By the time of the Battle of Britain, the venerable Junkers Ju 87 design
was beginning to show some of its shortcomings. A new, faster, better armed
and better armored replacement was needed, so work was begun on the Ju
187 design. It kept some of the features of the earlier Ju 87, such as
the cranked (gull) wing and two man crew, but added retractable landing
gear and a very novel reversible vertical tail. The Ju 187 was to be entirely
of metal construction. The wing was tapered and featured both dihedral
and anhedral. Slatted dive brakes were fitted near the trailing edge of
the landing flaps. The main landing gear was housed in a bulge at the junction
of the wing where the angle of the wing changed, and retracted to the rear
(also rotating 90 degrees to lay flat under the wings). Power was to be
supplied by a Jumo 213A 12-cylinder liquid-cooled engine, which was also
used in the Fw 190D and Ju 88G-6), and developed 1750 horsepower at takeoff.
One of the most unusual features was the movable vertical tail fin, which
could be moved 180 degrees in flight, thus clearing the field of fire for
the rear gunner. Two men sat back-to-back in a pressurized cockpit.
Defensive armament was located in a remote-controlled rear turret, consisting
of one 151/20 20 mm cannon and one MG 131 13mm machine gun. The bomb load
was composed of one 500 kg (1102 lbs) bomb under the fuselage, and two
50 kg (110 lbs) bombs under each wing on either side of the landing gear
bulges.
Although windtunnel models and even a full-sized mock-up was built, the project was canceled due to the fact that the projected performance was not that much of an improvement from the older Ju 87, and also that fighter-bombers such as the Fw 190F series could do the job as well as specialized dive bombers. In October 1943, the project designation 287 was officially given to the forward-swept wing jet bomber project that Junkers was designing.
