EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2019: Warbirds - Salute to Nanchang and Yak

The Aero Experience continues our year-round coverage of EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2019, sponsored by Elite Aviation, with a look at warbird trainers from behind the Iron Curtain - Nanchang CJ-6 and Yak-52. The CJ-6 (and at least 6 subtypes) began production in China in the early 1960s, and is an indirect development of the Chinese production model (CJ-5) of the Russian Yak-18. Thousands were produced for the primary trainer role and secondary light attack roles for export models. It has become a popular civil warbird in the U.S. and other western countries due to its reasonable purchase and operating costs. We also include the Yak-52 in this collection, as they are often flown and parked together on the grounds. The Yak-52 was the primary trainer for Russian and eastern bloc countries from the 1970s to the 1990s. Many have become available for export to the warbird community as a result of downsizing of Russian military forces, and many Yak-52s in the U.S. are the Romanian Aerostar production models. Not surprisingly, both aircraft designs are very similar in appearance and in their no-frills design philosophy that delivers good performance for primary training and aerobatics.

Here we present a survey of the Nanchang CJ-6 and Yak-52 variants seen during the week, beginning with Mark Schuler's CJ-6A as seen in our previous post. The last photo is the Yak-18T, a cabin trainer/utility aircraft first flown in the late 1960s.