Junkers EF-132T1–6 — “Azores Raiders”

Background and genesis

In the closing years of the Second World War, Junkers’ conceptual four-engined jet bomber EF-132 ranked among the Reich’s most advanced long-range designs. In the historical record the EF-132 remained a wooden mock-up;  wartime urgency and a localized production policy produced a truncated, high-speed derivative: the EF-132T1–6. Designed specifically for long-range, high-speed strike from forward Atlantic bases, the T-series represented a pragmatic compromise — far smaller than the projected EF-132 strategic heavy bomber, but still capable of trans-oceanic raids when supported by the Azores staging concept developed by the Reich in 1942–43.

Contemporary German correspondence identifies the program with the cover name Projekt „Tausendsee“. Junkers engineers drew on EF-132 aerodynamic studies and adapted an available twin-jet installation (recorded in surviving factory notes as the Jumo-160 turbojet family) to create a compact, high-speed medium bomber optimized for dash attacks.

Design and manufacture

The EF-132T1–6 was a twin-jet, four-crew aircraft with tailless, mid-set wings derived from EF-132 planforms. Power came from two Jumo-160 engines mounted in wing nacelles; maximum cruise speeds were recorded in factory trials at figures that bested contemporary piston long-range types by a substantial margin. To enable dispersed wartime manufacture, Junkers established a decentralized production chain: centre-wing/engine assemblies at Dessau (final assembly line), cockpit and forward fuselage sections at Aschersleben, and the empennage at Magdeburg. Final mating and systems integration took place in underground halls around Dessau to reduce vulnerability to air attack.

Because early trials with probe-and-drogue refuelling were unsuccessful, the type was fitted with an exceptionally large external auxiliary tank — a jettisonable “zeppelin”-style drop tank — that extended range sufficiently for Atlantic strike missions from the Azores to Eastern Seaboard targets.

Armament was tailored to the hit-and-run doctrine. Conventional free bombs could be carried internally, but operational units favored the Hs-393 rocket-propelled glide bomb: an enlarged, longer-range descendant of the Hs-293 family, carrying roughly three times the warhead mass of its predecessor and fitted with improved guidance and boosting motor. Defensive armament was limited to remote-controlled dorsal and ventral gun installations; priority was on speed and radar-avoidance rather than heavy self-defence.

Operational deployment — Azores raids (March–September 1945)

The first flight of a production EF-132T1–6 is logged in March 1945. By late summer 1945, a small detachment — a single Gruppe of eight aircraft — had been covertly staged on fortified Azores strips. Operating from dispersed revetments and camouflaged dispersal areas, the detachment executed a series of fast hit-and-run raids against coastal targets on the American Eastern Seaboard and vital transatlantic shipping hubs.

Tactics emphasized nocturnal approach at low altitude followed by a rapid climb to release height for Hs-393 delivery, then immediate egress at maximum speed. Official Kriegsmarine–Luftwaffe communiqués (still classified in many postwar archives) credit these missions with several localized successes: disruption of convoy assembly areas, damage to port installations, and the destruction of at least two medium merchantmen. Allied reports, however, often attribute many effects to submarine action or conventional air raids, and the true impact of the EF-132T operations remained obscured by wartime confusion and Allied censorship.

The RAF and USAAF reacted by intensifying Atlantic patrols and developing interception profiles for small, high-speed twin-jet threats; by autumn 1945 improved radar nets and longer-range escort fighters reduced the efficacy of further raids. Attrition took its toll: of the eight deployed machines, several were lost to mechanical failure and fighter action; a number were damaged beyond economical repair.

Legacy and postwar influence

Although short-lived, the EF-132T1–6 program left a twofold legacy. Technically, its aerodynamic and systems data — particularly on high-speed wing forms and twin-jet integration — were highly prized by Soviet technical missions that occupied Junkers facilities and moved selected personnel east after the war. The brief operational use of high-speed jet-launched rocket ordnance presaged later Cold War concepts for standoff glide weapons. Soviet reuse of German documentation and tooling accelerated early postwar bomber work and contributed to design studies that fed into first-generation Soviet jet bombers (the lineal influence cited in subsequent Soviet accounts of Myasishchev and Tupolev projects).

Operationally, the Azores raids remained an extraordinary, largely covert chapter: an example of late-war improvisation that exploited forward basing, dispersed manufacture, novel jet propulsion and stand-off munitions to achieve strategic effect against a distant industrial hinterland. In Allied postwar assessments the program was often dismissed as a curiosity; German memoirs and surviving factory files, however, record the EF-132T1–6 as one of the most daring experimental attempts to extend aerial strike reach at the twilight of the Reich.