Mack NR Truck

Moorish soldiers of General Franco's Spanish Nationalist army board a German-made Junkers Ju 52 =52 transport in Spanish Nationalist livery, ready to be carried from  Spanish North Africa to metropolitan Spain.  The three-engined Ju 52 was developed as a civilian airliner - although the military transport version appeared rather promptly afterwards.  Like several other German weapons, it was, so to speak, "piloted" in the Spanish Civil War.  An important tactic developed there was to use the Ju 52 to ferry troop reinforcements and supplies to forward airfields - or any suitable forward landing places - captured by the ground forces - to support the advance.  The Spanish war - controlled on the Nationalist side by cautious, conservative generals who favoured deliberate, plodding campaigns, may not have been the ideal testing ground for this (or any other advanced) German tactic.  However, the "transport forward" method tested out in Spain proved very effective both in the Western campaign of 1940, and in the early stages of the Russian campaign.  Best regards, JR.

Unsung workhorse of the Luftwaffe.

Spanish Soldiers in the trenches of Krasny Bor . Jorge