Restored Birds of Prey

[Laza]

From Paul Allen Collection in the USA

The aircraft:



This Fw 190 was built in 1943 and factory-modified for ground attack duties. Fighting on the Eastern Front, the aircraft was assigned to Jagdgeschwader (fighter wing) 54 near Leningrad. On July 9, 1943, while attacking a Soviet supply train, the plane crashed. The pilot became a prisoner in Russia, but his plane remained untouched and hidden by acres of impassable wetland and a growing forest of young saplings.

The amazingly intact plane was discovered by a warbird hunter in the late 1980s and was carefully dismantled and airlifted with a helicopter. In England and later in the U.S., the fighter underwent an extensive restoration process. Today, the plane is the only original flyable Focke-Wulf 190A fighter to take to the skies with a genuine BMW 801 engine.






This Bf 109-E was manufactured in Germany and deployed in October 1939. Piloted by Eduard Hemmerling, it flew primarily over France. Hemmerling shot down a British Spitfire on July 7, 1940, while escorting Stuka dive-bombers that were attacking British ships in Dover harbor. Later that month he destroyed a British Blenheim bomber and another British plane. But his own aircraft was mortally wounded, and Hemmerling turned back toward France. His failing airplane crashed off the coast of Cap Blanc Nez, killing the 27-year-old pilot. In 1988, a man walking on the beach near Calais noticed a piece of metal sticking out of the sand—the tip of this plane's wing.