AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 108 / 170

Plate 108 of 170 · Early jet age · Utility and agricultural biplane

Antonov An-2R

An-2R, painted as HA-MKE, Morayvia’s Antonov An-2R, a Polish licence-built example (c/n 1G158-34) from the PZL factory at Mielec, flown in the Soviet Union and Ukraine as CCCP-07713 and UR-07714 and later registered in Hungary, brought to Kinloss by road from Hampshire in 2016 and reassembled by the museum’s volunteers: the biggest single-engined biplane ever built, a utility and agricultural aircraft of 59 ft 8 in span with a 1,000 hp Shvetsov ASh-62IR nine-cylinder radial driving a four-bladed propeller, a sesquiplane wing cellule with full-span leading-edge slats on the upper wing, single I-struts and wire bracing, a deep slab-sided cabin with round portholes, a tall rounded fin and a fixed tailwheel undercarriage, shown standing tail-down with the passenger door open and the propeller parked as an X: the museum’s 2017 repaint in a representative Soviet Air Force scheme rather than any service markings it wore, dark green upper surfaces, fuselage, fin and rudder over light blue undersides, light blue struts, slat rails and undercarriage, red stars with thin white borders on the fuselage sides, the fin and the upper wing tips, a red ‘14’ outlined in white on the rear fuselage, ‘Морайвиа’ in red Cyrillic letters below the cabin windows and a dark blue propeller with yellow tips.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as HA-MKE, Morayvia’s Antonov An-2R, a Polish licence-built example (c/n 1G158-34) from the PZL factory at Mielec, flown in the Soviet Union and Ukraine as CCCP-07713 and UR-07714 and later registered in Hungary, brought to Kinloss by road from Hampshire in 2016 and reassembled by the museum’s volunteers: the biggest single-engined biplane ever built, a utility and agricultural aircraft of 59 ft 8 in span with a 1,000 hp Shvetsov ASh-62IR nine-cylinder radial driving a four-bladed propeller, a sesquiplane wing cellule with full-span leading-edge slats on the upper wing, single I-struts and wire bracing, a deep slab-sided cabin with round portholes, a tall rounded fin and a fixed tailwheel undercarriage, shown standing tail-down with the passenger door open and the propeller parked as an X: the museum’s 2017 repaint in a representative Soviet Air Force scheme rather than any service markings it wore, dark green upper surfaces, fuselage, fin and rudder over light blue undersides, light blue struts, slat rails and undercarriage, red stars with thin white borders on the fuselage sides, the fin and the upper wing tips, a red ‘14’ outlined in white on the rear fuselage, ‘Морайвиа’ in red Cyrillic letters below the cabin windows and a dark blue propeller with yellow tips. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.1 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (); engine, crew and dimensions are for the An-2R modelled here.

History

The An-2R

The An-2 was the first design of Oleg Antonov’s new bureau, drawn up after the war to meet a Soviet requirement for a rugged aircraft to replace the Polikarpov Po-2 on farm work, forestry patrols and transport in the remote parts of the country. Antonov chose a biplane because a big wing area gave short take-offs and landings from rough fields at a low speed, and the full-span slats on the upper wing let it fly slower still. The prototype, then called the SKh-1, first flew on 31 August 1947, and production aircraft had the 1,000 hp Shvetsov ASh-62IR radial.

Production began in 1949 at Kiev. It carried twelve passengers or more than a tonne of cargo, and could be fitted with skis or floats, spraying gear or a dusting hopper. In 1960 production moved to WSK-PZL Mielec in Poland, which went on to build nearly 12,000 for the Soviet Union and many other countries, and China built it under licence as the Nanchang (later Shijiazhuang) Y-5. With about 18,000 built in all, it is the biggest and most numerous single-engined biplane ever made.

Air forces used it as a light transport, for parachute training and for liaison; NATO gave it the reporting name “Colt”. North Korea kept large numbers to drop special forces at night, flying low where the fabric-covered wings gave little radar return, and in 1991 Croatian crews dropped improvised bombs from An-2s. Many are still flying, from crop-spraying in Eastern Europe and Asia to parachute clubs and private owners in the West.

This airframe

An-2R HA-MKE (“Red 14”)

HA-MKEThe airframe modelled

HA-MKE was built by PZL at Mielec in Poland (c/n 1G158-34) as an An-2R, the agricultural version. It flew in the Soviet Union and then Ukraine as CCCP-07713 and UR-07714 before being registered in Hungary. It came to Morayvia at Kinloss by road from Hampshire in 2016, still in a white Air Foyle scheme, and the museum’s volunteers cleaned it, put it back together and repainted it in 2017 as “Red 14”, a representative Soviet Air Force scheme rather than any it wore in service. The model shows it in that scheme: dark green over light blue, red stars, a red “14” and the museum’s name in Cyrillic, with the passenger door open as it is usually displayed.

See it at Morayvia

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the An-2R in one UK collection. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 170 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.