Thread: Yak-9P
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Old 25th April 2008, 20:19
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Theodor Theodor is offline
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Re: Yak-9P

Sadly, only the Arado survived from all the WW2 aircraft. A lot of the Me-109 and all the Do-17 were handled to Yugoslavia postwar in the late 40's /as well as some Bulgarian-made aircraft and some Il-2/. Everything else was scrapped!

A few Arado-196 were retired from the AF and given to the Black sea fishing fleet, to look for fishing areas from the air. Those were used until the late 50's if remember right and then one was given to the Marine Museum at Varna. There it stood till the beginning of the 80's. Then a group of Soviet officials came to visit the museum. A Marshal and some other high ranks. The Marshal got a bit angry, that an aircraft used to chase Soviet submarines is there on display. The Director of the museum hurried to give an order - the fashist machine must be gone within a day! And indeed it was roughly disassembled and transported to some military range out of town, waiting to be scrapped. Fortunately it was not sent to scrap immediately, but forgotten there lay in pieces for 2-3 years. Finally in the mid-80s a Museum of Aviation was created and the enthusiastic "fathers" of the museum went and brought the Arado to safety! Some restoration was needed, especially the skin of the tail part is not well made. Not only the tin needs to be fixed - I have heard the board instruments went missing while it was still in the navy museum. But after all the aircraft did survive!!! With some money and some more money, it can be very well restored

Unlike all else! As said, all were scrapped! Last year a vertical rudder from Ju-52 was found in some old military factory and brought to the museum. Also a Czech Smolik - most of the piping for the structure of the body, cut to pieces, can be restored very well. That is all. Nothing else. I have 3-4 board instruments and 2 clocks, some other people have aircraft clocks and other instruments panel parts /that is what people kept from the machines - board instruments/ - and that is all left from hundreds of aircraft!
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