Warbird Information Exchange

I wonder if they have any B-29's left, original or copies ?

Only one Tu-4 at the Central Airforce Museum in Monino, outside Moscow

Reminds me of the Indian Liberator that almost made it to Australia in the 1980s, and the oft-rumoured (and by now seemingly just a joke) Chinese Short Stirling.

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Zac in NZ
#avgeek, modelbuilder, photographer, writer. Callsign: "HANDBAG".
https://linktr.ee/zacyates

"It's his plane, he spent the money to restore it, he can do with it what he wants. I will never understand what's hard to comprehend about this." - kalamazookid, 20/08/2013
"The more time you spend around warbirds the sooner you learn nothing, is simple." - JohnB, 24/02/22

Wow, never knew the Chinese tried to make an AWACS out of one of the gifted Tu-4 airframes

Brewster 239 BW-372, now in Finnish AF Museum, Tikkakoski, is also missing from the list.

Stirling story I recall from years back was a wreck with two Lancasters somewhere near Murmansk or similar - potentially plausible but apparently no more than a tall tale! Sadly...

My bad if it doesn't fit the criterion, but would the Yak-1 being restored by Retrotec, No. 1342, G-BTZD, qualify for your list?

https://sites.google.com/site/yak1enqui ... e-aircraft

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It was a good idea, it just didn't work.

Tennessean and former American AIrlines pilot, Steve Sevier bought and flew back to the U.S. the first AN-2 in the country. He flew the northerly route to Alaska. That was two or three years before the fal of the Soviet Union. He said at that time there were P-63 Kingcobras everywhere in parks and gate gaurds at the airports. It was common to see barns, and other buildings made by using wings and other items from WW II. The story is that they were so starved for money that the last couple of years before the Soviet Union fell they were rounding up all scrap aluminum and anything they could find to sell for money. Supposedly, that is where most of the WW II stuff went.
I still think there is a lot of treasure over there as well as the middle eastern countries like Syria that aren't friendly to westerners. Many impoverished countries don't have scrap yards and so things are just left where they are abandoned. It costs too much diesel to haul these relics somewhere to be scrapped.

Hard to say, but even the Afghans had junkyards and lots of interesting stuff fell out of them, but maybe it was the Russians that put all the junk in one spot. Myself, I think there has to be a lot of stuff on the Russian side of the Bering Sea and still in the bush, just like there was in Alaska years ago.

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Defending Stearmans on WIX since Jeff started badmouthing them back in 2005.

Some may enjoy reading about current aircrew and artifact recovery efforts along the ALSIB route:

https://www.rgo.ru/en/article/find-and- ... anes-alsib

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It was a good idea, it just didn't work.

Can we just take a moment to appreciate how lucky we are that this massive cache of airframes was recovered and exported before the door of opportunity closed forever? I can't imagine any Westerners being able to stroll into Russia to recover historical artifacts like this ever again, at least not during my lifetime.

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Rob Mears
'Surviving Corsairs' Historian
robcmears@yahoo.com
http://www.robmears.com

I understand, but then again, I never thought I'd see a Warsaw Pact airplane up close and now there are tons of them in private hands. Things can turn on a dime. In this case, only one man has to pass from the scene and there may be all sorts of new opportunities.

But in the same vein, I was just thinking how I had about a 20 year window to see Monino, and alas, I missed it. It may be another 20 before it opens again.

Since being a teenager teenager I've seen Polikarpov I-16s and I-153s, Yak-3s, a Lavochkin La-9 and multiple Aero L-39s display - often at the same airshow. I wholeheartedly agree with Rob's sentiment.

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Zac in NZ
#avgeek, modelbuilder, photographer, writer. Callsign: "HANDBAG".
https://linktr.ee/zacyates

"It's his plane, he spent the money to restore it, he can do with it what he wants. I will never understand what's hard to comprehend about this." - kalamazookid, 20/08/2013
"The more time you spend around warbirds the sooner you learn nothing, is simple." - JohnB, 24/02/22

I visited Russia on a college trip in 2014 and while I was in Moscow I asked a local professor about visiting Monino. However, I was informed that it was difficult to get to, so I never went. (I don't speak Russian, so there was no chance I was going to go separate from the group I was travelling with.) We did get to see the Museum of the Great Patriotic War and the collection of aircraft on display outside there, though.

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Tri-State Warbird Museum Collections Manager & Museum Attendant

Warbird Philosophy Webmaster