Wings Over Syria : NORTH AMERICAN T-6 TEXAN

Harvard or Texan joined the SyAAF in 1947~48 coming from the stock of South Africa and some from RAF forming two combat squadron based in Mazze AFB, some as far as I know based in the training base near Alep, I remember wreckage of some silver Texans (not in the same camo as above shown) were visible to public in the Aviation School in Aleppo city, that was in early 1990s before they shifted the school completely to other place.

Nice archive photo for this Texan, seems the artist inspired the above shown diagram from it.

Now believe it or not..!!! this is not a real Texan..!!! a perfect scaled flying model carry the very fine details including the pilot himself..!!!

I collected these amazing images from Strega's website, seems he is a professional modeller for flying warbirds...I would like to shake his hand for his fabulous artworks..!!!

The only remaining Texan of SyAAF is still surviving at the Military Museum in Damascus which was my daily way to faculty, when i go back there again I'll archive all aircrafts there for new posts.

Amazing how it looks in sky, just remove the antenna and no one would believe this is a scaled model.

Wings Over Syria : ILYUSHIN-28

In early 1960s, SyAAF received the first jet bomber the Il-28, this profile shows the exact camo for most of jets delivered from Soviet Union at that time (all in metallic silver same as MiG-15/17).

 

Many sites state that SyAAF received dozens of Beagles, the correct story is that SyAAF has received and operated only TWO of this aircraft; one of these aircraft crashed when its engine inhaled a STORK !!! Eventually, the engine caught fire and caused of aircraft falling down.

 

The second Beagle R.I.P in Neyrab airbase, you can see its tail here, note there are wreckage of many Mi-8's here also.

 

Another image from sky. The two drop tanks don't belong to this Il-28, they look too close to these famous ones attached to the belly hard points of the MiG-21.

 

Note the extra fuel tanks attached to wing tips, this aircraft looks intact and in a very good situation taking into consideration the 40~50 years it laid here.

Photos by Luftwaffe A.S - where marked - (2009-2011)

Photos from Cairo Airport (2011)

Egypt Air Boeing 737 in the new attractive livery, in the background you can see a probably Airbus in the old HORUS theme.

 

Part of EAF C-130 fleet is stationed at Cairo Airport.

 

They appear here above, at left note the private jets in queue waiting to take off from the northern runway.

 

In these 3 spots I could photograph interesting wreckages of three transporters. 

Very interesting wreckage of ex-Uzbekistan Alim Airlines Ilyushin-62 belongs to R.I.P in Cairo Airport (Spot A)

 

Another photo for this poor Ilyushin-62M SU-ZDA, as per Wikipedia this is the only aircraft flew for Alim Airlines, so now they are no more..!!

 

Another petit airlines...Pharaoh Airlines, here in (Spot B) one of the only 2 Boeings 737 operated for this airline, this one carries the serial SU-PMA. 

CentrAfrique Air Express Boeing 727 with serial TL-ADY, seems this aircraft is scrapped recently in (Spot C) as it's not visible in Google Earth at least as of June 2010.

Photos by Luftwaffe A.S (2011)

Wings Over Syria : GLOSTER METEOR

Gloster Meteor was the very first operational jet fighter used in SyAAF, in Kweres (Rasm Al Abboud) airbase 15 Meteor's lie scrapped...you may recognize the Night-Fighter ones which have their wing span wider and their radome longer, the one mentioned in the aerial imagery above is a NF also.

Note the roundel of SyAAF in 1950s till early 1960s

Meteor was debuted into SyAAF in Sept. 1952, Hafez Al Asad (the former president) was one of the first pilots whom flew Meteor in SyAAF.

2 SyAAF Meteor's were performing a patrol when located a RAF Canberra which was in Recon mission over Syria, Canberra was shot down..!! this occurred in Nov. 1956

In early 1960s and upon the arrival of MiG-15/17, all Meteor's were withdrawn from service although they were in full operational status

SyAAF Neyrab Airbase on GE

After almost a year...GE revealed this aerial imagery (dated June 2009) of Neyrab airbase (Aleppo IAP) after being shown for couple of months before it suddenly disappeared. It's where I could photograph all these MLD Floggers.

After referring to my photo archive I indicate here the location of 21 MLD's and 9 UB's (training variant).

Among these beasts there is a lonely petite Fishbed.

Thanks to GE for resubmitting this map today.

SyAAF MiG-23MLD's in Neyrab (2010)

Upon landing in Neyrab airbase (Aleppo IAP)...I could count only 18 MiG-23MLD/UB left on tarmac, that means 15 were overhauled and delivered to their new front-line air bases.

Photos by Luftwaffe A.S (2010)