The subject of the tail colour of Vladimir Pavlovich Pokrovskiy's Yak-1b has come up yet again, this time in the pinned Yak-1 thread on Scalemodels.ru. The correct answer (red? blue? AMT-12? a mix of AMT-11/AMT-12?) is still not known, but there is a small amount of new information now.
Here's the only known photo of this aircraft, published in Osprey Aces No.64, "Yakovlev Aces of World War 2"; the photo copyright is attributed to Gennadiy Petrov:
Here's a profile from this Yakovlev tribute web site:
http://airfield.narod.ru/yak/yak.htmlAnother one; looks like the Osprey Aces No.64 profile, but with Russian text:
The following was posted by M. Golovanov on the Scalemodels.ru forum; this is apparently information he received by e-mail from Sergey Kuznetsov, the author of the book "First Yak". I've provided both the Google and the Babel Fish translations, since neither one is perfectly clear, and reading both helps to understand what was posted:
Google:
"That car, which is credited with Pokrovsky - not him. Pilot filmed somewhere in Bulgaria (like the sailors stood on EIA. Yambol) in someone else's faulty machine (see photo mounting tape vodoradiatora hanging under the fuselage), which stood in the meadow. This information came to me (albeit through third parties) from the Pokrovsky."
Babel Fish:
"That machine, which they assign to Pokrovskiy - not it. Pilot is taken somewhere in Bulgaria (seamen like they stood to [aer]. [Yambol]) in whose- that of the defective machine (on the photo they are visible the tapes of fastening water radiator, which hang under the fuselage), which stood on the clearing. This information is alien to me (truth through the third hands) from Pokrovskiy's very."
So, it seems that Kuznetsov had some indirect contact with Pokrovskiy himself, possibly trying to get an answer regarding the tail colour, and was told that this was not his aircraft at all. The real pilot is unknown; I found the comment regarding the radiator to be interesting.
John