Many of the vintage aircraft displayed across the nation today never bore witness to the chaos of combat. However, amidst the collection, one stands as a relic of true wartime strife. Gazing upward, I find myself captivated by the haunting silhouette of a Bell P-39Q Airacobra, its battered fuselage suspended within the confines of a workshop at the Niagara Aerospace Museum in Buffalo, New York. Strewn across the expanse of the old Bell Aircraft factory, where this very machine once took form, lie its wings, engine, and an array of tools, poised for the meticulous disassembly process. The underbelly of the fuselage, bearing scars of its tumultuous past, awaits the replacement of panels marred not by enemy fire, but by the brutal force of its final landing.
It was on a frigid November day in 1944 that Lieutenant Ivan Baranovsky, a seasoned combat aviator with seven victories under his belt, guided this aircraft to an icy embrace upon a desolate lake during a mission over the Soviet Union. Six decades later, amidst the thaw of an Arctic summer, the revelation of a Russian fisherman sent ripples through the global community of warbird enthusiasts. His account of spotting the submerged outline of a silt-shrouded Bell P-39 in the shallow depths near Murmansk reignited fascination with the lost relic.
Within the hallowed halls of the museum, curators pore over the remnants of this fateful flight, piecing together the narrative of Baranovsky’s final mission. Among the salvaged wreckage, his remains were discovered, intermingled with the artifacts of war. Tracing the lineage of P-39Q no. 44-2911 through the meticulous records of its maintenance log, its journey unfolds from the bustling factories of Buffalo, through the frigid expanse of northern U.S. air bases, to the rugged terrain of Alaska, where it was entrusted to the hands of a Soviet pilot. Among the thousands of P-39 Airacobras dispatched to the Eastern Front during World War II, it stands as a solitary survivor, defying the odds of combat and the ravages of time.
The Bell P-39s represented but a fraction of the arsenal dispatched overseas during the global conflict. The inception of the Lend-Lease Act in January 1941 heralded a monumental effort to arm and sustain nations embroiled in battle. From bombers to provisions, the United States orchestrated a vast logistical endeavor, reshaping the landscape of war. Under the auspices of the act, provisions were to be repatriated or reimbursed post-war, unless consumed by the flames of combat, consigned to the annals of history. This legislative cornerstone not only propelled the nation from isolationism but also fostered a delicate alliance with the Soviet Union, borne of necessity yet shrouded in uncertainty, wherein trust was extended for fighters, but withheld for strategic assets.
Recovered from the depths of Lake Mart-Yavr in 2004, the P-39 aircraft serves as a poignant emblem of the collaborative efforts between nations during a tumultuous era. Initially disregarded, this American fighter plane found its purpose in the Soviet Union, a nation that bore the brunt of sacrifices in the fight against a shared adversary. Moreover, the Soviet Union’s relentless demand for military supplies played a pivotal role in bolstering the industrial prowess of the United States.
Hugh Neeson, a venerable figure at 77 years old and formerly a key executive at Bell Helicopter Textron, reflects on the significant contribution of the western New York aircraft industries during World War II. He underscores the remarkable feat of producing 30,000 aircraft, a remarkable achievement representing a staggering 10 percent of the nation’s wartime output. Neeson reminisces about the precarious position of Bell Aircraft in the early 1940s, teetering on the edge of bankruptcy until a fortuitous order from France for 200 P-39s, accompanied by a substantial payment, rescued the company from financial ruin. Although geopolitical circumstances prevented France from receiving these aircraft, the subsequent production of 9,584 P-39s, half of which were supplied to the Soviet Union through the Lend-Lease program, solidified Bell Aircraft’s pivotal role in the war effort.
As demand surged, the workforce at Bell expanded exponentially, burgeoning from a modest 2,000 employees in 1939 to an astonishing 32,000 by 1943, operating out of a state-of-the-art facility in the Wheatfield suburb of Buffalo. Sandra Hierl, reflecting on her upbringing in post-war Buffalo, fondly recalls the enduring legacy of the aircraft factory in her hometown. Her mother and grandmother, Eleanor and Teresa Barbaritano, were among the countless women who stepped into the workforce during the war, embodying the iconic image of Rosie the Riveter. Hierl reminisces about her mother’s proficiency with tools, a skill honed during her tenure at the factory. Despite the challenges of wartime life, Hierl’s mother exuded pride in her contribution, regaling her daughter with tales of camaraderie and adventure on the bus rides to work. Though Eleanor Barbaritano’s life was tragically cut short at 55, her legacy endures as a testament to the resilience and determination of a generation that rose to the occasion during a time of unprecedented turmoil.
