New Updates

January 15 2013 Polikarpov. New photos of I-16, I-5, U-2.

December 24 2012 Japan Air Force Aircraft. Photos and Drawings.
December 23 2012 Luftwaffe Aircraft. Photos and Drawings.
December 22 2012 USSR Air Force Aircraft. Photos and Drawings.

December 20 2012 USSR. People and Aircraft. P-40E Kittyhawk (Series # 41-13531) BF Safonov. Killed in action in protecting the convoy PQ-16 May 30, 1942....

October 29 2012 Royal Canadian Air Force in WWII.

October 20 2012 In 1938 AA Mikulin design team was developed a more powerful engine AM-35 and AM-35A, based on a completely successful development and implementation of a series motor AM-34 (AM-34FRN).

September 27 2012 B-24D. Flight Manual. Consolidated Aircraft. 1942.

July 15 2012 The Royal Australian Air Force During the Pacific War.
July 14 2012 The Royal New Zealand Air Force During the Pacific War.

July 13 2012 U.S. Air Force Aircraft. Photos and Drawings.
July 12 2012 Royal Air Force Aircraft. Photos and Drawings.

March 28 2012 Dornier Do 335. Aero Publishers, Inc.
The Dornier Do-335 "Arrow" (Pfeil) featured a unique push-pull engine combination....

February 8 2012 Rools-Royce Merlin. Engine Maintenance manual. Derby, England, 1946.

November 16 2011 RTFM A-20G Handling and Maitenance Instructions

June 25 2011 B-29. Airplane commander training manual for the Superfortress.

May 31 2011 B-17. Pilot training manual for the Flying Fortress B-17.

February 01 2010 Helmut Brandt of I/JG54 shot off his propeller blades with a cannon round and he was unable to get his aircraft to his side of the front line. His airplane landed on the ice of Lake Ladoga and he tried to escape on skis, but was caught by Russian patrols. The captured fighter aircraft was urgently evacuated to the rear and then handed over to Engineer-Captain P. S. Onopriyenko, a lead engineer, for testing at the Air Forces Scientific Research Institute...

January 26 2010 Luftwaffe. People and Aircraft. After the war a number of theories were given for Faber's actions in landing his aircraft. One, a persistent rumour, was that he was attempting to desert but this was never borne out by his subsequent interrogation or, in fact, his later behaviour. When he was settled into a prisoner of war camp he successfully convinced the British authorities that he suffered from epilepsy. With a little more thought to the matter the British authorities might have wondered how an epileptic pilot could rise to be a senior member of a front-line fighter unit. But, nonetheless, in 1944 they allowed his repatriation and, shortly after his return, he was again flying in fighter operations...

December 31 2009 USAAF. People and Aircraft. The 392 nd Bomb Group was more fortunate than most on the 6 March 1944 mission to Berlin in that only one of its number failed to return. B-24H 27598/E, Flak Ducker, was seen to have No 3 engine feathered before the target and to jettison its bombs. Lagging behind, it was last seen leaving the formation near the German border although still in normal flight. A wheels-down landing was attempted in a cow pasture at Overberg, the Netherlands, which was successful but for a collapsed nose wheel. Lt Erling Hestad and crew were all taken prisoner...

December 25 2009 RAF. People and Aircraft. Extraordinarily, the first Stirling and Halifax heavy bomber squadrons were expected to operate from turf-surfaced airfields. This was not a problem in summer, but these 30-ton giants rutted and churned up runways at other times of the year and were often bogged down. No 7 Squadron at Oakington was the first with Stirlings and suffered with unsuitable surface conditions for many months until concrete runways were laid. Until sufficient concrete hardstandings were available, the Stirlings at Oakington were lined up on the out-of-use runways for bombing up, as in this photograph taken in March 1942. W7466/MG:B, with P Off M. R. Green and crew, failed to return from its sixth sortie, the Liibeck raid later in the month, crashing at Gnutz...

December 19 2009 The HANDLEY PAGE HP.57 HALIFAX heavy bomber was evolved by design team led by G R Volkert as final stage in process started in 1935 when a prototype of the twin-engined HP.55 had been ordered to Specification B.l/35 but superseded by two prototypes of the HP.56 to P.13/36, each powered by two Vultures.

December 06 2009 SHORT STIRLING - The Short S.29 Stirling was designed under the direction of Arthur Gouge as Short's response to Specification B.I2/36, which defined a heavy bomber to meet Operational Requirement OR. 40 drawn up by the Air Staff in 1936.

