WARBIRDS YA K-3
94 FLYPAST March 2018FRANCO-SOVIET PATRIOTS
W
ill Greenwood is no stranger
to display flying and has
been a regular member of
the Great War Display Team flying
a Bowers Fly Baby-based Junkers
CL.I scale replica. He also acquired
Egyptian-built Bücker Bestmann
G-TPWX in 2011 and this trainer
monoplane has been a very popular
UK airshow participant.
These two provided stepping
stones for his next purchase,
Yakovlev Yak-3UA,
registeredas G-OLEG. Only a handful of
Yak-3s survive – the most famous
being on display in Moscow, plus a
Normandie-Niemen veteran in the
Musée de l’Air at Le Bourget, near
Paris.
The Civil Aviation Authority has
1994 as the construction date on
Will’s Echo-Golf, so the reader might
be minded to call this machine a
replica. That would be unfair: it’s a
reproduction, or a new-build.
It was one of a trio
commissioned in the mid-
1990s and