The AN-2, born in the Ukrainian factory ofOleg Konstantinovich Antonov75 years ago, it is the most versatile plane in the Soviet-Russian aeronautical industry and one of the most used by pilots to flee Cuba, as they did this Friday,Ruben Martinez, taking off from Sancti Spíritus and landing in Florida.
This Friday, civil aviator Rubén Martínez landed with the AN-2 that worked in Cuba, at the Florida airport ofDade-Collier, located in the Everglades, which is a training and transit facility, primarily for civil aviation; although it also has a military section.
The small aircraft allows you to fly safely at very low altitude, a quality that makes it invisible to most radars, hence the preference of Cuban pilots to escape to the United States, as the spy did.René González Sehwerert, in the late 1990s.
Other Cubans have tried to escape, getting caught in the landing gear of foreign planes operating in Havana or hiding in their cargo holds; but onlyfour have managed to survive.
The CubanSandra de los Santos, arrived in Miami in 2004, where she obtained political asylum, hidden in a small wooden box, after being sent as a postal package from the Bahamas by DHL; where he had previously arrived from Cuba.
The escapes of Brigadier General (r) Rafael del Pino Díaz who, in 1987, flew in a small Cessna with part of his family, from Havana to Boca Chica, and that of Major Orestes Lorenzo, crewing a MIG-23, are the most significant of those carried out by military aviators; especially the second case, because years later, he secretly flew to Cuba in a small plane and rescued his wife and their oldest children, whom the Cuban government prevented from traveling through normal routes.
The AN-2 is a multipurpose, single-propeller, piston aircraft that burns 100 octane fuel, can carry up to twelve passengers, with an autonomy of more than five hours, and is considered very safe as it is equipped with double wings, which They allow you to glide like a kite, with the engine off or damaged. It is usually manned by two pilots, although there are single-seat versions.
Annushka, as it is also known, is an extremely robust, single-engine biplane aircraft that made its inaugural flight on August 31, 1947, being the first designed by Antonov. which achieved other aeronautical milestones such as the design and manufacture of the largest and heaviest aircraft in the world, the enormous AN-225.
In 2020, Cuba purchased a batch of AN-2 from Russia, which were assembled in the workshops of the National Air Services Company (ENSA), where the pilot Rubén Martínez, recently arrived in the United States, worked until this Friday in one of those airplanes, registration 1885.
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