Shortly after the P-39 arrived at the Niagara museum, Hugh Neeson received a call from the son-in-law of a former plant worker. The caller urged him to closely inspect the panels inside the fuselage during disassembly, revealing a curious practice of the past. “The girls used to write their names and addresses on them,” he divulged. True to his words, museum conservators discovered the inscriptions of two women: Helen Rose and Eleanor Barbaritano.
Hierl, residing in Connecticut, reminisced about his mother’s anecdotes with a chuckle. “It was probably just a prank by a group of teenage girls,” he mused. “Occasionally, a pilot would reach out to one of them, expressing gratitude for their contribution.”
Returning to Buffalo last April, Hierl sought out the airplane his mother had a hand in building. “She had penciled her name and address onto a metal plate, about five by eight inches, fitted into a small aperture,” he recounted. “As I peered into it, I couldn’t help but feel connected, thinking, ‘My mom must have done this.'”
On Christmas Day 1943, according to the maintenance log, no. 44-2911 embarked on its journey to the Soviet Union from the factory. The Lend-Lease route traced along the southern fringes of the Great Lakes before veering northwest towards the high plains along the Canadian border. WASP members, or the Women Airforce Service Pilots, ferried the aircraft for the initial legs of its westward journey. “I frequently flew them from Buffalo to Great Falls, Montana,” reminisced Violet Thurn Cowden last year. “Navigating that route in winter was quite challenging; by the time we reached Chicago and traversed over to North Dakota, we invariably encountered adverse weather conditions.” (Cowden, who earned her wings in the 1930s in Spearfish, South Dakota, passed away last April.)
Great Falls served as the pivotal eastern and southern terminus of the aerial conduit known as the ALSIB, an acronym for Alaska-Siberia. A network of basic airstrips, spanning from Great Falls to Fairbanks, provided essential maintenance, refueling, and emergency refuge. On the opposite side of the Bering Strait, a similar chain of airfields extended across Siberia into central Russia. While over 2,000 P-39s were transported to the Soviet Union via Iran, the majority traversed the ALSIB, accompanied by a variety of Lend-Lease aircraft, including P-40 Warhawks, P-63 Kingcobras, A-20 and B-25 bombers, C-47 transports, and AT-6 trainers. Each paused at Great Falls before venturing into the vast northern expanse.
“The predominant challenge we encountered was the weather,” reflects Steve Allison, a member of the 7th Ferry Command based in Great Falls, now residing in Enterprise, Oregon. Over the course of his service, Allison undertook 30 perilous journeys between Great Falls and Fairbanks. “Occasionally, a delivery could be expedited within two days,” he recollects, “yet during the winter months, it could stretch to a daunting 10 days before returning.” Navigating through treacherous conditions, ferry pilots routinely braved over a week to traverse the 1,200-mile expanse of the U.S. portion of the ALSIB. Allison vividly recalls an instance during a routine layover in the Yukon Territory’s Whitehorse, where the thermometer plummeted to a bone-chilling -54 degrees Fahrenheit. In such frigid temperatures, “the oil congealed to the consistency of molasses,” unless diligently heated to maintain engine functionality. At that time, weather forecasts in the region were notoriously unreliable, rendering the flight path a precarious endeavor of navigating mountain ranges and eluding snowstorms.
A scarcity of pilots trained in instrument flying compounded the hazards, with many relying heavily on the recently constructed AlCan highway—a lifeline amidst the wilderness connecting airfields en route to Alaska. Yet, amidst the vast expanse of the Yukon, navigation proved perilous, resulting in the tragic loss of 80 American airmen along the ALSIB route. On the opposite side of the Bering Strait, the toll among Soviet airmen exceeded 109. Chronicling these perilous journeys in his 1998 publication “Warplanes to Alaska,” historian Blake Smith recounts the desperate searches for ferry pilots who veered off course amidst the snowy wastelands. Sometimes, rescuers arrived in time, yet more often than not, the pilots’ fate remained shrouded in mystery or revealed only through the discovery of their remains long after their disappearance. The ill-fated final flight of Lieutenant Walter T. Kent epitomized the perils faced by many. On October 27, 1943, Kent’s Cobra succumbed to a snowstorm engulfing the Yukon mountains, losing orientation within the clouds and tragically crashing into the terrain. Remarkably, the wreckage was only unearthed by a Royal Canadian Air Force helicopter, scouring the region for a civilian aircraft—nearly two decades later in 1965. Kent’s P-39 was identified by its data plate, with searchers recovering a poignant relic: a high school ring bearing his name.
According to Smith, the maps utilized by pilots for these ferry flights were largely borrowed from bush pilots, leading to potential discrepancies in landmark positioning. Navigating this desolate terrain mirrored the challenges of being a bush pilot in a fighter plane, albeit at significantly faster speeds, necessitating split-second decisions. The desolation of the landscape was such that the airfields established along the route resembled “an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean,” as described by Smith.
