Li-2 HA-LIX
Year built
1949
Aircraft
Li-2T Cab
Base
Budaörs Airport
This Exact Li-2 was built in 1949 in Airframe Factory Nr.84 (GAZ-84) of Tashkent, as serial number 18433209 and was taken on strength by the Magyar Legiero (Hungarian Air Force) with the serial number S104 and later 209 ML.
In 1956 it joined the MALEV fleet where it received a civil registration HA-LIX.
On the 1st of September 1964, the aircraft returned to the Hungarian Air Force with the serial number 209.
On the 15th of April 2002, the Li-2 was sold to the Gold Timer Foundation where it received its previous civil registration HA-LIX it has to this day.
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Lisunov Li-2T Cab
The Lisunov Li-2 (NATO reporting name: Cab), originally designated PS-84, was a licensed-built Soviet version of the Douglas DC-3. It was produced by Factory #84 in Moscow-Khimki and, after evacuation in 1941, at TAPO in Tashkent. The project was directed by aeronautical engineer Boris Pavlovich Lisunov.
The Soviet Union received its first DC-2 in 1935. A total of 18 DC-3s had been ordered on 11 April 1936, and the government of the USSR purchased 21 DC-3s for operation by Aeroflot before World War II. A production license was awarded to the government of the USSR on 15 July 1936. Lisunov spent two years at the Douglas Aircraft Company, between November 1936 and April 1939 translating the design. One of the engineers who accompanied him to Douglas was Vladimir Mikhailovich Myasishchev. Design work and production were undertaken at State Aviation Factory 84 in Khimki (now a suburb of Moscow). The Soviet version was given the designation PS-84 – Passazhirskiy Samolyot 84, passenger airplane 84 (i.e. made in GAZ/State Aircraft Plant No. 84).
Despite the original intention to incorporate as few changes as necessary to the basic design, the GAZ-84 works had to make some 1,293 engineering change orders to the original Douglas drawings, involving part design, dimensions, materials and processes, most as a part of metrication of the design from U.S. customary units to suit Soviet standards, no small task for Vladimir Myasishchev to accomplish. The well-established Shvetsov OKB-19 design bureau, responsible for the great bulk of the Soviets' air-cooled radial aviation powerplant designs of the 1930-40s, used their Shvetsov ASh-62IR radial engines, Soviet development of the nine-cylinder Wright R-1820 Cyclone 9, to power the PS-84. The same Wright Aeronautical Cyclone 9 radial also powered the earliest Douglas DST "Sleeper Transport" versions, and initial 21-passenger versions, of the original American DC-3 airliner.
The Soviet standard design practice usually mandated fully shuttered engines in order to cope with temperature extremes. A slightly shorter span was incorporated, but many of the other alterations were less evident. The passenger door was moved to the right or starboard side of the fuselage, with a top-opening cargo door on the left or port side in place of the original passenger door. The structural reinforcement included slightly heavier skins because the metric skin gauges were not the exact equivalents of the American alloy sheet metal. Standard Soviet metric hardware was different and the various steel substructures such as engine mounts and landing gear, wheels, and tires were also quite different from the original design. Later modifications allowed the provision of ski landing gear in order to operate in remote and Arctic regions. The first PS-84s had begun to emerge from the GAZ-84 production line by 1939.
By the time Germany invaded the USSR on 22 June 1941, 237 PS-84s had been built at GAZ-84, all in civil passenger configuration. In response to the invasion, the Kremlin set in motion a plan to relocate much of the industrial capability of the Soviet Union to the East, with the production of the Li-2 ending up at GAZ-33 in Tashkent, now the capital of Uzbekistan. After a monumental struggle, the factory was producing PS-84s again by January 1942.
GAZ-124 at Kazan also built ten aircraft before the start of World War II, and 353 Li-2Ts were built by GAZ-126 at Komsomolsk-on-Amur between 1946 and 1950 before that plant switched to MiG-15 production.
Some military versions of the Li-2 also had bomb racks and a dorsal turret, unlike the military C-47 development of the DC-3.
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