Junkers Ju 87 It was produced until 1944 for lack of a better replacement. By then ground-attack versions of the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 had largely replaced the Stuka, but Stukas remained in service until the end of the war. An estimated 6,500 Ju 87s of all versions were built between 1936 and August 1944. "Oberst" Hans-Ulrich Rudel was the most successful Stuka ace and the most highly decorated German serviceman of the Second World War. The Ju 87's principal designer, Hermann Pohlmann, held the opinion that any dive-bomber design needed to be simple and robust. This led to many technical innovations, such as
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