mystery junkers

[paddywhack]

have a look at tyhis site is fairly good and theres some nice pics to have fun 8)
http://members.tripod.com/~Tachel_KG200/HISTORY.HTM

[paddywhack]

sorry forgot to say that it has to do with kg200 nice site

[Erich]

thanks again guys for the additional info on the Ju 290. It appears that once the F.A.Gr 5 returned from it's Atlantic duties it was absorbed by KG 200.

E

[Erich]

Antonio and others......

this morning I received an e-mail from a good German research/historian friend. He indicated he interviewed a wireless operator of F.A.Gr 5 two weeks, thus noting that a unit history of the Recon gruppe was being written at this very time.

Alles gut !

E

[Antonio Pena]

Anyone in this forum can write in German?, for my hobby (2nd WW) I could read (with a dictionnary aid, of course) German but no to write and I wonder if the Bundesarchiv or the Bundesamt für Wehrtechnik und Beschaffung don't have information about the operations of the FAGr 5, not an Operational Unit History, but logs, the War Diary, etc. Could anyone contact these two sources?
Thanks

[Erich]

Gentlemen :

Just received more news from Germany this morning.

The flight to Manchuria and the flight to New York in 1944 is pure myth. Never happened. Several articles were reported on the flight to New York, written in Germany the last 10-15 years with a book that dealt primarily with these two flights with F.A.Gr 5.

Peter Herde, Der Japanflug: Plannung und Verwirklichung einer flugverbindung zwischen den Achsenmächten und Japan 1942-1945

published 2000, 303 pages, 10 photos.

No wonder no one could answer my inquiries about this.....

E

[Erich]

FAGr 5's codes were 9V, the KR codes were either factory or fake to cover the true identity of the gruppe.

1 st staffel had the Ju 290
2nd staffel had the Ju 290
3rd staffel did not exist
4th staffel was to have had the Ju 290 but did not, in place was the He 111 H-1, Ju 88A-4 and Do 217E

It does appear from the reports that I have just received that not all but only a handful of crews reported to KG 200. many were involved with the FAGr 5 to the end in the transport of a/c to other units and the unit appears to be re-equipped at some stage in early 1945 with the Arado 234 doing recon over Northeast England for U-boot command. Involved in Unternehmen Eisenhammer with parts of KG 200 in March of 45.

third week of April 1945 the gruppe/staffeln ordered disbanded by the OKL.

E more to come !.....

[Erich]

Antonio and others.....for the F.A.Gr 5 unit

It appears that some information is included in the BA/MA Freiburg in KTB Gen. Aufkl.Fl., in RL 4 II/32.

Now to find the documents

E

[Simon Gunson]

The Ju-290-A5 flew from Prague to Barcelona in late April 1945 from memory. There was only one Ju-290-A5. I was interested to hear about the Ju-290-A7 Harry as three were built as nuclear bombers. Are you sure it surrendered before VE day ???

There were two flying Ju-390 aircraft. One is said to have flown near New York. Controversies rage about that mission as the FAG.5 reconnaisance unit at Mont de Marsan have no record of that mission. It may be however that the Ju-290 in question was not a part of that unit.

Hitler's armaments minister Albert Speer alleged after the war that a Ju-290 was flown by the "polar route" (ie from Norway) to Japan and was piloted by test pilots. Deutsch Luft Hansa operated Ju-290 civil flights from Bulgaria to China up until April 1944. A Blohm und Voss flying boat is also said to have flown the polar route in DLH markings from Norway to Japan's Kuril Islands.

[Cantankerous]

The Ju-290-A5 flew from Prague to Barcelona in late April 1945 from memory. There was only one Ju-290-A5. I was interested to hear about the Ju-290-A7 Harry as three were built as nuclear bombers. Are you sure it surrendered before VE day ???

There were two flying Ju-390 aircraft. One is said to have flown near New York. Controversies rage about that mission as the FAG.5 reconnaisance unit at Mont de Marsan have no record of that mission. It may be however that the Ju-290 in question was not a part of that unit.

Hitler's armaments minister Albert Speer alleged after the war that a Ju-290 was flown by the "polar route" (ie from Norway) to Japan and was piloted by test pilots. Deutsch Luft Hansa operated Ju-290 civil flights from Bulgaria to China up until April 1944. A Blohm und Voss flying boat is also said to have flown the polar route in DLH markings from Norway to Japan's Kuril Islands.

This thread may be 18 years old, but I should emphasize that the Ju 290A-5 flown to Barcelona in April 1945 remained in Spain because the Spanish Government ordered that regular Luft Hansa flights on route K22 be terminated beginning April 21. The book Bunker published by James P. O'Donnell in the 1970s claimed that Albert Speer mentioned a secret Ju 390 flight to Japan "late in the war" in an early 1970s phone interview, but nowhere in interviews with and/or memoirs by Speer himself is a supposed Ju 390 flight to Japan mentioned. The Ju 290 A-3 with W.Nr. no. 0163 is the Ju 290 that was claimed in a number of sources to have left Odessa and Mielec before landing in Manchuria and eventually Japan, but that aircraft ended up being destroyed by British troops on May 3, 1945.

Only the first Ju 390 prototype was flown, the second prototype (Ju 390 V2) being incomplete when the Ju 290 and Ju 390 programs were canceled in July 1944 pursuant to an order by Göring. The debunked story about the Ju 390 making a test flight to the vicinity of New York City to test the Ju 390's capability to attack Manhattan originated a letter by an RAF officer from mid-1944 that was published in the November 1955 issue of the British magazine RAF Flying Review and claimed that Allied Intelligence had learned from prisoner interrogations that a Ju 390 took off from Mont-de-Marsan near Bordeaux and completed a 32-hour reconnaissance flight to within 12 miles of the U.S. coast, north of New York City. A 1969 article in the Daily Telegraph titled "Lone Bomber Raid on New York Planned by Hitler" claimed that Hans-Joachim Pancherz flew the Ju 390 on a test flight to South Africa in early 1944, but Duffy (2004) found no evidence of this alleged flight.

Reference:
* Duffy, J.P., 2004. Target America: Hitler's Plan to Attack the United States. Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood Publishing Group.
* Sweeting, C. G., 2001. Hitler's Personal Pilot: The Life and Times of Hans Baur. Washington, D.C.: Brassey's. ISBN 1-57488-402-6.