Edition: 199
Artist's proofs: 10
Overall size: 24" x 31.5"
Image size: 19.5" x 27"
Support: Epson Ultra Smooth Fine Art 100% Cotton Heavyweight paper
Signed, numbered, and annotated individually by the artist
Copyright 2006 Jack Fellows, ASAA
Color printing: Epson StylusPro 7800
Color: 8-color array Epson K-3 Pigment-based archival inks
* Prints come with a certificate of authenticity
Limited Edition Print: $200 + S&H $14 U.S. / $45 International
Original art: 24" X 36" oil painting on stretched canvas, Commissioned by Doug Champlain, 1988. Museum of Flight Collection, Seattle, Washington |
LAST FLIGHT OF YELLOW TEN
As the
Allies tightened the noose around what remained of the Third
Reich in the spring of 1945, surviving Luftwaffe pilots, whose
worst fear (worse than being killed in combat) was to be captured
by the Red Army, as it rapidly advanced across Germany from
the east…as not much imagination was required to foresee
what the Russians might have in store for their former aerial
tormentors, whom they now had on the run. By April, the situation
was hopeless, even to the most optimistic, so to some, a more
attractive alternative to capture by the communists was surrender
to the British or the American forces, sometimes only a short
flight away.
 “Yellow
Ten”, so named for the colored number on either side
of the fuselage, was assigned to JG.26 in March of 1945, and
due to the chaotic conditions of that period, not much is
known of its short service record, other than it was captured,
or surrendered in April (or as late as May) at the Luftwaffe
airbase at Flensburg on the Danish frontier…which, at
the time, was in the hands of the advancing Allied forces.
This particular machine was eventually shipped to the United
States for evaluation, donated subsequently to Georgia Tech,
and by 1955, had arrived at an advanced state of decrepitude,
due to vandalism and neglect. It is now fully restored to
better than new condition, at the expense of warbird collector,
Doug Champlin (Champlin Fighter Museum), an extremely rare
example of the last iteration of the Fw.190 evolutionary line,
the Fw. 190D-13, the 17th example, and probably one of the
last of the 190s, a total of about 20,000 Fw.190s of all series
had been produced by the war’s end.
The artist
was commissioned by Mr. Champlin in 1987 to depict what it
may have looked like as the machine was surrendered to RAF
forces occupying Flensburg (if that was, indeed, the case)
during the last few days of April, 1945, and it is displayed
at the Museum, as of this writing.
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