For help, advice and discussion about stuff not related to aviation. Play nice: no religion, no politics and no axe grinding please.
By avtur3
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1637022
Anyone notice on tonight's TV news the reports of the North Korean 70th anniversary celebrations ?

Much is being made about the fact that KJ-un did not display any nukes, as he plays the diplomatic game with DT. However there was a few seconds showing a flypast which got my attention as there were a number of biplanes :shock: what appeared to be AN2's flying in formation, their outline is quite distinctive but I thought no surely not.

A quick bit of Googling reveals the the North Koreans still operate 300 of these aircraft, again my initial thought was that's a lot of very old aircraft, haven't they got anything faster?

Again courtesy of Google the AN2 was in production from 1947 until 2001 and over 18,000 were made, so 300 remaining isn't a big deal. But interesting that they chose to display this 70 year old technology in a display of their military might. More of the mind games?
User avatar
By kanga
#1637147
A JAM colleague is a semi-professional aviation photographer, from both ground and air. Not many years ago, during one of the rare fits of openness, the North Koreans invited foreign photographers not affiliated to Governments to attend their Air Show. Stars of the show (as shown off to both citizens and foreign visitors) were 2 female teenage MiG-21 pilots doing formation aerobatics.

Anyway, An-2s were giving joyrides to citizens and visitors, with uninhibited photography from them which also yielded some interesting sights of military hardware, although presumably all familiar to US satellite photo interpreters. All the An-2s shown seemed to have large antennae on the top of the fuselage, not a standard SovBloc era fit. There appeared to be no equipment in the all-seater cabin to justify it, but presumably the seats could come out and pertinent equipment could go on.

I have since heard from a Western military source whose expertise I have every reason to trust that the South Koreans (and US Forces in Korea) worry about the An-2 force, and the fact that they seem to be kept airworthy, for a couple of reasons at least:

a. they could be used en masse for very low level penetration, over the DMZ or the sea, to deliver Special Forces at a large number of sites, rural and (sub)urban (a soccer or baseball field or suburban street would do); possibly crashlanding rather than paradropping; and/or

b. given the antennae, they could be equipped with powerful radar/comms jammers as a creeping screen to disguise a massive ground or low air attack, and to disrupt the S Korean command network which would be trying to deal with it

Of course, the force could be split to do both roles.

Mere speculation, obviously. But other nations have had the habit of 'never throwing anything away'. The Chinese AF will sometimes show off to foreign visitors underground hangars full of apparently combat-ready MiG-15s and -17s.
OCB liked this
User avatar
By OCB
#1637374
Fascinating- and very plausible write-up by Kanga.

I presume S.Korea has war-game’d those scenarios. Our typical NATO platforms would fair badly against against 300+ ultra low level and slow moving targets, right?

(BTW, lets not forget there are squadrons of ME109 in the easily mined ground around Berlin...)
User avatar
By kanga
#1637394
on the subject of Air Forces which do not throw anything away: a JAM visitor told me that the only place with more Meteors than JAM is the Israeli AF Museum. I don't know how combat-ready theirs are, though :)
By Bill McCarthy
#1637464
My cousin fought with the Black Watch in the Korean War. If ever anyone had PTSD it was him, which was not recognised then. We met up again recently at a family reunion (my three brothers and I had never been under the same roof in nearly seventy years) and he is the only survivor out of all his brothers and sisters - the never ending boozing and shagging didn’t seem to do him any harm physically. He talked of hoards of Chinese coming at them blowing bugles as they advanced to their positions
User avatar
By OCB
#1637511
^^^^Bill, that does nothing for our Scots dour/alcoholic and rammy-ready reputation!
...ok, admittedly my brother and I have slept only once in the past 35 years under the same roof - and that is an experience never to be repeated....

They say Korea is the "forgotten" conflict. I knew veterans who fought in Europe in 44, then the Far East before Enola Gay did the biz, then in Palestine, then Korea - they said it didn't really seem to stop. A school mate's father served in Burma, my father served in Libya and Aden etc, all drew casualties.

Hardly any of those conflicts would register outside veteran or military buff circles.

I remember reading a book a few years backabout the experiences of a British soldier in Basra. He hadn't realised that during WWI British soldiers had fought and died there, and there was a Commonwealth Graves Commission cemetery there until he chanced upon it.

Dunno what the moral is there - but it never goes amiss having the tales of old soldiers/sailors/airmen etc shared to the wider community; even if it's daft stories.
Lindsayp liked this