The Junkers J.1000 was an exercise in aeronautical design produced by the

Junkers Junkers Flugzeug- und Motorenwerke AG (JFM, earlier JCO or JKO in World War I, English: Junkers Aircraft and Motor Works) more commonly Junkers , was a major German aircraft and aircraft engine manufacturer. It was founded there in Dessau, Germ ...

company of Germany in the mid-1920s. No airplane was ever produced. The design was led by Otto Mader who was also responsible for such Junkers aircraft as the J.1, which was the first all-metal aircraft to enter mass production.

Design

The design was extremely advanced for its day, indeed revolutionary. The design envisioned a four-engined near-

flying wing A flying wing is a tailless fixed-wing aircraft that has no definite fuselage, with its crew, payload, fuel, and equipment housed inside the main wing structure. A flying wing may have various small protuberances such as pods, nacelles, blis ...

capable of carrying eighty to 100 passengers and a crew of ten across the Atlantic Ocean. As designed, this proposed airplane consisted of twin fuselages which were connected by a pair of canard wings. The smaller fore wing was attached to the very front of the fuselages. The massive main wing sat on top of the twin fuselages, located behind the fore wing and approximately two-thirds of the way towards the twin tails of the craft. The main wing was designed to internally house the passengers and crew. There were four vertical stabilizers, two attached to each of the fuselage sections and two just inboard from the wingtips. A small cockpit protruded from the center of the main wing between the two fuselages. The dimensions were impressive, even by today's standards. The span of the main wing was over 260 feet as compared to today's

Boeing 747 The Boeing 747 is a large, long-range wide-body airliner designed and manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes in the United States between 1968 and 2022. After introducing the 707 in October 1958, Pan Am wanted a jet times its size, t ...

which has a wingspan of 196 feet. The main wing was 24 feet thick at its greatest point allowing ample headroom for standing passengers and crew. The overall length of the craft was some 80 feet. With projected flight times of up to 10 hours, sleeping accommodations were also built into the massive main wing.
German Aviation 1919-1945 Junkers J1000
', 2012 histaviation.com

History

The J.1000 design project was initiated by company founder

Hugo Junkers Hugo Junkers (3 February 1859 – 3 February 1935) was a German aircraft engineer and aircraft designer who pioneered the design of all-metal airplanes and flying wings. His company, Junkers Flugzeug- und Motorenwerke AG (Junkers Aircraft and Mo ...

specifically for a promotional trip to the United States. During their 1924 visit with potential U.S. investors, Junkers and Ernst Zindel, chief designer at Junkers, proposed the J.1000 as a trans-Atlantic commercial transport. To sell their proposed craft, they brought design blueprints, renderings of the completed airplane as well as a model aircraft. Mock-ups of the interior cabins were set up at Junkers headquarters in

Dessau Dessau is a town and former municipality in Germany at the confluence of the rivers Mulde and Elbe, in the '' Bundesland'' (Federal State) of Saxony-Anhalt. Since 1 July 2007, it has been part of the newly created municipality of Dessau-Roßlau ...

Germany and photographs of them were included in these discussions. A proposed air route was also discussed connecting Europe and the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

through

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...

Greenland Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland is t ...

and the Atlantic coast of

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. Not surprisingly, U.S. investor reaction was minimal. This futuristic craft was easily twenty-five years ahead of its time. Given the lack of investor interest, Junkers did not pursue this venture beyond this single visit to the United States. Design features of the J.1000 however were incorporated into later aircraft. For example, the concept of incorporating the passenger cabin within the main wing was again seen in the

Junkers G.38 The Junkers G.38 was a large German four-engined transport aircraft which first flew in 1929.EADS Two examples were constructed in Germany. Both aircraft flew as a commercial transport within Europe in the years leading up to World War II. Duri ...

which first flew some five years later in 1929.

References

{{reflist Junkers aircraft Abandoned civil aircraft projects