A Junkers A50 pilot 1931, updated 07.03.2025
Junkers A50
Excerpt from the book “Mal oben, mal unten” by Richard Perlia, *06.04.1905 Aachen †14.04.2012 Berlin, a pilot who first flew the Junkers A50 in 1931.
I met Richard Perlia in 2002 during a static display of our Super Puma AS532U2 at Bienenfarm airfield. We had a pleasant conversation, and I later visited him at his home in Berlin, where he shared many stories from his adventures and showed me historic film footage of his helicopter test flights.
In his book, there is also a chapter dedicated to his experiences flying the Junkers G38.
In Aachen, there was already a small airfield at Merzbrück operated by the Akaflieg, which had no objections to additional training operations. Even today, I vividly remember the examination day. It was true April weather: cold and rainy. At three o’clock in the afternoon, Captain Willi Kanstein appeared. He remarked, “The weather isn’t exactly nice for an exam, but let’s see what you can do.”
Then he walked over to the Akaflieg office and politely asked if he could borrow the Junkers A 50, popularly known as Junkers Junior, for about half an hour, as he intended to conduct an examination flight with it. His request was granted without hesitation; I was speechless. I had never flown this aircraft before, and it had a particularly poor reputation for being sensitive to handle and, to put it mildly, prone to stalling.
I voiced my justified concerns, but the strict examiner dismissed them: “Perlia, if you don’t trust yourself to fly this bird, then you’ve already failed as a flight instructor, and I’ll return to Cologne immediately, basta.” I felt uneasy but replied, “Captain, I’ll try, but please clearly instruct me what maneuvers you want me to perform—I don’t want to disappoint you; there’s too much at stake.” Kanstein responded, “Now that’s more like it. Fly at around eight hundred meters; the rain has stopped, so your aerobatic maneuvers should stand out well against the white sky, allowing me to judge you better. First, perform two loops upward, then one downward, followed by a controlled roll, then two snap rolls—one to the right, one to the left. After that, pull up into a tailslide, pause, go vertically downward on the elevator, tip forward into an inverted position and fly a complete circle upside down. Then perform four spins and recover in a dive. That’s all.”
Even though, due to my successful aerobatic training, I could manage these rather challenging maneuvers well—and the urge to finally secure steady employment was strong—it was still difficult to precisely execute these maneuvers on the first try in an unfamiliar aircraft known for being tricky to fly.
Thus, I asked Kanstein first for permission to fly a traffic circuit with a landing in this bird, which he generously allowed. Everything went well, and I performed the maneuvers so successfully that Kanstein patted me on the shoulder and said, “If your theoretical test goes equally well, I have no objections to you working as a flight instructor.”