“The challenges they faced in the initial phase were markedly distinct from the conditions toward the war’s conclusion,” Smith observes. “They contended with the coldest winter in over half a century, ill-prepared for the adversities that awaited.”
During this initial phase, ground crews toiled outdoors and bunked down in tents, braving subzero temperatures. “Those young men endured harsh conditions,” reflects Allison, “working tirelessly in all weather conditions, and they performed admirably.”
AMONGST DEVOTEES OF VINTAGE AIRCRAFT, each harbors a cherished World War II fighter. While the British hold a fondness for Spitfires, Americans often revere the P-51 Mustang or the P-38 Lightning. However, for Ilya Grinberg, his heart belongs to the P-39. A professor of electrical engineering at Buffalo State College, hailing from Ukraine with a doctorate earned in Moscow, Grinberg doubles as a connoisseur of Soviet aviation lore. He stands as the mastermind behind lend-lease.airforce.ru, a bilingual online repository brimming with historical records, interviews, and analysis concerning the aircraft dispatched from the United States to the Soviet Union during the war.
“The P-39 holds a special place in my heart,” Grinberg affirms. During my visit to his office, adorned with technical tomes on power distribution, I observed his computer’s screensaver cycling through a cavalcade of aircraft, spanning from early Soviet fighters to contemporary Sukhoi jets. “I deem it among the most aesthetically pleasing planes of its era, boasting several innovations that foreshadow the features of modern aircraft: tricycle landing gear, a streamlined canopy, and a radio button integrated into the throttle—eliminating the need for the pilot to disengage from throttle control to transmit.”
However, few pilots from the U.S. Army Air Forces, and even fewer from the Royal Air Force, shared such sentiments about the P-39. In 1940, the British procurement commission ordered 675; after just four sorties, the RAF promptly returned the majority—save for 200, which they benevolently shipped to the Soviet Union. Perhaps if the aircraft had been equipped with a turbo-supercharger, as initially planned, the British pilots might have sung its praises. Yet, turbo-superchargers remained an embryonic and unreliable technology fraught with constant issues. Larry Bell, president of Bell Aircraft, successfully lobbied the U.S. Army to eliminate the supercharger from the aircraft’s engine. However, sans the supercharger, the fighter proved ineffectual at the high altitudes where British fighter pilots operated to safeguard their strategic bombers from Luftwaffe adversaries.
It might surprise enthusiasts of Mustangs and Lightnings to learn that during World War II, the P-39 Airacobras, piloted by Soviet aviators, emerged as the top-scoring American-made fighters. The theater of combat on the Eastern Front seldom reached altitudes exceeding 20,000 feet, creating an environment conducive for the P-39’s effectiveness. German aircraft primarily engaged in ground attack and close-support missions, operating at low altitudes where the Cobras could excel. Notably, eight Soviet P-39 pilots achieved remarkable success, each downing at least 30 German planes. G.A. Rechkalov, the highest-scoring Soviet ace, claimed 48 of his 54 confirmed kills while flying a P-39, affectionately dubbed Kobrushka—Little Cobra by the Soviets.
Upon its deployment, the P-39 stood out as the sole U.S. fighter with its engine situated behind the cockpit. This configuration was conceived by Bell chief designer Robert Woods to accommodate a 37-mm cannon, positioned to fire through the propeller hub. As World War II ace Nikolay Golodnikov recounted in a 2003 interview, a single strike from the cannon typically incapacitated enemy fighters. Golodnikov emphasized the potency of the cannon, asserting that no engine could withstand its impact.
Contrary to some military aviation narratives, the notion that Russians employed the P-39s solely as tank busters in ground attack missions is dismissed as a myth. According to Grinberg, the P-39 primarily undertook air superiority missions, capitalizing on its maneuverability and firepower to engage enemy aircraft at mid-altitudes. Golodnikov concurred, reflecting that adherence to American specifications would have rendered the P-39 vulnerable to enemy fire. However, Soviet pilots adapted their tactics to leverage the aircraft’s strengths effectively.
The P-39’s significance extended beyond its combat capabilities; it also addressed a critical communication deficit within the Soviet Air Force. Golodnikov lamented the inadequacy of pre-war radios, which were notoriously unreliable and hindered effective communication. The introduction of the P-39 and other Lend-Lease aircraft equipped with superior radios revolutionized communication among Soviet pilots, contributing significantly to their combat effectiveness against the Germans from 1943 onwards.
NO. 44-2911 arrived in Fairbanks on January 9, 1944, where it was received by a delegation from the Soviet air force’s foreign service. Almost a month later, on February 1, a Soviet pilot piloted the aircraft westward to Nome, then across the Bering Strait into the Soviet Union. The P-39s were dispatched in formations of six or more, accompanied by a North American B-25 or another medium bomber equipped with more advanced avionics than those found in the P-39s. Progressing from one base to another across Siberia, by March the planes had reached a central Siberian base at Krasnoyarsk, marking the terminus of the ALSIB route. It was there that the aircraft was designated White 23 and possibly repainted with Soviet insignias, including the iconic red stars.
