Survivors
One Ju 388 survives today. The Ju 388L-1 reconnaissance version with construction number (Werknummer) 560049 was the eighth of the series manufactured at Weser Flugzeugbau's Nordenham plant. Parts of the airframe were also built at ATG in Altenburg and at Niedersächsische Metallwerke Brinckmann & Mergell in Hamburg-Harburg. The aircraft was completed early in 1945. It was captured by U.S. troops in May 1945 at the Junkers plant in Merseburg, then flown to Kassel/Waldau.
The aircraft was examined and test flown by "Watson's Whizzers", led by United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) Colonel Harold E. Watson, as part of Operation Lusty and it is believed that Watson himself flew in the aircraft in preparation for flying it directly back to the U.S. Instead, on 17 June 1945 the aircraft was flown to Cherbourg, France where it was shipped to the United States aboard the Royal Navy escort carrier HMS Reaper together with other captured German aircraft for detailed evaluation in the U.S.
The aircraft was flown to Freeman Field in Indiana for evaluation, and in September 1945 made a flight demonstration for the press. The Ju 388 was flown for 10 hours of flight tests at Wright Field near Dayton, Ohio with the "foreign evaluation" registration FE-4010 (later changed to T2-4010). Following these tests the aircraft was displayed at the Dayton Air Show in 1946 along with other captured German aircraft.
On 26 September 1946, Ju 388 Werk-Nr. 560049 was transferred to Orchard Place Airport in Park Ridge, Illinois, near the present O'Hare International Airport. This temporary storage facility was a vacant U.S. Government-owned factory previously used by the Chrysler Corporation to build the Douglas C-54. Ju 388 Werk-Nr. 560049 was donated to the Smithsonian Institution's National Air Museum on 3 January 1949. The aircraft arrived at Silver Hill, Maryland, for storage in November 1954.
Today the aircraft is disassembled and remains in generally good condition, having never been stored outside. The cockpit area is in particularly good condition and complete with all instruments. Ju 388L-1 Werk-Nr. 560049 is just one of several unique German aircraft still awaiting restoration at the National Air and Space Museum's Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration, and Storage Facility in Silver Hill, Maryland.
Read more about this topic: Junkers Ju 388
Famous quotes containing the word survivors:
“I want to celebrate these elms which have been spared by the plague, these survivors of a once flourishing tribe commemorated by all the Elm Streets in America. But to celebrate them is to be silent about the people who sit and sleep underneath them, the homeless poor who are hauled away by the city like trash, except it has no place to dump them. To speak of one thing is to suppress another.”
—Lisel Mueller (b. 1924)
“I believe that all the survivors are mad. One time or another their madness will explode. You cannot absorb that much madness and not be influenced by it. That is why the children of survivors are so tragic. I see them in school. They don’t know how to handle their parents. They see that their parents are traumatized: they scream and don’t react normally.”
—Elie Wiesel (b. 1928)