During 1942, the inadequacy of bombs against tanks became increasingly       
obvious to the Stukagruppen. This inadequacy had been revealed, in fact, on
the fourth day of the invasion of the Soviet Union when the whole of 
St.G.2 attacked a concentration of some 60 Soviet tanks 50 miles south of 
Grodno, later discovering that only one tank had been knocked out, and it was
not until the beginning of 1943 that a reasonably satisfactory weapon became
available in the form of the first tank-busting Ju87Gs.

The Ju87G-1 was actually a conversion of the Ju87D-5 to carry a pair of
37mm FLAK 18 (BK 3,7) cannon which, together with their magazines, were slung
beneath the wing immediately outboard of the main undercarriage members. The
cannon mountings were detachable and could be replaced by bomb racks 
operationally in the summer of 1942 on a modified Ju87D-3 which was fown by
several pilots, including Oberleutnant Hans-Ulrich Rudel of 1./St.G.2 who 
was later to become the Luftwaffe's leading exponent of the art of tank
busting, and to be credited with knocking out a total of 519 Soviet tanks 
while flying the Ju87G-1. The brilliant success enjoyed by the Panzerjager-
Staffel formed on the first Ju87G-1s to reach the Eastern front resulted,
after October 1943 (when the Stukageschwader 1, 2, 3, and 77 were
redesignated Schlachtgeschwader 1, 2, 3, and 77), in a Ju87G-equipped
Panzerjaeger-Staffel being added to each Geschwader.

The Ju87G-1 suffered the major disadvantage of being extremely slow and 
unwieldy, and relatively easy preay for fighters, and as Soviet fighter 
oppostion increased, the elderly Junkers was progressively supplanted in the
Schlachtgeschwader by the Focke-Wulf Fw190 for day operations, the Ju87 
being transferred to the Nachtschlachtgruppen, and by the autumn of 1944
only one Gruppe, Rudel's III/SG2, was still on daylight operations with the
Ju87D and G, together with two anti-tank Staffeln, 10.(Pz)/SG2 and
10.(Pz)/SG77.
                        Ju87G-1 Conversion Information

This conversion uses the cockpit of the Bf109G. Unfortuantely, all attempts 
to equip this plane with its rear cockpit gunner's position has failed. 
So remember to lower your gear previous release versions of my Ju87 did not 
have the landing gear fixed in the down position, becuase the needed byte had
not been discovered yet. This version has been fixed and the landing gear is
permanently lowered just as it should be on a Ju87. The conversion uses the 
two Stuka PAC files from BOB. You should copy the JU873.PAC file into the 
BF109G.PAC and the JU873S.PAC file into the BF109GS.PAC file. Then copy the 
JU87.EXP file into the BF109G6.SPC file. The plane's new designation "Ju87G-1" 
will appear on the weapons screen. You will have a choice of a 2,000 lb., 
1000 lb., and 500 lb. bomb for the center rack and either the BK 37mm cannon 
or 4x 110 lb bombs for the inner rack. The main armament of the plane has 
been changed to 20mm cannon, which was done on later model Stukas. The top 
speed of the plane was only 255 mph and cruise was 198 mph at 75% throttle. 
The addition of an autopilot by pressing the "A" key is included  and for 
those with the P80 expansion disk set installed you can deploy the speed 
brakes by pressing "B". If you don't have the P80 disk set installed this 
feature probably won't work. 
You will probably notice some visual quirks, as the imported PAC files from
BOB are not completely compatible with SWOTL. Occassionally you may notice a
plane that appears to be flying sideways or changes back and forth between
the appearance of a Ju87 and Bf109. This will not effect how the planes
react. Normally Ju87s were only used for ground attack and not for 
inteception there was no known way to limit the type of orders used, so if
you use my Ju87 for your custom missions you should limit it DIVE BOMB, 
DIVE BOMB and STRAFE, LEVEL BOMB and STRAFE, FORMATION FLYING, and RETURN TO
BASE orders to be realistic.

Place the JU87.EXP, JU87G.PAC, JU87GS.PAC files in the SWOTL \AC subdirectory
and the JU87.BAT and NOJU87.BAT file in the \SWOTL subdirectory. Remember to
run NOJU87 after you fly any JU87 missions and you are going to quit SWOTL or
before you shutdown your computer. These batch files have no error traps, so
if you forget you may be forced to reinstall the PAC or SPC files for the
BF109G-6 from the original SWOTL disks.

Keith Heitmann, Prodigy ID #GVXV90A
