The surrounding area of this aircraft restoration and storage facility, located in a suburb of Saint-Petersburg, Russia, actually looks like it should be the backyard of a search and recovery team’s base. It is a “picturesque mess” of cases, cabins, engines, wings, wheels, tanks, parts of old aircraft wrecks… and no one can guess what else.

But when you go inside this facility, you see a restoration workshop, in good order, where work is underway on antique aircraft.

The workshop, as well as the “picturesque mess” around it, belongs to Voenno-Patrioticheskoe obshestvo “Vysota” (the Military-Patriotic Association “Height”) which was founded in 1994 in Saint-Petersburg by former Russian North Fleet NAVY pilots with the goal to commemorate the Heroes of WW2. They conduct searches, organize recoveries, and restore WW2 aircraft and armoured vehicles so that future generations can see how their forefathers were armed.

“The Hurricane work in progress is the fourth one in our restoration history. We do it for the Krasnogorsky Museum of the Technics near Moscow. It is for static display but we will provide it with a working engine.” says Victor Dudin, retired TU-22M BACKFIRE pilot, now a leader of the “Height”. “We have already restored three Hurricanes, one of them is in a Brooklyn museum… two others are in private collections located in the UK and USA.”

We also have restored, to flying condition, a YAK-9. It is in France. Our tanks are displaying in the Central Museum of the Great Patriotic War (WW2) in Moscow… along with the German TIII and T-IV, the Russian two turrets T-26 and experimental T-46, plus some WW2 cars and armored vehicles.

At the end of last year we provided armored car BA-64 (in working condition) to the Krasnogorsky Museum of the Technics. Just now our tank T-60 (in working condition) is playing a part in the shooting of a movie about WW2. Next to the Hurricane, we plan to restore another YAK-9… then a Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero, a Kawasaki KI-61 Hien. and an IL-2 Shturmovik.

Looking at the list of what has been done and is going to be done, it is hard to believe that there are only 6 restoration experts in the team who have done, and will do, all of the skilled work.

Sergei Stepanenko, Contributing Editor
ssn@mail.wplus.net

Visit Sergei's Website for unique salvage projects, World War II artifacts, and planes you can buy for your museum collection.

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