The Sole Survivor
There is only one surviving example of the Ta 152: a 152 H-0 variant flown by III./Jagdgeschwader 301, a Luftwaffe Wilde Sau unit. The aircraft is currently housed at the National Air and Space Museum Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration, and Storage Facility in Suitland, Md., where it is awaiting restoration. The exact history of the aircraft is unknown, but the NASM reports:
"Definitive information about the NASM Ta 152 has always been lacking but research conducted late in 1998 may have revealed the airplane's true identity as Werk-Nummer (serial number) 150020, not 150003 or '010 as widely reported. This places the airframe toward the end of the range of pre-production H-0 models, a variant marking the transition from the Ta 152 prototypes to full production Ta 152H-1 airplanes. It was probably built at Focke-Wulf's production facility at Cottbus, Germany, in December 1944, and delivered to Erprobungskommando Ta 152 at Rechlin, Germany, for service testing."
Read more about this topic: Focke-Wulf Ta 152
Famous quotes containing the words sole and/or survivor:
“There’s only one way for an individual to remain upright, not to fall to pieces, not to sink into the mire of self-oblivion ... or self-contempt. That’s calmly to turn away from everything, to say, “Enough!” and, folding one’s useless arms across one’s empty breast, to retain the ultimate, the sole attainable virtue, the virtue of recognizing one’s own insignificance.”
—Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883)
“You’re looking, sir, at a very dull survivor of a very gaudy life. Crippled, paralyzed in both legs. Very little I can eat, and my sleep is so near waking that it’s hardly worth the name. I seem to exist largely on heat, like a newborn spider.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)