I-16 Type 5 early seat padding

[tomaszgronczewski]

First of all thank you for accepting me to the forum.

As far as I understand I-16 Type 4s, and first series of Type 5s prior to armor upgrades had seats with narrow backrest. Oddly, the restored I-16 which is now on display at Military Aviation Museum in Virginia Beach has this early type of the seat installed. See the photo found on net-maquettes.com walkaround:







But I guess that originally this seat should have leather upholstery attached to the backrest. Has anyone any photo or drawing showing such seat with padding in place? I suppose it would be something similar to upholstery still preserved in UTI-4 displayed in Finland. See the photo uploaded to Britmodeller forum:

[Massimo Tessitori]

Hi Tomasz
welcome to Sovietwarplanes.
The armoured and unarmoured seats were interchangeable, so old type 5 could be found with both seats; unarmoured seats were often replaced with armoured ones on a second time.
About the rear seat of the UTI-4, for what I know it was not utilized on the fighter version.
Now I see that the file at https://massimotessitori.altervista.org/sovietwarplanes/pages/i16/details/cockpit-canopy/cockpit-canopy.htm lacks of a photo of the front seat of the UTI-4, I'll have to add it.
Best regards
Massimo

[tomaszgronczewski]

Hi Massimo,
thank you for the link to your I-16 cockpit page. I had seen it before but for some reason I had overlooked the photos of the seats at the bottom of the page. And the photos of the I-16 preserved in Chkalov Museum are exactly what I was looking for! I see that padding does not cover the entire backrest around, but is attached to it from the front.
Best,
Tomasz