Aerospace History Files publication on the Junkers Ju 287

[Vahe Demirjian]

A new publication on the Ju 287 is out on Amazon (published last August):

Junkers Ju 287: The most advanced Jet-Bomber of the Luftwaffe (Aerospace History Files): Jack, Uwe W.: 9798678677266: Amazon.com: Books

Junkers Ju 287: The most advanced Jet-Bomber of the Luftwaffe (Aerospace History Files) [Jack, Uwe W.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Junkers Ju 287: The most advanced Jet-Bomber of the Luftwaffe (Aerospace History Files)

www.amazon.com

The author of this publication wrote about the Junkers Ju 287 and EF 131 in a 1991 issue of the German aviation magazine Aviatik, but this publication is more extensive and comprehensive, including not just drawings of the Ju 287 prototypes and planned production versions but also a specifications table for the Ju 287/EF 131 series, EF 140, and EF 132, images of the nearly complete but unflown Ju 287 V2, a drawing of the outer skin layout of the Ju 287 V3, and info about the Type 150 sweptback wing bomber and VEB 152 airliner. Note that a few specs in the Ju 287 specifications table for the Ju 287V3 and production Ju 287/EF 131, namely the length and wingspan, are incorrect because the Ju 287 V3 and the baseline production Ju 287 had a wingspan of 63 feet 8 inches and a length of 63 feet (in contrast to the Ju 287 V1 and V2 having a wingspan of 66 feet and length of 60 feet), while the EF 131 was slightly longer than the production Ju 287 and Ju 287 V3, V4, V5, and V6. The specifications given for the EF 132 clearly pertain to one of the later sweptback designs for the EF 132 in 1946, because the initial EF 132 project was a sweptback wing bomber with a wingspan of 106 feet, whereas the 1947 design for the EF 132 had six Mikulin turbojets.

The following link is available for publications by Uwe Jack:

Welcome!

The new publication series "Aerospace History Files". Part 01 the Luftwaffe's six-engined Jet-Bomber Junkers Ju 287, part 02 the manned V-1 flying bomb, part 03 Messerschmitt Me 263 rocket fighter.

aerospace-jack.com

 

[newsdeskdan]

I went and bought this from Amazon as a Kindle edition as soon as I saw the above. It's a very short book at just 6000w (the author's word count, cited in the introduction) and 46 pages. Strikingly, the introduction also says the following (text reproduced exactly as it appears in the book):
"Searching Ju-287-documents since the late 1980ties, with the result that most publikations on this aircraft have been full of errors. Helping other authors with his findings for a long time, he now publishes his own work on this remarkable jet-bomber."
This book itself certainly has its fair share of errors. The genesis of the Ju 287 is vaguely and inaccurately described: "In early 1943, the Luftwaffe issued an order for a very fast bomber. Junkers modified the EF 116 to the larger EF 122 with four engines. Initially, the use of four Daimler-Benz DB 603 or Junkers Jumo 213 piston engines was investigated."
Well, immediately after the decision to make the Dornier P 231 into the Do 335 as the Luftwaffe's new fast bomber, on January 19, 1943, Junkers (and Heinkel) had been ordered by the RLM to work specifically on a jet bomber. The meeting minutes specifically say 'Strahlbomber'. Jet bomber. This was a research order and most likely resulted in the EF 116. The actual RLM specification for the Strahlbomber (GL/C E 2 Nr. 8492/43 (IB) - Technische Richtlinien fuer einen "Strahlbomber") was issued on July 30, 1943, to Junkers, Heinkel and Blohm & Voss. This stated the number of crew required, engines (4 x Jumo 004 C or 4 x HeS 011 A and B - and it must be possible to later replace these with 4 or 2 engines of the same or similar total power output), defensive armament, bomb load, fuel tank protection, required flight performance, etc.
Jack doesn't mention any of this. I don't know of any evidence that Junkers' projects intended to produce a jet bomber were tested with piston engines.
The section covering the decision to temporarily suspend work on the Ju 287 is similarly vague. It's nice to see that Jack covers the renewal of work on the Ju 287 in January 1945 but I'm not sure he really understands why this happened - he says it was to produce a bomber for attacking America, when this was certainly not the case.
Crucially, although Jack makes vague mention of a handful of period sources in passing in the text, there is no list of sources and no footnotes explaining what those sources are and where they can be found. There is no bibliography (at least in the Kindle edition) and no index. At present, I would like to think that we are moving away from this sort of vagueness, to a stage where in order to be taken seriously, any book about German secret projects needs to cite all of its sources clearly. And where any book which does not show its sources must be treated, at best, with a degree of caution.
The strength of this little book is in its images - there are a couple of photographs I don't recall seeing in Ransom's Ju 287 book - but I cannot recommend the text as an accurate account of this aircraft's development.

