Quote:
Originally Posted by DaveB.inVa  What information do you have on the Ju-390 or 290 flying to Japan? What routes were taken, takeoff and landing locations and such. Ive been curious as to the nature of these trips for a while but have never been able to find any information on them. |
The only flight to Japan by Ju-390 which there is evidence of was on 28 March 1945, from Bodo Norway to Tokyo direct.
First mention of the mission was by the radio operator (oberfunkmeister der U-234) Wolfang Hirschfeldt in his book "Atlantik Farewell: Das Letzte U-boot".
U-234 sailed for Japan from Kiel in March 1945. Unfortunately it suffered an underwater collision with another U-boat and had to put into Christiansand for repairs before continuing in April 1945. There is a 70 tonne (ton?) discrepancy between the loading manifest at Keil and the unloading manifest at Portsmouth new Hampshire.
There are also discrepancies in the items on that manifest. Two disassembled Me-262 were claimed to be loaded on U-234, but none are noted as unloaded. in USA.
The submarine carried a cargo of secret war material for the Japanese war effort and surrendered to a US Navy destroyer in the western Atlantic 14 May 1945. It appears that the colision made it vital that some items in her cargo be flown rather than shipped. Thus U-234 may have been partially unloaded in Norway. Hirschfeld said that there was a plan to send the most urgent cargo on by air.
Hirschfeld stated that a "special version of the FW 200" with additional fuel tanks had been built to tranship the most important items of U-234 cargo to Japan, with a fuelling stop in Manchuria. The idea had been scrapped when it was determined that it was not possible for the FW200 to reach Manchuria without overflying Soviet airspace.
The longest known distance for a non-stop FW 200 flight occurred on 10 August 1938 when a passenger version flew from Berlin to New York.
There, Hirschfeld's personal knowledge of the mission stops.
Another thread to the Ju-390's Tokyo flight was in Silesia where SS Kammlerstab was intent on evacuating a Bell centrifuge device, which generated ionizing plasma from mercury amalgams placed in it's core.
At the Berlin Document Centre there are records from the post war interrogation of SS-Obersturmbannfuehrer Rudolf Schuster attached to SS-WVHA Amt-V zbV.
This officer stated that in the second half of April 1945 a Junkers Ju 390 attached to KG 200 was at Schweidnitz (an airfield SW of Breslau) where it loaded materials from a secret project coded "Cronos/Laternentraeger." The aircraft was painted pale blue and had Swedish AF markings. It was guarded by SS and concealed beneath tarpaulin. It is known to have taken off for Bodo in Norway, but nothing further is known of its activity.
At the time Ju-390V1 (werke nr. J4918 ) had been flown to Junkerswerke Dessau in November 1944 and stripped of propellers. It lay there derelict until April 1945 when it was burned to prevent capture.
The Ju-390 V2 marked RC+DA however was noted in Oblt Joachim Eisermanns logbook. According to his logbook he flew the Ju-390V-2 at Rechlin in February 1945
Author Igor Witowski pieced together parts of the evidence for this flight when the Polish government declassified wartime files in 1998.
Around February 1945 the Ju-390 V2 flew from Prague to Opole, Poland (near Ludwigsdorf) to collect cargo and according to interrogation reports of an SS officer involved with the flight (cited by Witowski from Berlin Document Centre “The Truth about the Wunderwaffe, pp 242) it then was flown to Bodo in Norway.
At Bodo, Norway, the Ju-390 V2 was also sighted in fake Sweedish airline markings.
Post war British Journalist Tom Agoston interviewed Dr Wilhelm Voss from Kammler's staff at Prague. Voss told Agoston of the flight to Tokyo from Norway via a polar route on 28 March 1945.
The claim is corroborated by Reichs Armaments Minister Albert Speer in his book "Inside the Third Reich."
Speer spoke of a Ju-390 flight to Tokyo "via the polar route" flown by Junkers test pilots.
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