December 3, 2007 at 4:04 pm
First of all, I am NOT referring to those airplanes withdrawn from use and than parked in the grass on an airfield as they were.
I am thinking about:
A. Non-flightworthy airframes, retired types which were transformed / cosmetized to look like the aircraft in service
B. Plain and simple decoys crafted from wood/tin/rubber/whatever made to look like the aircraft in service
A. In the first category some Finland AF MiG-21F-13 would fit well: after retirement from service in the 80’s the engines and equipments were taken out, they were painted and marked like the (than) newly received MiG-21bis/UM; the wing and fin folded for easy transport on a usual trailer truck. They went to such detail that even the pitot tube was repositioned on top of the nose – also foldable.
See:
http://www.airliners.net/open.file/0892607/L/
Another example that I came across today is a Belgian F-84F made to look (more or less) like a Mirage V: added nosecone, larger side intakes and wing “filled in” to look like a delta. Picture dated 1980:
http://www.aircraftslides.com/Auction/AuctionDetail.aspx?ID=413289

B. In the second category the first thing that comes to mind are the wooden Yugoslav MiG-29s from 1999. A number of them were parked in Batajnica AB, even in HAS, while most of the real ones were dispersed on the roads adjacent to the base. Pictures found on this forum: