[A] 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.

You’ll find information on the German pilot Feldwebel (Staff Sergeant) Paul Rätz who remarkably survived Russian imprisonment but who never knew his airplane had been found.  “Perhaps it was better for him never to know he spent sixteen years in a Soviet prison because his plane had been sabotaged, that a tiny little dirt clod had determined his fate.”

Click here for the full story and conjecture about the sabotage and other interesting bits of history from World War II as well as videos including one of Paul Allen’s restoration of the FW 190 Wurger – fascinating!

Courtesy of Blackfive

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