Junkers Ju.52/3m, Croatian, Czechoslovak and Danish users

 

The Junkers Ju.52/3m is a German cargo airplane that was produced since 1931 until 1952, since 1945 under foreign manufacturers though.

It comes no surprise that it was used by a wide variety of countries as it was very sturdy, versatile and easy to fly. Some of those countries that employed the type were the following ones:

• Independent State of Croatia: As an organic part of the Luftwaffe, the Croatian Air Force Legion, had at one moment at least one Ju.52/3m registered in January 1944. It seems that previously there were three of them which were used to transport personnel of the 15 (Kroat)/KG.3. The drawing should be considered as speculative because we couldn't find any graphical evidence of a Ju.52 serving with the Croatian Air Force Legion.
• Czechoslovakia: Just after the War, the airline Ceskoslovenské Letecka Spolecnost briefly operated the type by flying a Ju.52/3m to Bromma airport, in Sweden, on 1st February 1946.
  On 1st March 1946 CSA (Czechoslovak Airlines) resumed aerial operations with a fleet of, among other types, three Ju.52/3m (refurbished by Letov) and two Amiot AAC.1 (some sources claim it was three) transferred from the Czechoslovak Air Force between 1946 and 1948. This airline kept scheduled flights from Prague to various destinations all around Europe like Amsterdam, Belgrade, Berlin, Brussels, London Paris, Stockholm, Strasbourg and Warsaw, with many internal destinations like Bratislava, Karlovy Vary and Kosice. 
  One Ju.52/3m crashed when landing in Prague on 5th March 1946, killing ten of the fifteen total people on board, when operating a Paris-Strasbourg-Prague service. 
  After the communist coup in Czechoslovakia, in 1948, CSA was nationalised, so the whole country passed to the Soviet sphere of influence, making the Ju.52/3m and AAC.1s to be eventually replaced by the Lisunov Li-2 and surplus Douglas DC-3 supplied by Soviet authorities.
  Another Czechoslovak users of the Ju.52/3m was the Bata Shoe Company (headquartered in Zlin) which briefly operated a pair of AAC.1s to transport goods and materials between their factories. When the company was nationalised in 1948, the AAC.1s were passed on to the Czechoslovak Police Air Force. Eventually those two Amiot were sold back to France on 17th March 1951.
• Denmark: Det Danske Luftfartselskab (Danish Airlines - DDL) had one Ju.52/3m in property. This aircraft was acquired, with American-built Pratt & Whitney engines, on 8th August 1936 and was nicknamed as "Selandia". It suffered several accidents during 1937 and 1938, when flying regular flights from Copenhagen to various destinations, so a second one was leased from Deutsche Lufthansa. At the outbreak of World War 2, "Selandia" was ready again and resumed operations, this time with big Danish flags painted, as neutrality markings. When Germany occupied Denmark, in April the whole DDL fleet was parked, where it remained until operations were partially resumed in June, after the fall of France. On 18th December 1942 "Selandia" was lost to an accident when landing at Aspern, in Vienna.
  After the War, on 18th July 1945, one Ju.52/3m was leased by DDL, however, due to poor technical conditions of the airplane, it was returned three weeks later. Later, three Ju.52/3m were handled by the RAF to the Dannish Government with the intentions of incorporating them to the DDL's fleet, although eventually only one of them entered service. This Ju.52/3m was nicknamed as "Uffe Viking" and was used on the Copenhagen-Ronne, in the island of Bornholm as the small airfield of the island wasn't adequate to operate the Douglas DC-3. 
  The other two Ju.52/3m remained unused and were returned to the Danish Government in December 1948 which allocated them for firefighting practices in Kastrup. "Uffe Viking" was used until 4th February 1948, when it was stored at Kastrup awaiting a possible buyer. It was eventually bought by the Swedish company Aero Trafik on 23rd August 1950 and ferried to Sweden three weeks later.

Sources:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Junkers_Ju_52_operators

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Airlines

3. https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/České_aerolinie (translated)

4. Fonthill Media - The Junkers Ju.52 Story
5. https://hrvatskoobrambenostivo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/the-croatian-air-force-in-the-second-world-war.pdf

6. https://military.wikireading.ru/26850 (translated)