German Air Force

LTS 290 at Grosseto

Bundesarchiv

Grosseto airport, Italy, March-April 1943: a pair of Junkers Ju 90 of the Luftwaffe’s Lufttransportstaffel 290 (LTS 290) which on Spring 1943 received all the exemplars of this four-engines at beginning designed and produced as civil airliner for Lufthansa already operated by the German Air Force in the Mediterranean Theater from Italian bases as well as in the Eastern Front where, on January 1943, delivered supplies to German troops at Stalingrad. On December 1943 the LTS 290 became the Transportfliegerstaffel 5 (Tr.fl.St. 5) which early 1944 was used for the evacuations of Crimea. In August 1944 the Transportfliegerstaffel 5 was transformed in the 14./TG4 (14./Transport Gruppe 4) which in September and October of the same year was committed in the evacuation of German troops from the Greece. In total the Ju 90 built was 18: 16 was destroyed before the end of the war and the other two captured, by the Allies, were scrapped shortly after. The aircraft in foreground of this photo is the Ju 90V-8, developed directly for the Luftwaffe, first flight September 1941, original civil registration D-AQJA, W.Nr. 4920, Stammkennzeichen DJ+YE, military code J4+BH, equipped with machine-guns turrets (total one MG-151 and five MG-131 (photo Bundesarchiv Bild 1011-561-1130-39A). Victor Sierra