Description

Hugo Junkers was one of the greatest aviation pioneers and a maverick to boot. His approach to how an aircraft should be built was like no other and Junkers took his own unique route and doggedly stuck to it for two decades. Proceeding in the face of the theory that aircraft should be built from wood and fabric, all Junkers aircraft were made of metal, a material that was regarded, right up to the early 1930s, as being too heavy. His goal was to prove that metal would provide much greater durability and his unceasing efforts to prove this made Junkers and his aircraft pioneers of the airline industry.

The Junkers aircraft story is told in three parts: the first was under the control of Hugo Junkers, the second by the Nazis until the end of World War Two, and the third is the post-war period that saw the company exist as a shadow of its former self. The first part of the story is clearly dominated by Junkers' efforts in commercial aircraft production, while the Nazi period is, unsurprisingly, about military machines that helped to rapidly re-build a new Luftwaffe. This new book edition charts the aircraft made by Junkers and the company's development from one that contributed to the advancement of aviation to one contributing to the war machine.