Survivors
When the war had ended in Europe, the U.S. Army Air Forces Intelligence Service, as part of "Operation Lusty" (Luftwaffe Secret TechnologY), took control of three He 219s at the Grove base of the 1st Night Fighter Wing (Nachtjagdgeschwader 1) in Jutland, Denmark starting on 16 June 1945. These aircraft were made flight-worthy by "Watson's Whizzers" and flown to Cherbourg, France. He 219 A-2 Werknummer 290202 was shipped to the United States with 21 other captured German aircraft on board the British aircraft carrier HMS Reaper, and was reassembled at Ford Field, Newark, New Jersey.
Werknummer 290202 was given the foreign equipment number FE-614, and later T2-614. The aircraft was flown to Freeman Field, Indiana for flight testing along with a second of the three He 219s: a He 219 A-5 prototype, Werknummer 290060 and given the foreign equipment number FE-612. The fate of Werknummer 290060 is unknown. Following testing, He 219 A-2 Werknummer 290202 was then moved to Orchard Place Airport in Park Ridge, Illinois in 1946. It was stored in a vacant aircraft factory and then transferred to the Smithsonian's National Air Museum on 3 January 1949. Finally, the He 219 was crated and shipped to the Smithsonian's Silver Hill, Maryland storage facility in early 1955.
He 219 A-2 Werknummer 290202 is undergoing restoration in the collection of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., USA. Recently the fuselage has been put on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center by Dulles Airport, however, the wings are still being restored at the Paul Garber Facility in Silver Hill, Maryland. As of 2012, the completely restored fuselage and tail surfaces, along with the aircraft's partially restored engines and nacelles displayed nearby, can be seen displayed near the museum's Dornier Do 335 and Arado Ar 234, aircraft that accompanied it across the Atlantic over 60 years ago.
In April 2012, a previously unknown He 219 was salvaged from the sea bed, 100 meters from the beach, north of Hirtshals, Denmark. The remains are in several pieces, but will undergo restoration and eventually be displayed at Aalborg, Denmark. As of late April 2012, no information was available as to the sub-model or Werknummer of the aircraft.
Read more about this topic: Heinkel He 219
Famous quotes containing the word survivors:
“I want to celebrate these elms which have been spared by the plague, these survivors of a once flourishing tribe commemorated by all the Elm Streets in America. But to celebrate them is to be silent about the people who sit and sleep underneath them, the homeless poor who are hauled away by the city like trash, except it has no place to dump them. To speak of one thing is to suppress another.”
—Lisel Mueller (b. 1924)
“I believe that all the survivors are mad. One time or another their madness will explode. You cannot absorb that much madness and not be influenced by it. That is why the children of survivors are so tragic. I see them in school. They don’t know how to handle their parents. They see that their parents are traumatized: they scream and don’t react normally.”
—Elie Wiesel (b. 1928)