The Junkers Ju 88 is a German World War II Luftwaffe twin-engined multirole combat aircraft. Junkers Aircraft and Motor Works (JFM) designed the plane in the mid-1930s as a so-called Schnellbomber ("fast bomber") that would be too fast for fighters of its era to intercept. It suffered from technical problems during its development and early operational periods but became one of the most versatile combat aircraft of the war. Like a number of other Luftwaffe bombers, it served as a bomber, dive bomber, night fighter, torpedo bomber, reconnaissance aircraft, heavy fighter and at the end of the war, as a flying bomb. Despite a protracted development, it became one of the Luftwaffe's most important aircraft. The assembly line ran constantly from 1936 to 1945 and more than 15,000 Ju 88s were built in dozens of variants, more than any other twin-engine German aircraft of the period. Throughout production the basic structure of the aircraft remained unchanged. For information on the development, operational history and various versions of the Ju-88, click here. Mistel-WWII Unmanned Flying Bomb Using surplus JU-88 Night Fighters or bombers as makeshift guided missiles was just one of the desperate schemes attempted by the Luftwafe during the final year of the war. At the end of WWII, the JU-88 was a favorite aircraft to conversion to unmanned flying bomb configuration by attaching a fighter, such as the Bf-109 or Focke-Wulf Fw-190, above the Ju-88. Some retained their noses for training and others had a massive warhead attached as shown in the bottom photo below. In 1941, the German Air Ministry (ReichluftMinisterium or RLM) began to investigate composite aircraft, and a suggestion was made that the scheme could be used to allow a fighter to guide an unmanned war-weary Junkers Ju-88 bomber packed with explosives to a target. The piggyback fighter was wired to the bomber's throttles and flight controls. The fighter pilot took the composite into the air, flew to the target area, flew straight at the target, and then released his fighter from the bomber. The bomber flew into the target on autopilot. There were many variations of the Mistel piggy-back bomber combinations. Mistel Prototype: Ju 88 A-4 and Bf 109 F-4 Mistel 1: Ju 88 A-4 and Bf 109 F-4 Mistel S1: Trainer version of Mistel 1 Mistel 2: Ju 88 G-1 and Fw 190 A-8 or F-8 Mistel S2: Trainer version of Mistel 2 Mistel 3A: Ju 88 A-4 and Fw 190 A-8 Mistel S3A: Trainer version of Mistel 3A Mistel 3B: Ju 88 H-4 and Fw 190 A-8 Mistel 3C: Ju 88 G-10 and Fw 190 F-8 Mistel Führungsmaschine: Ju 88 A-4/H-4 and Fw 190 A-8 Mistel 4: Ju 287 and Me 262 Mistel 5: Arado E.377A and He 162 Junkers Ju-88. Ju-88 Mistel combinations.
