Junkers Ju 87 Stuka was obsolete in what was now a fighter-bomber's war. The Bf 109 and Fw 190 could at least fight enemy fighters on equal terms after dropping their ordnance but the Stuka could not. The Ju 87's vulnerability was demonstrated on 11 November 1942, when 15 Ju 87 Ds were shot down by United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) Curtiss P-40Fs in minutes. By 1943, the Allies enjoyed air supremacy in North Africa. The Ju 87s ventured out in "Rotte" strength only, often jettisoning their bombs at the first sight of enemy aircraft. Adding to this trouble, the German fighters
Hugo Junkers communist activist, as Managing Director of what remained of his business. Hugo Junkers is mainly known in connection with aircraft bearing his name. These include some he reluctantly developed for the German Empire during World War I, later in minor association with Anthony Fokker, as well as civil aircraft designs during the "interwar period" produced by "Junkers Flugzeugwerke" (Junkers Aircraft Works). Junkers died in 1935. The earliest all-metal post-World War I aircraft designs of both Andrei Tupolev — with his Tupolev ANT-2 two-passenger small aircraft of 1924 — and William Bushnell Stout's initial all-metal design, the Stout ST twin-engine torpedo