fell upon the slowmoving formations like wolves on sheep.

Stookers were blown apart in midair, crashed in flames, or limped back to France with dead and wounded crews.

By the end of August, the losses were unsustainable.

Herman Guring ordered the withdrawal of Stooker units from operations against Britain.

The invincible dive bomber had met its match.

Yet the story of the stuker was far from over.

In April 1941, Germany invaded Yugoslavia and Greece.

In these campaigns, the Luftvafer once again achieved air superiority and the Stooker resumed its deadly work.

Then in June 1941 came operation Barbarasa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.

This was where the Stooker would find its greatest success and its eventual obsolescence.

The vast open spaces of the eastern front combined with initial German mad.

Air superiority created ideal conditions for stew operations.

Soviet forces caught off guard and suffering from poor leadership and outdated equipment were hammered relentlessly from the air.

Stookers destroyed thousands of tanks, vehicles, and artillery pieces.

They shattered Soviet defensive positions, enabling rapid German advances deep into Soviet territory.

But as the war on the Eastern Front dragged on, Soviet air defenses improved.

By 1943, the Red Air Force had recovered from its disastrous losses of 1941 and was fielding modern fighters in large numbers.

The Stooker, still slow and vulnerable, began suffering heavy casualties once again.

Production had actually decreased during 1941 with only 476 Stookers delivered that year.

The Luftvafer had intended to replace the aircraft with the Mesor Schmidt 210 twin engine attack aircraft, but that program was plagued with problems.

It took years to develop a workable version, the Mi410, and by then it was too little, too late.

So, the Stooker solded on.

Production ramped back up in 1942 with 917 D series models delivered.

In 1943, that number jumped to 1844.

But the role was changing.

The D87D model, introduced in late 1941, featured improved armor, better engine performance, and enhanced ground attack capabilities.

Many D3 variants had their dive brakes and bomb crutches removed.

The Jericho sirens, once so terrifying, were also removed.

They created drag, reducing speed, and by this point, the psychological weapon was no longer worth the performance penalty.

The Stooker was being transformed from a precision dive bomber into a dedicated ground attack aircraft.

The ultimate expression of this transformation was the D87G model introduced in late 1942.

This variant was a tank killer, armed with two massive 37 mm flak 18 cannons mounted in underwing pods.

Each cannon could punch through the armor of Soviet tanks with devastating effect.

The weight and drag of the cannons reduced performance further, but in the hands of skilled pilots, the Stuker G became a formidable weapon against armored targets.

The most famous Stuker G pilot was Hans Olrich Rud, who would become the most highly decorated German serviceman of the war.

Rud flew over 2,500 combat missions, destroying 519 tanks, 900 vehicles, and numerous other targets.

His skill and courage were legendary, but even he could not change the fundamental reality.

The Stooker was obsolete.

By 1944, faster aircraft like the Fauler Fo 190 were taking over the ground attack roles.

The FW90 was more than 150 mph, faster than the Stooker, better armed and far more survivable.

Stooker production continued, but numbers dwindled.

In 1944, only 998 were built, and production ended entirely in September of that year.

As the war ground toward its conclusion, Stooker units shrank, their aircraft worn out, their pilots exhausted or dead.

By May 1945, when Germany surrendered, only a handful of operational stookers remained.

The legacy of the GU87 Stooker is complex and contradictory.

In the early years of US of the war, it was a weapon of extraordinary effectiveness, a symbol of German military power and a key component of the Blitz Creek strategy.

Its pinpoint accuracy and psychological impact made it a devastating tool for supporting ground operations.

It sank more ships than any other aircraft in history.

a testament to its precision and lethality.

Yet, it was also a flawed design from the beginning.

Its slow speed, light armorament, and vulnerability to modern fighters meant it could only operate effectively when the Luftwaffer controlled the skies when faced with capable aerial opposition.

As in the Battle of Britain, it became a death trap for its crews.

The Stooka story is also a tale of technological stagnation.

While other nations developed faster, more versatile aircraft, Germany clung to the Stooka long after it should have been retired, the failure to produce a viable successor meant this aircraft was forced into roles it was never designed for, leading to unnecessary losses and declining effectiveness.

And yet, despite all its flaws, the Stucker remained in service from the first day of the war to the last.

It fought in every theater where Germany was engaged.

Poland, France, Britain, the Balkans, North Africa, the Soviet Union.

It adapted, evolved, and persisted even as the world changed around it.

Today, only two complete stookers survive.

One, a D series aircraft modified as a G2, is displayed at the Royal Air Force Museum at Henden outside London.

It was captured at the end of the war, originally painted in modeled gray camouflage, and later repainted for possible use in the film Battle of Britain.

The other, an R2 tropical variant, was found abandoned in the Libyan desert after a forced landing in November 1941.

Both are silent now, their sirens forever stilled, their bombs long expended.

The Junker’s D87 Stooker represents a moment in history when a single aircraft could embody both innovation and obsolescence, terror and vulnerability.

It was a weapon designed for a specific kind of warfare.

And when that kind of warfare ended, so did the Stooker’s dominance.

Yet for a few brief, terrifying years, the sound of its diving scream was the sound of war itself, a shrieking herald of destruction that echoed across Europe and beyond.

The Stooker may have been outmatched and outmoded by war’s end, but its legacy, for better or worse, endures.

A reminder that even the most fearsome weapons are only as invincible as the circumstances that allow them to thrive.