HA-LIB  Lisunov Li-2P                                  (c/n  18423506)

                                

                                   Between 1946 and 1966 I wrote scores, if not hundreds of letters to airlines around the world
                                   asking for photos of their aircraft.  About the only ones which did not reply were those of the
                                   Eastern Bloc (Communist) nations: Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, etc.. I have, there-
                                   been extremely grateful to correspondents, such as Gábor Toth  for providing most of the
                                   images from these Iron Curtain countries. . This nice shot of HA-LIB at Budapest Airport in
                                   the mid 1950s is one of them.  Note starboard side door  The Hungarian airline before WW II
                                   was MALERT.  In 1946 Maszovlet was formed by merging the old Malert, Maefot and the
                                   Hungarian portion of Aeroflot, and a modest fleet of LI-2s was acquired.        In 1954 the
                                   Hungarian government acquired the assets of these three companies and formed Malev.  
                                   HA-LIB flew faithfully for over twenty years and was wfu in 1958.  By which time it had
                                   become a freighter.    It, along with other similar aircraft were used as fire fighting training
                                   machines, and, such, was completely destroyed in 1962.