Tuesday, September 06, 2011

Europe Trip 2011 #12: Checkpoint Charlie Museum question...?

If you're following my World Travels blog, you'll know that I went to Checkpoint Charlie earlier today. One of the intriguing sights were a set of wings up on the outside of the museum wall. I'm trying to figure out what sort of aircraft is was.

Clearly it's a light aircraft of some sort - maybe the size of a C172/ PA28 [maybe slightly larger?], with the registration D-EDDG. The wings appear to have leading-edge slats and to the right you can see a two-bladed prop.

The words on the caption [between the wings] read:

With an airplane carried by these wings and driven by this propeller the family Arndtz escaped on 22nd May 1982. Their escape agent Rolf Schauss (top photo) from Saarbrucken had flown without permission in the hedgehopping style to Hungary and landed as agreed on a field near Jak. With four GDR citizens on board he had overcome the Hungarian border flying as low as had been possible whilst being shot at and landed in Pinkafeld/ Austria. The action took 19 minutes. 

A quick Google search didn't turn up anything obvious [and the rego appears to have been re-used]. Any ideas?

3 comments:

ZK-JPY said...

If my (very) limited german is right... the "Flugzeug" in question is a Wilga 35 (http://www.verlag-neue-literatur.de/schauss.html)

Pics: http://bit.ly/pnAWkA

Oddly enough, I spotted one of these the other day while I was refuelling at Tatenhill Airfield...

specifically, this one: http://www.abpic.co.uk/photo/1306214/

Rodney said...

Hello ZK-JPY,

Yep, that would be it. Thanks for hunting that down for me. The wings seem to match, and the dates in the website match also [I really appreciate the Google translator!].

I had forgotten all about the Wilga - I seem to recall that they had a fairly short endurance, at least partly to discourage this very activity :-)

Cheers!

ZK-JPY said...

You're welcome... I have been "stalking" your blog for a while...

Hopefully the weather is nicer in your part of Europe than where I currently am:

WITTERING EGXT 060650Z AUTO 20025G37KT 9999 BKN020/// SCT060/// 15/12 Q1002 RERA

reminds me of Wellington ;)


cheers,
Jared