Hi all,
right to the 1st birthday of Axis & Allies Paintworks i'm proud to present the next series of Ju52 squadron skinpacks, this time dealing with the Norway and Western campaigns in 1940.
For these skins i added the small and barely visible door on the right fuselage, just next to the large cargo door, to my template representing the early 3m4ge variant.
As always a lot of time was needed for research and as very often, complete and good quality pics are rare. Don't ask how many books i had to read or how much time i spent
posting in various luftwaffe forums, but not all questions are answered and not all mysteries were lifted...
A big thanks therefore to all who supported me, including foo'bar, Imme and millekmh, whose excellent public templates i used to start from.
The paintschemes of this period unit were going through a constant process of altering,
so don't be surprised to find different kind of markings, camos, pre-war or lufthansa colours.
'Operation Weserübung' ('operation weser exercise' - the weser is a river in northern germany) was the codename for the invasion of denmark and norway starting
on april 9th of 1940. Especially neutral Norway was an important target because Germany received all iron ore for producing armor and weapons from the mines there. The norwegian government
sympathized to the british and the germans were fearing the british 'occupying' norway at first.
While there was nearly no resistance in denmark the germans found hard opposition in norway, the norwegian army and their allies (mainly british and french)
were fighting tough causing a lot of losses amongst the germans. Especially the fighting in and around the town Narvik was fierce and costly.
However the luftwaffe transport units were tasked on april 9th with dropping paratroopers (the very first paratrooper action of WWII) at strategically important places like bridges and airfields, securing these for the following landings of infantry troops. As always not all went in favour of the germans, i. e. when the most Ju52 of II./KGzbV1 abandoned their mission to secure the important Fornebu airport near Oslo due to very bad weather. One Ju52 of II./KGzbV1 is reported shotdown by norwegian gladiators and some Ju52 of KGrzbV103 ignoring or missing the orders to abandon were shotdown by norwegian flak, killing the commander of KGrzbV103 when he attempted to land infantry troops on the unsecured airfield.
More history info in the readme-files of the individual skinpacks.
I didn't skin Ju52 of KGrzbV101 - 106 of the Norway campaign so far, they were specially and hastily formed from training units, schools and Lufthansa (civilian airline) crews/planes which mainly flew with factory codes only. This means each code is individual different - from a single up to all four code letters being different from the others. Therefore it needs exact reports, lists or well photographs to make a skinpack - i couldn't find such until now. Furthermore the most unit emblems of this period are still unknown. I'm on the track of KGrzbV102 or KGrzbV105 (both norway campaign) but can't promise anything for now.
'Fall Gelb' (case yellow) was the german codename for the invasion of the Netherlands, Belgium and finally France (Fall Rot - case red) starting on may 10th of 1940.
The germans managed to totally surprise the belgian troops serving in the strong fortress Eben Emael by landing paratroopers with gliders inside the walls. A small force of germans overwhelmed
all belgians and captured them, with only few losses. Eben Emael was reputated impregnable before.
The transport units were tasked with similar to Norway missions, dropping paratroopers at important bridges and airfields to secure them for the advancing ground troops or reinforcement landings.
Again not all went well, the Dutch were prepared due to intelligence reports and learning from Norway. They flodded and partially mined the target airfields which became a bad surprise for the incoming german transport planes. The paratroopers couldn't secure some of these in time so the losses of transport planes were high. Dutch flak and artillery screened the airfields, some became
a 'Ju52 cemetary' in very short time. Little action is reported by the Royal Dutch airforce, ground attacked and destroyed before some few Fokker DXX1 and G-1 managed to take off and attacked some transport planes. The majority of the Ju52 were lost
trapped to artillery/flak/ground fire or when crashlanding on beaches or highways, streets, grassland lacking a secured landing ground.
Of nearly 500 transport planes the germans lost about the half on may 10th 1940.
I selected units which are amongst the better documented. Again see their individual history in the readme-files.
60 fully marked skins overall plus blanks and generics. Available in the new Download sections from tonight onwards.
Hope you like. Feedback is much appreciated.
ATB
Armin
Author
Topic: Ju52 squadronskinpacks Norway &Western campaigns 1940 (Read 3973 times)
