Antinov AN-2 down near Sacramento

[G-force]

That the one I've seen fly in person at the Cable air show. Itscomical how slow it flies, just lumbering around. Sad to hear it was lost.

Here's Big Panda-Monium, which used to be a regular on the field at KCCB in Upland, CA. It was lost in a crash (suspected carb icing) near San Bernardino, where the pilot nearly made an open field but clipped some power lines. Aircraft ended up inverted but fortunately only minor injuries to pilot and crew.

 

[luvflyin]

Since you brought up the open cockpit Polikarpov, this was the light fabric covered biplane that the "NightWitches" used as a (very) light nightime bomber on the Eastern Front during WW2.

Female pilots stationed directly behind the front lines flew multiple-- sometimes six or eight per night-- harassment missions intended to keep the enemy from ever being comfortable or getting a good night's sleep.

They took off from unimproved farm fields and clearings. In the beginning the bombardier threw small bombs from her cockpit WW1 style. They flew nap of earth without lights in the darkness so as not to be seen or heard from a distance, climbing to a little altitude before attacking in a shallow dive with the engine throttled back to idle.

Thier defense was in not being heard or seen and the fact that the Po-2 cruised at an airspeed that was lower than the stalling speed of German or Italian fighters.

An historical fiction book based on girl russian pilots during the war. The Huntress by Kate Quinn. Good read

 

[Geosync]

There are still quite a few flying in Russia and even Europe, I saw both first hand. The joke was it moves the same speed for taxi, takeoff, cruise and landing. There is a TP version that is in development but I don't expect it to get any traction, especially in the west.

 

[Silvaire]

...The aircraft was obviously in a high AOA climb, and fell off on one wing as the airspeed decayed to an unsustainable value...

Yup, that was a classic departure stall. All this talk about no published stall speed is nonsense, it stalls just like any other airplane and there's the video to prove it. It does have a huge cabin and my thoughts are they probably loaded a bunch a stuff in there and botched the W&B calcs. A friend of mine flew one out here to California from the midwest and said that at cruise it burned a gallon of 100LL per mile.