Clashmaker.com

Neat picture! I’ve got my hand on it courtesy of a friend, who used to be a ‘polarny letchik‘, a ‘polar flyer’. In Russia they use this name (instead of generalized term ‘bush pilot’) for identifying a type of airmen involved in flying up in the Arctic, or down in the Antarctic. I never met this friend of mine in life, we had just bumped into each other on the Russian language equivalent of ‘MySpace‘. Here he seats on the flight deck of the Ilyushin-14, the reputable machine Soviets used widely to use on both caps of the world.

These are modern pictures of the Ilyushin-14 (Il-14). Another friend of mine, an aviation photographer sent them to me. As far as I know, there’s no more flying Il-14s left in Russia, but they have had at least two until not too long ago. I’ll find out what the plane is pictured here, and what was its fate.

And if I can, I’ll communicate with that ‘polar letchik’ again, and ask him share some stories of flying in Antarctica, - exactly as we did with Greg, a former Canadian ‘Kenn Borek’ pilot.

There’s one more picture featuring a number of Il-14s seating on the ramp of the Magadan airport.

Magadan is a city in the Eastern Siberia well known for a few things. One of them was its role of being the ‘aviation stronghold’ on the edge of vast wilderness of Northern Siberia and Arctic. Some sufficient chunk of air supply aimed at keeping alive Northern communities and functionality of the so-called ‘Polar Ice Stations’ was originated from this airport. To some Americans and Canadians Magadan might be known as well, for it was an intermediate stop on the famous ‘Alaska-Siberia’ route during WW II which was created by the Allies to supply American-built combat aircraft to the Eastern fronts of the war.

Oh, well, should have marked it as a footnote though

OK, we’ll talk more about ‘polar letchiks’ soon,

C