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As the Allies tightened the
noose around what remained of the Third Reich in the spring of
1945, for the surviving Luftwaffe pilots a more attractive alternative
to capture by the communists was surrender to the British or
the American forces, sometimes only a short flight away.
Yellow Ten "Yellow Ten",
so named for the colored number on either side of the fuselage,
was assigned to JG.26 in March of 1945, and due to the chaotic
conditions of that period, not much is known of its short service
record, other than it was captured, or surrendered in April (or
as late as May) at the Luftwaffe airbase at Flensburg on the
Danish frontier, which, at the time, was in the hands of the
RAF. This particular machine was eventually shipped to the United
States for evaluation, donated subsequently to Georgia Tech,
and by 1955, had arrived at an advanced state of decrepitude,
due to vandalism and neglect. It is now fully restored to better
than new condition, at the expense of warbird collector, Doug
Champlin (Champlin Fighter Museum), an extremely rare example
of the last iteration of the Fw.190 evolutionary line, the Fw.
190D-13, the 17th example, and probably one of the last of the
190s. A total of about 20,000 Fw.190s had been produced by the
war's end.
Signed and numbered by the artist. |