The Little World

When there is nothing more left to get out of the toothpaste tube.

The USAF had ways; ways of getting information from enemy air forces. In the case of the Royal Air Force they just bought the plans for the Merlin engine and turned them over to Packard for production. They boxed up all the prototype rockets and jet engines from Germany that the Soviets had not gotten to and sent them home to White Sands. And they got aircraft from defectors.

One of the early ones was this Yak 23 – there is a training film from the USAF on YouTube right now of an example being flown for test purposes in the early 50’s. The commentator states that the test pilots were quite satisfied with the performance of the thing, while the strategists noted the numbers and the flaws.

After the tests were done and the plane became so obsolete as to be useless it could either have been parked in some obscure museum or fitted with an R/C box and flown out as a test target.

Since mine would never have a canopy ( even the spares box yielded nothing ), I decided to take this last option. I like the colour orange anyway.

Kudos to KP for a plane that went together easily – no filler, hardly any sanding, and gear doors that actually fit first time. If I ever build a Ryan Firebee or a CAC Jindivik it can join them for a new display,