Subject: Re: Uncommon Aircraft Update: IJN Aircraft MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII (some headers removed) Hi Rob - a few more notes on a couple of things we've talked about! According to Bill Yenne's "The Encyclopedia of Soviet Aircraft Since 1917" (Osprey, London, 1983), the first I-270Z never actually flew, but was destroyed during a ground test in mid-1946. The second one actually flew by the end of the year, piloted by V. N. Yuganov, but was written off in a crash fairly early on. This gives you at least one of the pilots, and implies the final fate of both airframes. As for the "MX" designation, two sources - R. J. Francillon's "Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War" (Putnam, London, 1970) and Basil Collier's "Japanese Aircraft of World War II" (Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1979) say that this designation was for special purpose aircraft, with "M" alone meaning a special purpose seaplane. HTH Ruediger