The log of White 23 documents several sorties flown from a base near Murmansk during an October 1944 offensive aimed at dislodging German forces from the Finnish town of Petsamo. As ground troops pressed the Germans backward, they seized control of Petsamo and the Norwegian port city of Kirkenes. On November 19, Lieutenant Ivan Baranovsky was scheduled to pilot the aircraft with his squadron to the recently captured air base Luostari, situated near the Norwegian border. While White 23 took off from the base near Murmansk, it failed to reach Luostari.
In 2010, personnel at the Niagara museum raised White 23’s engine and discovered two significant breaches in the engine block. “The engine had thrown two rods,” remarked Hugh Neeson. Grinberg attributes the engine failure to subpar lubricants and posits that Lieutenant Baranovsky attempted to make an emergency landing on Lake Mart-Yavr. Neeson tasked Grinberg with locating the pilot’s relatives to inform them of the discovery. Collaborating with a Russian organization dedicated to investigating cases of missing soldiers and airmen, Grinberg swiftly obtained contact information for Baranovsky’s brother and nephew.
GRINBERG INAUGURATED his website dedicated to the Lend-Lease program as a tribute to the past. “The individuals who fought, those who piloted and maintained these aircraft, their numbers dwindle with each passing day,” he reflected. “I believe it’s important for the world to recognize who they were, the armaments they wielded, and their experiences. What were their thoughts, unbounded by any constraints on what they could or couldn’t express?”
The Soviet resurgence following the initial onslaught by the Germans in World War II is nothing short of remarkable. Operation Barbarossa, the surprise Nazi offensive launched in June 1941, dealt a severe blow to the Soviet air force. Within the first week, the Luftwaffe obliterated around 2,000 Russian aircraft, the majority of them while grounded, while suffering minimal losses themselves, fewer than 40 aircraft. Despite this devastation, the Soviets rebuilt their air force while simultaneously engaging in combat. They relocated their factories eastward, away from the reach of German air raids, and eventually churned out over 140,000 aircraft, including nearly 60,000 fighters.
Soviet post-war propaganda asserts that the contribution of Lend-Lease aircraft to the Soviet victory over Germany was minimal, citing their representation of only 13 percent of the Soviet air force. Grinberg highlights this narrative’s persistence in public consciousness. However, he argues that the reception of 9,775 fighters from the United States, including Curtiss P-40 Hawks and Bell P-63 Kingcobras, spared the Soviet government from the daunting task of constructing four additional factories. According to Grinberg, this endeavor would have consumed valuable resources and prolonged the war effort considerably. Instead, the resources were diverted to the frontline to repel German offensives. Although Grinberg acknowledges that Lend-Lease aircraft did not singularly alter the war’s outcome, he contends that their absence would have resulted in significantly higher casualties and a protracted conflict.
Grinberg’s involvement extended to facilitating the acquisition of White 23 by the Niagara museum. Following the aircraft’s recovery and relocation to England by Jim Pearce of Warbird Finders, Grinberg’s online publication about the salvage garnered global attention. He subsequently urged Hugh Neeson to consider acquiring the airplane, catalyzing Neeson’s visit to inspect White 23 in Britain. Impressed by the aircraft, Neeson spearheaded efforts to purchase it for $400,000, leveraging the museum’s resources and securing additional sponsors.
In a symbolic ceremony on August 27, 2006, the Alaska-Siberia Research Center honored the U.S.-Soviet collaboration during the Lend-Lease program by unveiling a monument in Fairbanks. Among the dignitaries present were Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, Russian Ambassador Yuri Ushakov, and Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Ivanov. At the event, Ilya Grinberg was awarded a medal for his efforts in educating the public about Lend-Lease, a moment he described as profoundly significant. Addressing the audience, Grinberg underscored the personal and global impact of Lend-Lease, bridging communities from Ukraine, where he grew up, to Buffalo, his current residence, and Fairbanks, where the aircraft changed hands.
Miss Lend Lease, formerly known as White 23, is set to debut at the Thunder Over Niagara Air Show on September 10 and 11 at the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station. Instead of undergoing restoration, the aircraft will be preserved in its current state for display at the museum’s exhibit space in the former terminal of the Niagara Falls Airport. The exhibit will feature simulated snow and ice to recreate the aircraft’s landing on frozen terrain. Additionally, visitors will have access to the aircraft’s maintenance log and a surprising discovery made during salvage: 11 cans of American-made food stashed in the ammunition bays.
