Lend-lease A-20 found in Siberia

Thanks for the report, Flyer.

Well, this “find” have rich history – this crash site is place of tourists pilgrimage through the years. For example, back in 2011 the group of tourists has taken a hike to Zelyonaya mountain. Apart from the usual tourist occupations, they visited A20 crash site too and made the videos. Other “expeditions” were also in year 2012, 2008, and in earlier years. So, this place is not secret. Besides, this wreck was the object of “hunters for nonferrous metals” thefts for several times.

Today there are only following large parts in site:

Note – these images are in all news issues about Siberian A20 from 2014. But I saw them in some blogs in year 2012 !
As You see, these “parts” are not enough for whole plane restoration. Possibly, there are some much smaller parts and fragments around – but this place is covered with tall grass. And members from 2011 tourists group state, that “plane has been taken away” by unknown people – those tourists seen the traces of tracked vehicles on mountain’s top and slopes in crash site area. I feel sure, these tourists were not aviation specialists, and in their word “plane” they mean “fuselage” only, because of we can see fragment of wing center section and engine nacelle on images above. By the way – the opinion exists, that this A20 crashed already after War, in about 1947.

Thus, this is common “ghostly, vanishing find”. Eastern part of Russia have a lot of such crash sites. For example, only one search group from Vladivostok city, which operates in Primorskiy Kray (large region near Pacific coast of Russia), found more 50 plane crash sites from June 2007, when this group was formed. All these planes are from different eras – pre-War, WW2 and post-War. Sadly, only very small part of them could to be restored – very often those searchers find only very small fragments or parts; or plane and it’s units are highly damaged during crash and during decades past.
And note – this is only one region; Russia have many of such regions – with high mountains, wide and deep rivers/lakes, dense forests – in it’s eastern part.
For present days many aircraft’s wrecks are discovered – but more wrecks could to be discovered in future.

Thanks for posting that. Shame there are no pictures but sounds like it’s more a lump of wreckage following controlled flight into terrain than an intact tundra wreck. Still, perhaps the Russians may deem it worth recovering…