The Junkers Ju 87 — universally known by the German abbreviation “Stuka,” от Sturzkampfflugzeug (“dive-bombing aircraft”) — was among the most recognisable aircraft of the Second World War. Designed at Junkers by a team under Hermann Pohlmann and first flown in 1935, it entered Luftwaffe service in 1937. With its cranked inverted-gull wing, fixed spatted undercarriage and angular lines it was never fast or elegant, but it was built for one job: to plant a bomb on a small target by diving almost vertically onto it.

What set the Ju 87 apart was the engineering of the dive itself. Hydraulic brakes under the wings held it to a safe speed as it tipped into a dive of up to roughly 80 degrees; a pre-set altimeter warned the pilot when to release, and an automatic pull-out device could recover the aircraft even if the crew blacked out under the g-forces of recovery. A crutch under the fuselage swung the main bomb clear of the propeller arc before release. The result was an accuracy that level bombers of the day could not match.

The Stuka’s reputation was made in the opening campaigns of the war. It saw combat first in Spain with the Condor Legion in 1937, then spearheaded the German assaults on Poland in 1939 and on France and the Low Countries in 1940. Operating as airborne artillery ahead of fast-moving armoured columns, it became a symbol of Blitzkrieg. Its steep, accurate attacks — announced by the wailing of propeller-driven sirens fitted to some aircraft — were as much a psychological weapon as a physical one.

That dominance depended on controlling the sky. When the Stuka met modern, well-flown fighters on equal terms, its weaknesses were brutally exposed. Slow, lightly armed and unmanoeuvrable, it proved highly vulnerable during the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940, where RAF Hurricanes and Spitfires inflicted such heavy losses — culminating in the costly fighting of mid-August — that the Luftwaffe withdrew it from the daylight battle. The aircraft that had terrorised Poland and France could not survive over southern England.

The type found a longer future on fronts where the Luftwaffe still held an edge. In the Mediterranean it became a deadly anti-shipping weapon, savaging the convoys that supplied Malta; in January 1941 Stukas scored six bomb hits on the British carrier HMS Illustrious. On the Eastern Front after 1941 it served in huge numbers as close air support, and evolved into the specialised Ju 87G “tank-buster,” carrying two 37 mm cannon to attack Soviet armour from 1943.

By the middle of the war the design was clearly obsolete. As the Allies and Soviets gained air superiority the un-escorted Stuka became a liability, and it was increasingly relegated to night-harassment units and the anti-tank role. Production ended in 1944 after roughly 6,000 had been built across all variants. Beyond Germany the type also served with the air forces of Italy, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, among others. Today only two substantially complete examples remain, both on static display and neither airworthy.