Mongolian Yak

[Greebo]

Thanks to Lyric1 for finding me some of the info for this aircraft.

This Yak-9U served with the Mongolian People's Air Force during the Soviet invasion of Japanese-held Manchuria during the last few weeks of the war. The Soviet army quickly overran the defenders, partly by attacking over supposedly impassable mountains and partly because the Japanese Kwantung Army had been stripped of its best units and equipment to fend off the Americans in the Pacific.

The skin is based on the photo posted below. Careful analysis of which reveals the horse and rider are carrying a flag-tipped lance and are themselves painted on a flag background. There is also a dark coloured cranked arrow below the slogan, a dark painted spinner and a bare metal canopy frame. My guess is the flag was painted blue since the flag of the old Genghis Khan Mongol Empire was a white horse on a blue background. The cranked arrow is a slightly lighter shade than the red star so I am assuming that it and the spinner are blue too.

[Vraciu]

Wow.   Nice one. 

Were the undersides really that blue?   

The tail is astonishingly well done.   

[Devil 505]

Most excellent. 

[bustr]

How did you come up with the color of the spinner and arrow. That is some excellent research.

[Nefarious]

Mongol hordes! 

[Greebo]

I've actually desaturated the underside colour a fair bit, it is normally brighter than that. Soviet colours are a bit of a minefield, lots of differing sources, not much original source material and the colours faded a lot as well. I can desaturate the underside blue a bit more though.

The spinner, arrow and flag colours are just my educated guess. The flag is likely to be blue because of the Mongol Empire flag connection and I figured the other markings would match. The shades of grey in the photo don't contradict that assumption. However the spinner could in theory be dark grey camo or some other colour. It is also possible the arrow was originally painted white by another unit and was over-painted grey when it was transferred. However this seems unlikely to me because it is too neatly painted, no one doing that job would bother to mask the arrow off, they'd just block out the area.

[lyric1]

That is amazing.

[B4Buster]

Wow, very nice and unique.

[bustr]

Was this Yak in the Mongolian Arat squadron? When it was commissioned in 1943 inside of the VVS, the Little Khural parlament of Mongolia funded for 12 La5 flown by Russian pilots to form a Mongolian squadron under the 2nd Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment. Their spinners were red along with cowling ring gold. Maybe take a look at the evolution of that squadron's colors 43-45.

[lyric1]

Was this Yak in the Mongolian Arat squadron? When it was commissioned in 1943 inside of the VVS, the Little Khural parlament of Mongolia funded for 12 La5 flown by Russian pilots to form a Mongolian squadron under the 2nd Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment. Their spinners were red along with cowling ring gold. Maybe take a look at the evolution of that squadron's colors 43-45.

The yellow cowling is a misinterpretation of black and white photos of the day discussed in the last link below.

The first link is from a pilot from the group and confirms only red was used.

http://mig3.sovietwarplanes.com/pilots/kardopoltsev/kardopoltsev.htm

Here is a link with an image of the Russian presentation of aircraft to the Mongolians.

http://eap.bl.uk/EAPDigitalItems/EAP264/EAP264_1_11_1-EAP264TR109_L.jpg

German 190's used yellow as an early identifier for recognition. Highly unlikely the Russians used yellow on a radial engine as well on the Eastern front.


http://sovietwarplanes.com/board/index.php?topic=751.0

[bustr]

Is this one of the links from the La5 modeling POST that you followed?


http://www.iremember.ru/content/view/479/78/1/2/lang,ru/

[Greebo]

My understanding is that the Arat squadron flew against the Germans and had Russian pilots flying aircraft paid for by the Mongolian Communist Party. The Mongolian People's Air Force guarded the border with China and fought the Japanese in both the 1939 Khalkhin Gol conflict and the Soviet Union's occupation of Manchuria in 1945.

[bustr]

found this:



Searched on this: Монгольская Народная Армия авиации Як 9


http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?ref=SERP&br=ro&mkt=en-US&dl=en&lp=RU_EN&a=http%3a%2f%2fru-aviation.livejournal.com%2f2608627.html

Untranslated:  http://ru-aviation.livejournal.com/2608627.html