This Yak-23 served with the training squadron of the No. 5 Air Force Officer Training School in Radom, then as a teaching aid at the Higher Air Force Officer Training School and an exhibit at the 58th Air Force Training Regiment in Dęblin. It has been restored and housed in a dome tent since my previous visit in the Museum in 2021. The previously red serial number on the fuselage is now yellow.

This Curl carries a prominent sticker on the nose commemorating the Polish aviation pioneer and World War 2 commander, Stanisław Jakub Skarżyński. One of the first recipients of the Louis Blériot medal in 1936 for his solo flight across the southern Atlantic from Saint-Louis, Senegal to Maceio in Brazil. The flight took 20 hours 30 minutes crossing 3,582 km and establishing a distance world record in a FAI tourist plane category II. He was the first commander of the Polish Flying Schools in the UK and later CO of no 305 (Polish) Squadron. He was killed returning from raid over Bremen 26 June 1943. Detailed photo of the sticker is here.

The Polish Aviation Museum has an impressive line-up of Hoplites. Nearest the camera is 4316, 05, 0216, 2121, and 6048.

Crashed, 10/4/2010, near the Russian city of Smolensk, killing all 96 people on board. Among the victims were the President of Poland Lech Kaczyński and his wife Maria, the former President of Poland in exile Ryszard Kaczorowski, the chief of the Polish General Staff and other senior Polish military officers, the president of the National Bank of Poland, Polish Government officials, 18 members of the Polish Parliament, senior members of the Polish clergy and relatives of victims of the Katyn massacre. The group was arriving from Warsaw to attend an event commemorating the 70th anniversary of t