My son and I went to the USAF museum in Dayton yesterday. We've been there a bunch of times, but it's been a couple of years and one of the new aircraft that we hadn't seen before was a Mig 25 that was recovered from Iraq. The story was that the Iraqis buried it in the desert during the lead up to the 2003 invasion, in hopes of hiding it from US forces. Well, our guys found it (or at least most of it...it's missing the wings and horizontal stabilizers), and it ended up at the museum in pretty much the same condition that it was recovered in.

One thing I noticed was that a lot of the labeling stenciled on the airframe was in English, not Russian or Arabic. I did see some Arabic looking script, but no Cyrillic, at least on the outside (couldn't see in the cockpit). Presumably the plane is in the same condition as it was recovered, so It wouldn't have been US personnel that painted that on there. Was this normal for Russian export aircraft that they sold to other countries?

I remember growing up in Prague in the early 90s a lot of the trains, busses, and other equipment that had been imported from Russia still had placards on them in Cyrillic Russian, even though the Czechs use the latin alphabet. It was prevalent enough that we were used to seeing it, so I was surprised to see English on a Russian aircraft, particularly one that had been exported to a country that uses yet another alphabet.

I got some pictures but they're not very clear as I only took the wide-angle and we couldn't get super close, the lighting isn't great in there, and the markings were kinda faded. I'll try to post them if there's interest. Either way it was a cool story and an interesting aircraft...a low tech approach to going VERY fast!

English is the international language of aviation.

I'm more of a WWII-and-prior tank guy, than an airframe guy, but I did find your answer in a YouTube video about this particular exhibit at about the 5:30 minute mark.

According to the speaker, the Russians put English markings on their exports as it is the most spoken word.

Good marketing move, for a bunch of ex-Communists!

quote:

Originally posted by joel9507:
I'm more of a WWII-and-prior tank guy, than an airframe guy, but I did find your answer in a YouTube video about this particular exhibit at about the 5:30 minute mark.

According to the speaker, the Russians put English markings on their exports as it is the most spoken word.

Good marketing move, for a bunch of ex-Communists!

Thanks for that, that's a good video. The story about the wings getting stolen didn't get told in the museum, either...they just said they never found them.

That is a pretty damn cool place, was there a few years ago. Was with my young kids so it wasn't like we could stop and savor each exhibit, it was more like a "hurry up and wait and rush along" Disney World like visit. I could have spent a week in there easily.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
That is a pretty damn cool place, was there a few years ago. Was with my young kids so it wasn't like we could stop and savor each exhibit, it was more like a "hurry up and wait and rush along" Disney World like visit. I could have spent a week in there easily.

We're about 3 hours from there, and we go every other year or so. I've been going since I was 7. Even when we lived overseas I could usually talk my parents into taking me when we'd come back to the States for visits.

This time it was just me and my 13 y/o son. He's pretty cerebral and really into that kind of stuff, so we actually followed the guided tours of the different hangars this time and learned some new stuff. Well worth it if you have the time, especially if you get a volunteer guide with some personal experience with the aircraft who can tell some stories. Most of the planes on exhibit were selected because they were directly involved in something unique, too, and while some of it is on the placards not all of it is.

I took a picture of the Strawberry Bitch when I was around 11 or so. I went and saw it about 2 years ago with my friend. It was neat to have the same picture taken 40 years apart.