WIX Archives

Re: PeterA.. Any more info on the 4 Kingcobras

Posted by PeterA on Wed Apr 30, 2003 05:21:27 AM

In reply top PeterA.. Any more info on the 4 Kingcobras posted by Paul McMillan on Wed Apr 30, 2003 04:11:21 AM

Paul,
Here is the 'copy' that went to Flypast and Aeroplane that will be on the news stands from tomorrow. Pretty exciting stuff. I will email you some pix and perhaps you can make them visible on the WIX with your superior IT skills.
You can still read the serials on two of the stuctures and I am wondering if infra red photography will reveal the other serails that have bleached out. Any knowledgeable P63 enthusiasts/engineers who can direct to internal identity locations please step forward.
Copy and pix on three axis types from the same source in process.
PeterA

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Kingcobras recovered to the UK.

Surrey based brothers Daniel and Kevin Hunt have taken delivery of the first of several new shipments of WWII aircraft that they have recovered from Russia.

The first package comprises four P.63c Kingcobras from the Kurile Island chain in Eastern Russia. Typically ?bruised? by nearly 60 years of exposure to the elements, passing ?militia? and local peasants salvaging fitments and fittings, the aircraft however had been parked on their undercarriage, and are not crash remains. Professionally dismantled in Russia, strategic heavy components are in remarkably good condition and the structures bode well for future restoration to quality static or flight status.

An initial superficial inspection has revealed two of the identities as 44-4315 and 44-4368, still clearly stencilled by the entry doors.

Over two thirds of Kingcobra production, some 2,400 machines, were ferried to Russia over the ALSIB (Alaska-Siberia) route. Used in the short Manchurian campaign against the Japanese in August 1945, fighter regiments of the Pacific Fleet maintained them in service until the early 1950?s. These recovered examples are almost certainly from the units 307 and 308 IAP.

One airframe is earmarked for a proposed local museum and the others will be placed on the Warbird market in due course.

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