In 1940, the crew of an AA battery or a road column usually heard a Stuka before they saw it. The aircraft dove at 60 degrees or steeper, well under the speed of sound, so its scream arrived first — a wail from the sky audible for kilometres. Then the bomb, then the quiet. It is one of the most recognisable sounds of the Second World War, and it came from a device bolted to the landing gear.
The siren on the wheels
The device was the Jericho-Trompete, the Jericho trumpet: a small wind-driven siren mounted on the fixed landing gear spats. It made the aircraft neither faster nor more accurate. Its entire job was fear — German crews sometimes had it removed when hiding the aircraft's position mattered more than theatre.
Everything about the Ju 87 was shaped by the dive. Those inverted gull wings — bending down at the root, then out and up — made room for short, strong landing gear legs and let designers mount dive brakes where they would not flip the aircraft mid-dive. The fixed, faired gear was aerodynamically embarrassing and structurally simple. The result: a bomber that could put a 250 kg bomb into an area the size of a tennis court, at a time when "precision bombing" usually meant the right district. Around 6,500 were built after the type first flew in 1935.
The 1940 lesson
During the Battle of Britain the Stuka met Spitfires and Hurricanes that were faster, and fighter pilots who had learned what it sounded like. Losses got bad enough that the Luftwaffe pulled it from daylight operations over England. Over the Eastern Front it found a second act — as a tank-buster with two 37 mm cannons bolted under the wings, then as a night harasser, a glider tug, a supply hauler. The last ones flew into 1945.
A specialised machine stays brilliant exactly as long as the conditions it was built for hold. Not a new lesson. The Stuka is just unusually good at teaching it.
Two Stukas, two theatres
We stock two 1/72 Ju 87s, and they wear different camouflage. The desert-camouflage Ju 87 Stuka diecast model is the North African look — sand and olive blotches, Balkenkreuz on the wings, canopy and propeller moulded separately. The green European-theatre version carries soft-edged green blotches and the yellow theatre band on the tail. Both come with a detachable display stand in the box.
The airframe is diecast metal with engineered-plastic detail parts. At 1/72 the real aircraft's 13.8-metre wingspan works out to roughly 19 centimetres, and the listing dimensions land close:
- 1/72 scale, diecast metal fuselage with engineered-plastic details
- 18.5 cm wingspan, 15.7 cm length, 4.5 cm tall on the stand (6.18 × 7.28 × 1.78 inches)
- About 91 grams on the scale (0.2 lb)
- Detachable metal display stand included
Heavy for its size. It won't blow off a shelf, which matters more than you'd think on a model with a propeller this easy to knock.
Which to pick is a shelf question, not a quality one. The desert version reads better under warm lamplight; the sand tones pick up yellow light in a way the green one doesn't. The green one sits better against pale walls. If you already have a few WWII types on display — our roundup of ten WWII aircraft models covers that shelf — either Stuka fits straight in. And if you're still weighing what size suits your desk, our 1/72 vs 1/100 comparison deals with that properly.
What the buyers say
Five reviews across the two listings so far, all five stars. Tony Rollo, on the desert version: "Very nice quality in the detail. Ready to display with the included stand that's easy to set up."
And the one we'd rather not quote but should — T-Rex: "Arrived with two broken pieces. The model looks good now that I glued them where they belong. Suggest better shipping packaging as there was no padding." Fair warning, then: at 91 grams with thin plastic details, a Stuka does not survive being packed like a brick. If the box rattles when it arrives, photograph it before you open it.
No Ju 87 flies anymore — every survivor sits behind museum glass. The spatted gear, the gull wings, the mounts where the trumpet used to bolt on: 1/72 is the only place you'll still see them attached to something you can pick up. Both listings sit in the military aircraft collection.
