« Linen Butterfly »: Northrop's Antonov AN-2

This "AN-2" was indeed something different altogether - it was a PZL-built AN-2, operated by Northrop in the early eighties and named "Linen Butterfly". The civil registration was N22AN and the MSN was 1G142-35.

The story (and I can't vouch for it's accuracy) is that there was concern that the North Koreans were using (or would use) AN-2s to infiltrate Special Ops Teams and supplies into South Korea. Testing was done using N22AN as a target with Marine Corps OV-10Ds at Camp Pendleton as interceptors (recall that the OV-10D was FLIR and gun-equipped and could carry Sidewinders). Interestingly, the China Lake Alumni site has an image of N22AN at Armitage Field, so it is possible that missions were flown in the China Lake complex.

N22AN was also displayed at some of the Southern California airshows at the time including some of the Hawthorne Air Faires. Note that a different AN-2, now registered N22AN, is now on display at the March Field Museum - it is not the same aircraft.

HTH!
 
I can confirm some of this story with a twist. In July '81 I took a trip with a Project Engineer, to Chehalis, OR to look at an AN-2 for Northrop to buy. As you know the AN-2 is a pretty large airplane and it has fabric-covered wings. This plane was in the middle of a wet field with one guy trying to recover it alone and it fell off our short list of potential purchases. I was involved because the plane belonged to a friend of a friend who I knew through Formula One air racing.

From my recollection, Northrop's interest was in selling F-20s to S. Korea. Detection of the AN-2 was a problem for them because the fabric construction impacted the ability of radar to find them. The other problem was that the moving target indication system was gated at something like 60 m/h to avoid picking up traffic on the highway and the AN-2 could fly slower than that. Northrop wanted to prove that the F-20 was capable of finding S. Korea's AN-2 threat. It is entirely likely that someone dreamed up another study we could sell to the military and further utilize the asset.
 

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