Talk:Junkers Ju 290

Incredible stories without quotations...
Have some German airplane descriptions been invaded by some Usenet-troll? I mean,

"According to historian Horst Zöller, a postwar German newspaper article in the 1950s reported that three Ju 290 aircraft were converted to civilian airframes with extra fuel capacity and these were transferred to Deutsche Lufthansa (DLH) during the war. These aircraft flew from Bulgaria to Yin-ch'uan also known as Ninghsia, which is 540nm west of Beijing. (Remark by Horst Zoeller: These Flights were planned and were even under work, but they were not performed until the end of WWII)."

Should this sentence be deleted, or made into an separate article? What kind of source is a single newspaper article printed in a newspaper during 1950's?

"There is some speculation that three Ju 290 A-7 aircraft were completed with special bomb-bays in their bellies for export to Japan as "nuclear bombers". During the war Japan was attempting to develop an atomic bomb in what is now North Korea. Japan lacked long range aircraft with which to bomb the US mainland. These "A-7" aircraft were apparently never delivered to Japan owing to the loss of airfields in Bulgaria by Soviet occupation. No Ju-290 A-7 is known to have actually entered service."

Quote, quote, should this be deleted?

"One aircraft said by one Herr Baires, a correspondent to the German U-Boot website, Parsimony.net, to have been evacuating an SFM 43 kurier cypher system and a considerable weight of signals records, reached Barcelona by night in the morning of 6 April 1945 at 3:28 am. It was a foggy morning and the plane did not touch down until 3:40 am. It bounced heavily and ran off the runway through two ditches damaging the undercarriage (said by Herr Baires to be the tailwheel). This was one of many clandestine missions up until then, but by morning the wreck lay off the side of the runway for all to see. This led to diplomatic protests from the British who threatened to declare war on Spain for breach of neutrality. Thereafter Spain demanded only aircraft in civil markings from Germany could land in Spain."

What kind of source is Herr Baires, and what do the details of the single flight do in an aircraft article anyhow? And please, sources for Britain "threatening to declare war on Britain"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jr54 (talk • contribs) 21:57, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Flights to Japan
States: "...Ju 290 A-5...loaded with 41 tonnes (45 tons) of fuel and cargo..." - however advanced that version was this is unbelievable, considering "General Characteristics" states: "Max. takeoff weight: 44,970 kg". It would have needed to be a much bigger and more powerful aircraft, for example the Lockheed C130 Hercules has a gross weight of 70 tonnes and unladen weight of 34 tonnes, permitting carrying fuel and payload of 34 tonnes, and to do this it has 4 x 4,590shp engines! Chris.Bristol (talk) 19:54, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Clean-up
I cleaned up some of the conspiracy theories without credible sources out of this page, they are available below still. If sources can be found, they still don't belong to airplane history.

WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Tag & Assess 2008
Article reassessed and graded as start class. --dashiellx (talk) 14:36, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

There is some speculation that three Ju 290 A-7 aircraft were completed with special bomb-bays in their bellies for export to Japan as "nuclear bombers". During the war Japan was attempting to develop an atomic bomb in what is now North Korea. Japan lacked long range aircraft with which to bomb the US mainland. These "A-7" aircraft were apparently never delivered to Japan owing to the loss of airfields in Bulgaria by Soviet occupation. No Ju-290 A-7 is known to have actually entered service.

There is confusion as to how many Ju 290s flew to Spain at the end of the war. One aircraft said by one Herr Baires, a correspondent to the German U-Boot website, Parsimony.net, to have been evacuating an SFM 43 kurier cypher system and a considerable weight of signals records, reached Barcelona by night in the morning of 6 April 1945 at 3:28 am. It was a foggy morning and the plane did not touch down until 3:40 am. It bounced heavily and ran off the runway through two ditches damaging the undercarriage (said by Herr Baires to be the tailwheel). This was one of many clandestine missions up until then, but by morning the wreck lay off the side of the runway for all to see. This led to diplomatic protests from the British who threatened to declare war on Spain for breach of neutrality. Thereafter Spain demanded only aircraft in civil markings from Germany could land in Spain. That aircraft which crashed at Barcelona on 6. April 1945 was sold for scrap two years later to the Bilbao Industrialist Heliodoro Eliorreta, who used it to fly merchandise cargo and often leased it to the airline, Iberia.

Other airframes were also civilianised during the war to fly discreet missions to Barcelona. Some of the last missions to Barcelona were at the directions of Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz to evacuate records of U-boat movements into hiding before the collapse of Nazi Germany. One civilianised Ju 290 aircraft flew a number of Nazi officers from Prague to Barcelona in late April 1945. Its passengers may have included SS Lt General Hans Kammler who disappeared from Prague about the same time. Kammler was the head of the V-2 rocket project and other secret technologies. There is also a possibility that the mission was sanctioned by the OSS as a part of Operation Paperclip (to recruit Nazi scientists for USA) and Operation Sunrise (the secret surrender of Nazi Germany to US forces) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jukra (talk • contribs) 19:26, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Ceiling
Curious: Why was this plane limited to a service ceiling of only 20,000 feet? Sca (talk) 16:16, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
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Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 19:32, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Horst Zoeller's Hugo Junkers Home Page is now preserved on the Wayback Machne at: http://web.archive.org/web/20091026234846/http://geocities.com/hjunkers/

I fixed the citations here

Mark Lincoln (talk) 23:14, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Filled out Ju 290 role in the Amerika bomber project & the end of the road.
I came to add the name of the project engineer and noted that the role of the Ju 290 in the Amerika bomber effort was ill served. Curiously I found myself having to correct an error in Griehl's fine book. To determine the actual w/n of SB+QH I had to consult the Junkers production list. http://web.archive.org/web/20091024121432/http://geocities.com/hjunkers/ju_ju90_p3.htm

Have I committed the sin of "Original Research" or the seldom practiced perversion of checking my sources?

As for the mysterious last three Ju 290s. I have encountered mention of them in the past. Usually connected with tales of escapes or covert flights to South America and Japan. Tales which were not credible given the range of the airplane. Griehl has some careful suggestions but clearly subscribes to none. Given the depth of his research (check out the bibliography) and his careful writing I consider his report of three last poorly documented Ju 290s to be credible. (Note his careful discussion of whether the second Ju 390 was ever completed or flown).

I am sorry I did not turn up more credible material but Griehl is all I have in my library and what I turned up on the web was mostly incredible.

Mark Lincoln (talk) 23:10, 23 June 2016 (UTC)