Graflex.org

[photografr7@yahoo.com]

Believe it or not, the K-20 handheld camera played a small part in American-Soviet relations during an incident that occurred in northern Korea on August 29, 1945. That day, an American B-29 was shot down by four Russian Yak fighters. The good news is... none of the crew died.

A few days later, one of the B-29 crewmen noticed a K-20 camera sitting on a table and asked the Russians (through an interpreter) if it was the K-20 from their plane. The answer they got: "No, we got it through lend-lease." I personally think that they were lied to, but we'll never know for sure.

I'm writing an article for a military magazine about this August 1945 incident. If you know anything about Soviet copies of the K-20 camera, or lend-lease, or if the K-20's vacuum system was so innovative the Americans would never have handed them over to the Russians, etc. please respond... your answer could fill in a couple of missing puzzle pieces.

If you supply a definitive answer, I'll add your name to my lond list of Russian and U.S. consultants, including Sergei Khrushchev, the son of Nikita, a former Premier of the Soviet Union.

[Les]

Well there's no question that Uncle Same Lent and leased materiel to what would later be 'the Red menace'

And I can tell you that with 15,000 k-20s made, we had a few to spare. But I don't have any record of what Uncle Sam did with them after delivery.

It's been said that Graflex sold cameras to 25 different countries during WWII but I have yet to see proof of it beyond some cameras to Britain.

[glennfromwy]

There's a very good possibility that the story is true. The US was sending all kinds of stuff to our allies when we entered the war. At the time, the Soviet Union was our ally and recieved a lot of materials.

[photografr7@yahoo.com]

The reason the Russian explanation is suspicious is that the K-20 camera was clearly marked 500BG (bomb group). The plane they shot down was from the 500BG... guilty as charged!

The first chapter of my book The Flight of the Hog Wild, with a pretty extensive description of the K-20 camera (in a later chapter) can be read on Gary Powers, Jr.'s Cold War Museum website, May 1, 2009 edition at www.ColdWarTimes.com