Junkers Ju 87 near Sagan, 13 Ju 87s and 26 crew members were lost when they crashed into the ground almost simultaneously. The planes dived through cloud, expecting to release their practice bombs and pull out of the dive once below the cloud ceiling, unaware that the ceiling was too low and unexpected ground mist formed, leaving them no time to pull out of the dive. On 1 September 1939, the Wehrmacht invaded Poland, triggering World War II. "Generalquartiermeister der Luftwaffe" records indicate a total force of 366 Ju 87 A and Bs were available for operations on 31 August 1939. The first
Junkers Bomber" design competition for a trans-Atlantic range strategic bomber saw the Junkers firm build two prototypes of its six-engined Junkers Ju 390, basically a stretch of the four-engined Ju 290 transport — competing against the trio of Me 264 four-engined prototypes as the only fully airworthy competitors for the contract, which had included designs from Focke-Wulf and Heinkel that were never built, with the competition ended in July 1944 due to the developing need for interceptors to defend the Reich. The Junkers company survived the Second World War and was reconstituted as Junkers GmbH and eventually merged into the MBB