? for those who read Cyrillic...

[gn728]

A big fan of Romain Hugault's art - so just wondering what the slogan says...

 

[216th_Lucas_From_Hell]

It says 'Eskadrilya Valeriy Chkalov' - Valery Chkalov Squadron.

 

These planes have a really great backstory to it, about this batch of planes bought by the collective farmers of Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod, a big city east of Moscow). Read more about it here: http://mig3.sovietwarplanes.com/la5/chkalov/chkalow.html

 

Workers of Gorky region were encouraged by collective-farm workers of Tombov region who donated to the Red Army tanks on 9th of November 1942. Therefore already on 16th of December 1942 in Gorky region workers of various districts had piled 60 mlln. RUB to obtain new fighters Lavochkin La-5 and LaGG-3 produced at the Factory Nr.21. The aircrafts donated by the collective farms and dedicated to Valeriy Chkalov were distributed into different units, mainly 159 IAP and 4 GIAP KBF, but examples were received by other units too, including 960 IAP-PVO, 254 IAP, 159 IAP, 193 IAP, 88 GIAP, and probably 31 IAP and 131 IAP. All these aircrafts were characterized by the inscription "Eskadrilya Valeriy Chkalov" on port side; on starboard, most of them had inscription describing the donors "Ot kolkhoznikov i kolkhoznits Gorkovskoy oblasti" (From the Collective-workmen and Collective-workwomen of the Gorky region).

 

[216th_Lucas_From_Hell]

It's worth noting that more squadrons than listed used these aircraft. Ivan Kozhedub, for example, started off his combat career (and nearly died in his first sortie) flying a La-5 from 'Eskadrilya Valeriy Chkalov', number 75.

 

Here you can find quite a few drawings from aircraft in that batch: http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww2/f/336/1/0

[indiaciki]

It's fascinating that everybody who knows to read / write cyrillic also can read and write the latin alphabet. Isn't it weird? It doesn't work both ways :D

Edited October 15, 2015 by indiaciki

[gn728]

Wow -thanks for the info - what a great story! Also, thanks for the link - was unaware of sovietwarplanes.com - great site!

[3instein]

It's fascinating that everybody who knows to read / write cyrillic also can read and write the latin alphabet. Isn't it weird? It doesn't work both ways :D

I am pretty sure that everyone that uses Cyrillic as their first language doesn't know how to read and write English, some yeah, maybe most, but everyone?

 

Mick. 

[Brano]

He was reffering to latin alphabet,not english language in particular   I learned azbuka as my personal initiative,to read russian/soviet materials,books,newspaper articles etc.It is not my mother tongue,thats slovak,and we also dont use azbuka,but latin alphabet.Everything can be tought,there just have to be will.