AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 29 / 146

Plate 29 of 146 · Between the wars · Trainer, liaison aircraft and night bomber

Polikarpov Po-2

Polikarpov Po-2, painted as G-BSSY ‘28’, the Polikarpov Po-2 flown by the Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden: the Soviet two-seat biplane of 1928, built in greater numbers than any other biplane, the standard primary trainer of the Red Air Force and in the Second World War a liaison aircraft and night harassment bomber, a two-bay wood-and-fabric biplane of 37 ft 5 in span with near-rectangular wings, N-shaped interplane struts, tandem open cockpits, a split-axle undercarriage and a 115 hp Shvetsov M-11D five-cylinder radial with its cylinders exposed; built in 1944, given to Yugoslavia in 1946 and flown there as a trainer, glider tug and club aircraft until 1979, then restored in the United States, New Zealand and at Old Warden, where it flew again in 2011; shown as restored as a wartime night bomber: olive green, khaki and black camouflage on the upper and side surfaces, pale grey-green undersides, black cowl decking over light blue lower cowl panels, white-bordered red stars on the fuselage sides and across the fin and rudder, a white ‘28’ on the tan fin, red stars under the lower wings, a long silver exhaust down the port side, a Degtyarev machine gun on a post behind the rear cockpit and an olive two-bladed propeller.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as G-BSSY ‘28’, the Polikarpov Po-2 flown by the Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden: the Soviet two-seat biplane of 1928, built in greater numbers than any other biplane, the standard primary trainer of the Red Air Force and in the Second World War a liaison aircraft and night harassment bomber, a two-bay wood-and-fabric biplane of 37 ft 5 in span with near-rectangular wings, N-shaped interplane struts, tandem open cockpits, a split-axle undercarriage and a 115 hp Shvetsov M-11D five-cylinder radial with its cylinders exposed; built in 1944, given to Yugoslavia in 1946 and flown there as a trainer, glider tug and club aircraft until 1979, then restored in the United States, New Zealand and at Old Warden, where it flew again in 2011; shown as restored as a wartime night bomber: olive green, khaki and black camouflage on the upper and side surfaces, pale grey-green undersides, black cowl decking over light blue lower cowl panels, white-bordered red stars on the fuselage sides and across the fin and rudder, a white ‘28’ on the tan fin, red stars under the lower wings, a long silver exhaust down the port side, a Degtyarev machine gun on a post behind the rear cockpit and an olive two-bladed propeller. 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 Polikarpov Po-2 modelled here.

History

The Po-2

Nikolai Polikarpov designed the U-2 (the U stood for uchebnyi, training) in the mid-1920s to replace the U-1, a Soviet copy of the Avro 504, as the standard primary trainer of the Red Air Force. He aimed for an aeroplane that was cheap to build, easy to repair and forgiving to fly: a two-bay biplane of wood and fabric with near-rectangular wings, two open cockpits in tandem and a simple split undercarriage, powered by the new Shvetsov M-11 five-cylinder radial of about 100 hp. Mikhail Gromov flew the prototype on 7 January 1928, and series production began the next year.

The U-2 became the aeroplane on which a generation of Soviet pilots learned to fly, in the air force and in the Osoaviakhim flying clubs, and it was built in a long run of versions for crop-spraying, air ambulance work, liaison, photography and passenger carrying. When Germany invaded in 1941 it was pressed into the front line as a liaison and reconnaissance machine and, above all, as a night harassment bomber, carrying small bombs under the lower wings and a machine gun in the rear cockpit. Flying low and slow in the dark, it was hard to find and harder to shoot down. After Polikarpov died in July 1944 it was renamed Po-2 in his honour.

Production in the Soviet Union went on until the early 1950s and continued in Poland as the CSS-13; estimates of the total run from about 20,000 to more than 30,000, which makes it one of the most numerous aircraft ever built. It served with many air forces of the Eastern bloc, and in the Korean War North Korean Po-2s made nuisance raids at night on United Nations airfields, earning the nickname Bedcheck Charlie. Aero clubs and agricultural units kept Po-2s flying well into the 1960s.

This airframe

Polikarpov Po-2 G-BSSY “28”

G-BSSYThe airframe modelled

G-BSSY was built in the Soviet Union in 1944. Nothing is known of its wartime history; in 1946 it was one of thirty Po-2s given to Yugoslavia, where it flew first with the Military Air Force Academy at Pančevo. From 1952 it towed gliders and dropped parachutists with the Yugoslav Air Club, was registered YU-CLJ in March 1958 and flew from the Federal Aviation Centre at Vršac and later from Murska Sobota in Slovenia until 1979, when it was given to the Yugoslav National Museum. The museum sold it to Jim Pearce, who brought it to Britain and registered it G-BSSY in 1990. Pat Donovan bought it in 1996 and shipped it to Seattle, where its restoration began, and it went on to New Zealand in 2000. The Shuttleworth Collection bought it in 2004 and, after a thorough rebuild, it flew again at Old Warden on 10 January 2011 with the Collection’s chief pilot, Roger ‘Dodge’ Bailey, at the controls. It was restored as a wartime night bomber, with a Degtyarev gun on a post behind the rear cockpit. The model shows it as it flies today: olive green, khaki and black camouflage on the upper and side surfaces, which differs from side to side, pale grey-green undersides, black cowl decking over light blue lower panels, a white ‘28’ on a tan fin, white-bordered red stars on the fuselage and fin, red stars under the lower wings and an olive propeller. No photograph shows the upper surfaces squarely, so the camouflage pattern on top of the wings follows the style of the oblique views rather than a measured pattern.

See it at The Shuttleworth Collection

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

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

Every airframe and serial All 146 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.