 

[Vahe Demirjian]

I went and bought this from Amazon as a Kindle edition as soon as I saw the above. It's a very short book at just 6000w (the author's word count, cited in the introduction) and 46 pages. Strikingly, the introduction also says the following (text reproduced exactly as it appears in the book):
"Searching Ju-287-documents since the late 1980ties, with the result that most publikations on this aircraft have been full of errors. Helping other authors with his findings for a long time, he now publishes his own work on this remarkable jet-bomber."
This book itself certainly has its fair share of errors. The genesis of the Ju 287 is vaguely and inaccurately described: "In early 1943, the Luftwaffe issued an order for a very fast bomber. Junkers modified the EF 116 to the larger EF 122 with four engines. Initially, the use of four Daimler-Benz DB 603 or Junkers Jumo 213 piston engines was investigated."
Well, immediately after the decision to make the Dornier P 231 into the Do 335 has the Luftwaffe's new fast bomber, on January 19, 1943, Junkers (and Heinkel) had been ordered by the RLM to work specifically on a jet bomber. The meeting minutes specifically say 'Strahlbomber'. Jet bomber. This was a research order and most likely resulted in the EF 116. The actual RLM specification for the Strahlbomber (GL/C E 2 Nr. 8492/43 (IB) - Technische Richtlinien fuer einen "Strahlbomber") was issued on July 30, 1943, to Junkers, Heinkel and Blohm & Voss. This stated the number of crew required, engines (4 x Jumo 004 C or 4 x HeS 011 A and B - and it must be possible to later replace these with 4 or 2 engines of the same or similar total power output), defensive armament, bomb load, fuel tank protection, required flight performance, etc.
Jack doesn't mention any of this. I don't know of any evidence that Junkers' projects intended to produce a jet bomber were tested with piston engines.
The section covering the decision to temporarily suspend work on the Ju 287 is similarly vague. It's nice to see that Jack covers the renewal of work on the Ju 287 in January 1945 but I'm not sure he really understands why this happened - he says it was to produce a bomber for attacking America, when this was certainly not the case.
Crucially, although Jack makes vague mention of a handful of period sources in passing in the text, there is no list of sources and no footnotes explaining what those sources are and where they can be found. There is no bibliography (at least in the Kindle edition) and no index. At present, I would like to think that we are moving away from this sort of vagueness, to a stage where in order to be taken seriously, any book about German secret projects needs to cite all of its sources clearly. And where any book which does not show its sources must be treated, at best, with a degree of caution.
The strength of this little book is in its images - there are a couple of photographs I don't recall seeing in Ransom's Ju 287 book - but I cannot recommend the text as an accurate account of this aircraft's development.

Uwe Jack relied on Junkers company documents and RLM documents as well as photos of the second Ju 287 prototype during the writing his article of the Ju 287 in the 1991 issue of the German aviation magazine Aviatik. I agree, the books on the Ju 287 by Horst Lommel and Steve Ransom are more accurate because they have bibliographies and footnotes. I also do have to say that Jack did not cite Yefim Gordon's 2004 book on early Soviet jet bombers when listing the specs for the EF 132 strategic bomber project (the dimensions quoted by Gordon for the 1946 design for the EF 132 with six Jumo 012s and the 1947 EF 132 design with six Mikulin turbojets differ from the length and wingspan figures given for the EF 132 in Luftwaffe Secret Projects: Strategic Bombers 1935-1945, so it's safe to say that the original backswept wing EF 132 design conceived in early 1945 was slightly smaller in length and wingspan than later EF 132 designs, even though Gordon himself includes a three-view illustration of the EF 132 from the project documents in his 2004 book on early Soviet jet bombers).

 

[newsdeskdan]

I'm afraid I have no particular interest in the postwar Junkers projects and am not in a position to judge the accuracy of Jack's work on the EF 131 and 132.
Regarding the Ju 287, Jack covers the entire development programme for the EF 116 and EF 122 in three paragraphs. I actually quoted a big chunk of it above. Looking at the documents I have, Jack's assertion that "In early 1943, the Luftwaffe issued an order for a very fast bomber, Junkers modified the EF 116 to the larger EF 122 with four engines" seems wrong. The latest date I can find on an EF 116 document is November 12, 1943, and the earliest date on an EF 122 document I can find is November 15, 1943.
But to be fair this is the wind tunnel test programme only. We don't have the conceptual and design drawings which preceded it - although these must have existed.
It seems to me that the design phase for the four-engine EF 122 probably began shortly after the specification was issued - so July 30 to, say, October 1943. That's about three months of crunching numbers and coming up with concepts, no doubt informed by the ongoing EF 116 wing shape and nacelle/wing form tests.
There would have been no point in the wind tunnel facility continuing on with the twin-engine design when the focus had shifted to four engines, so, in due course, models were made for the EF 122 and work then commenced on testing them in November 1943.
I've probably written more about the Ju 287's early development in this thread now than Jack includes in his entire book. Information on how work on the type ceased during the autumn of 1944 is similarly muddled. If Jack had cited his sources, it would have been possible to check whether he's correct or not - but he doesn't, and what he writes conflicts with the known documents.

 

[athpilot]

I´m with Dan about this. Uwe W. Jack is in the german aerospace-history journalism world for quiet a while now. But personally I don´t trust him that much. He claims to have really new findings (of course in the field of german projects). And when I buy it, it´s often nothing. We had him for a very short visit here. He made not a good impression on me here: https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/th...g-mistel-so-aircraft.23397/page-2#post-240939
And I can´t forgive him ruining my favorite magazin, the Fliegerrevue....