Downed German Fighter Rises From Its Grave (FW-190)
Three videos and lots of history of the plane, pilot and the squadron (JG 54)
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This Luftwaffe Focke-Wulfe 190 Würger (“Shrike”) fighter aircraft laid unknown and unmolested in a remote forest near Voibakala, Russia for forty-six years after coming down behind Soviet lines in WWII. Somebody finally stumbled across it in 1989. It was recovered from the forest in 1991. I can’t find a Voybakala on the Google satellite map but there is a Voybokala about forty miles east of St. Petersburg, formerly Leningrad. It’s a few miles past the the southern tip of Lake Ladoga.
The Fw 190 belonged to Jagdgeschwader (figher wing) 54 (JG 54), called the Grünherz, or “Green Hearts,” because the wing was formed in the state of Thuringia, known as the “Green Heart of Germany” for its forests. At the beginning of the war it had about 110 pilots probably flying around a hundred fighters. The number of pilots and planes were probably diminished by the fierce fighting on the Eastern Front.