Post-war Use
After the war, the Pe-8 was used extensively as a testbed for trials involving Soviet derivatives of the German V-1 flying bomb and it was designated as the Pe-8LL for prototype piston engine trials. It was also used as a mother ship for the experimental rocket-engined Bisnovat 5 in 1948–49. Aeroflot received several of the surviving Pe-8s for polar exploration. Their military equipment removed, they had additional fuel tanks installed, were painted orange, and had their engines upgraded to either ASh-82FNs or Shvetsov ASh-73s. One landed at the North Pole in 1954 and others helped to monitor the drift ice stations NP-2, NP-3 and NP-4 during the late 1950s.
Read more about this topic: Petlyakov Pe-8
Famous quotes containing the word post-war:
“Much of what Mr. Wallace calls his global thinking is, no matter how you slice it, still “globaloney.” Mr. Wallace’s warp of sense and his woof of nonsense is very tricky cloth out of which to cut the pattern of a post-war world.”
—Clare Boothe Luce (1903–1987)