May 07 2009 Rolls-Royce Merlin 25 engine is a 12-cylinder, 60°, V12 liquid-cooled engine. It has a compression ratio of 6:1 and its dry weight is 1,430lb (687 kg).

December 08 2008 Yakovlev Yak-2 (BB-22) short range bomber with two Klimov M-103 V-12 engines.
Yakovlev Yak-4 (BB-22 bis) was a Soviet bomber aircraft, a development of the Yak-2. The Yak-4 used more powerful M-105 engines than its predecessors.

November 21 2008 Gloster Meteor was designed by a team led by George Carter during 1940 to take advantage of the still unproved Whittle turbojet, and Air Ministry Specification F.9/40 was written round the Gloster proposal for a single-seat twin-engined fighter armed with four 20 mm british Hispano cannon.
Gloster Meteor F Mk III: Similar to Gloster Meteor I, with 2,000 lb st (908 kgp) Derwent I (W.2B/37) engines

June 27 2008 Condors over Russia. When the German Sixth Army found itself fighting for its life at Stalingrad, Hermann Goring's boast that the Luftwaffe transport force could fly in the necessary relief supplies was quickly found to be hollow. That was one reason why part of KG 40 came to be in the hostile surroundings of Pitomnik -the other was that the Luftwaffe had a chronic shortage of small transport aircraft, let alone large ones. Bombers were pressed into a temporary transport role, four-engined types being able to help even if they could not lift substantial loads...

June 26 2008 Yak-1 M ('Moskit') fighter prototype. The Yak-3's predecessor was the Yak-1 M fighter, the prototype of which was also dubbed 'Moskit' (Mosquito). The wings of the new fighter were structurally similar to those of the Yak-9, featuring metal spars, metal and wooden ribs and plywood skinning. However, wing area was reduced...

June 22 2008 During a meeting in Moscow on December 23 1941, in the presence of Stalin, Mikoyan, Petlyakov, Mikulin, Ilyushin and many other, the delays by factory directors in shifting production of MiG-3s and AM-35As into Il-2s and AM-38Fs was discussed.
As a result, Stalin sent an angry telegram: "You have deceived our country and our Red Army. Our Red Army needs Il-2s as much as it does bread and water. Szenkman is producing one Il-2 per day, and tretyakov is producing one to two MiG-3s. This is an insult to the country and to the Red Army. We need Il-2s, not MiGs. This is your last warning".
The telegram led to the immediate suspension of MiG-3 production, while production of the Il-2 grew rapidly, even beyond the planned volume.
The OKB was charged to develop an improved MiG-3 for the PVO on February 26, 1943. The last of the MiG-3 family: I-230 and I-231 .

April 12 2008 According to the agreement, BMW granted our country the right to produce BMW VI engines at any plant in the USSR for 5 years. BMW also promised to provide consulting services in establishment of engine production and, in the event of necessity, send its engineers to the USSR to assist. Another stipulation was that the firm would inform the Soviet side about all improvements in its engines. For this, the Soviet side paid lump-sum compensation of $50,000 and, in addition, deducted 7.5% of the cost of every engine produced in the USSR.

March 02 2008 Soviet Fighters. Mikoyan ang Gurevich I-200 ; MiG-3 with AM-38 Engine ; MiG-9 with M-82 Engine ; MiG-9E with M-82F Engine.

February 01 2008 Soviet dive Bombers. Tupolev 103U ; Tu-2 VS

January 09 2008 German specialists in the USSR. The move to the USSR was a complete surprise to the Germans. Everything happened very quickly. Early in the morning of 22 October 1946, army trucks pulled up to the houses where the German specialists lived. A counterintelligence officer accompanied by a female translator and a group of soldiers read to the awakened Germans the order for their immediate transfer to continue their work in the USSR. At that time, trains ready to take them were waiting at railroad stations...
The movement of 7000 German specialists from various disciplines from Germany to the USSR was accomplished precisely and quickly.
Design team in the USSR. (OKB-2). Creation of the TV-2 (NK-12) turboprop engine.. Creation of the TV-2 (NK-12) engine was the final work in which the German specialists took part. In late 1953, the last Germans left the plant. Final tests were conducted and improvements made by a Soviet team headed by N. K. Kuznetsov.
The NK-12 and its modifications were successfully used on Tu-95, Tu-114, and An-22 aircraft.