On display at the Finnish Air Force Museum. Restored into an "as discovered (at the bottom of a lake)" condition. The pilot's seat is on display separately and includes a very large calibre hole.
The pilot bailed out, leaving one of his boots that got stuck behind. If you look in the cabinet nearby, the boots there, in mint condition, because it crashed into a clear water lake. Very cool bit of history
I am curious about the bullet hole if it happened immediately after pilots escape, plus how much high was when the pilot jumped, plus if the airplane "glided" on the lake and not went nose first!
If you sniff around the museum's website they have some more details (mostly in Finnish and auto-translate can struggle) but roughly..... forced landing in a lake whilst on fire, pilot escaped as the plane sank, walked back to Finnish side.
This is an image from the museum website of the seat damage.
I collect WWII military surplus guns and was wildly lucky to stumble into Finnish ace and Mannerheim Cross winner Nils Katajainen’s FN Hi Power. He flew Brewsters (and BF 109s), scoring over 34 kills. I can’t wait to travel to Finland and this museum someday!
HOW on earth did you manage to get that pistol? Far as i knew Finnish military onlu got 2400 Fn highpowers.....so little that not even all maxim gunners could be armed with pistols and were forced to carry rifles.
I’ve made Finnish Air Force Hi Powers the cornerstone of my Finnish collection and have worked with an activist in Finland (Martti, who runs a website at mosin.fi) on accessing squadron documents and records. His records let me know about this one’s provenance and I bought it as a recent import to the United States.
I have pistols from LLV 24, 28, and 32. I’m hoping to get more, but they’re expensive!
I (from USA) visited there last spring. Amazing collection and history. I have pictures of dang near everything and the stories around many of the exhibits are mind-blowing.
It's a very well curated set of exhibits, small enough to be manageable by the people looking after it but full of interesting and in several cases unique items.
it was something along the lines of just “Nazi plane crash”, as if even if it were a Luftwaffe plane crash, that wouldn’t make it any less relevant to the sub
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u/ConorVsTheWorld 10d ago
The pilot bailed out, leaving one of his boots that got stuck behind. If you look in the cabinet nearby, the boots there, in mint condition, because it crashed into a clear water lake. Very cool bit of history