3D Printed in Black or Grey
39.1 x 31.55 x 12.41 mm
The Junkers Ju 88 is a German World War II Luftwaffe twin-engine 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.
Mistel (German for "mistletoe") was the larger, unmanned component of a composite aircraft configuration developed in Germany during the later stages of World War II. The composite comprised a small piloted control aircraft mounted above a large explosives-carrying drone, the Mistel, and as a whole was referred to as the Huckepack ("Piggyback"), also known as the Beethoven-Gerät ("Beethoven Device") or Vati und Sohn ("Daddy and Son").
The most successful of these used a modified Junkers Ju 88 bomber as the Mistel, with the entire nose-located crew compartment replaced by a specially designed nose filled with a large load of explosives, formed into a shaped charge. The upper component was a fighter aircraft, joined to the Mistel by struts. The combination would be flown to its target by a pilot in the fighter; then the unmanned bomber was released to hit its target and explode, leaving the fighter free to return to base. The first such composite aircraft flew in July 1943 and was promising enough to begin a program by Luftwaffe test unit KG 200, code-named "Beethoven", eventually entering operational service.
The definitive Mistel warhead was a shaped charge weighing nearly two tons fitted with a copper or aluminum liner with the weight of a blockbuster bomb. The use of a shaped charge was expected to allow penetration of up to seven meters of reinforced concrete.
Some 250 Mistels of various combinations were built during the war, but they met with limited success. They were first flown in combat against the Allied invasion fleet during the Battle of Normandy, targeting the British-held harbor at Courseulles-sur-Mer.
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