The Junkers Ju87G-1

During 1942, the inadequacy of bombs against tanks became increasingly
obvious to the Stukagruppen. This inadequacy had been revealed, in fact, on
the fourth day of the invasion of the Soviet Union when the whole of
St.G.2 attacked a concentration of some 60 Soviet tanks 50 miles south of
Grodno, later discovering that only one tank had been knocked out, and it was
not until the beginning of 1943 that a reasonably satisfactory weapon became
available in the form of the first tank-busting Ju87Gs.

The Ju87G-1 was actually a conversion of the Ju87D-5 to carry a pair of
37mm FLAK 18 (BK 3,7) cannon which, together with their magazines, were slung
beneath the wing immediately outboard of the main undercarriage members. The
cannon mountings were detachable and could be replaced by bomb racks
operationally in the summer of 1942 on a modified Ju87D-3 which was fown by
several pilots, including Oberleutnant Hans-Ulrich Rudel of 1./St.G.2 who
was later to become the Luftwaffe's leading exponent of the art of tank
busting, and to be credited with knocking out a total of 519 Soviet tanks
while flying the Ju87G-1. The brilliant success enjoyed by the Panzerjager-
Staffel formed on the first Ju87G-1s to reach the Eastern front resulted,
after October 1943 (when the Stukageschwader 1, 2, 3, and 77 were
redesignated Schlachtgeschwader 1, 2, 3, and 77), in a Ju87G-equipped
Panzerjaeger-Staffel being added to each Geschwader.

The Ju87G-1 suffered the major disadvantage of being extremely slow and
unwieldy, and relatively easy preay for fighters, and as Soviet fighter
oppostion increased, the elderly Junkers was progressively supplanted in the
Schlachtgeschwader by the Focke-Wulf Fw190 for day operations, the Ju87
being transferred to the Nachtschlachtgruppen, and by the autumn of 1944
only one Gruppe, Rudel's III/SG2, was still on daylight operations with the
Ju87D and G, together with two anti-tank Staffeln, 10.(Pz)/SG2 and
10.(Pz)/SG77.
                        Ju87G-1 Conversion Information

The plane's new designation "Ju87G-1" will appear on the weapons screen.
You will have a choice of a 2,000 lb., 1000 lb., and 500 lb. bomb for the
center rack and either the BK 37mm cannon or 4x 110 lb bombs for the inner
rack. The main armament of the plane has been changed to 20mm cannon, which
was done on later model Stukas. The top speed of the plane was only 255 mph
and cruise was 198 mph at 75% throttle. The addition of an autopilot by
pressing the "A" key is included  and for those with the P80 expansion disk
set installed you can deploy the speed brakes by pressing "B".
You will probably notice some visual quirks, as the imported PAC files from
BOB are not completely compatible with SWOTL. Occassionally you may notice a
plane that appears to be flying sideways or changes back and forth between
the appearance of a Ju87 and Bf109. This will not effect how the planes
react. Normally Ju87s were only used for ground attack and not for
inteception there was no known way to limit the type of orders used, so if
you use my Ju87 for your custom missions you should limit it DIVE BOMB,
DIVE BOMB and STRAFE, LEVEL BOMB and STRAFE, FORMATION FLYING, and RETURN TO
BASE orders to be realistic.

Keith Heitmann, Prodigy ID #GVXV90A