Power Show Point Created by Bro

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Power Show PointCreated by Bro

• RUSSIAN AF MUSEUM
• By Colonel Tom Whitlock
• USAF - Retired

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In August of 2005 I made my way to Russia, hungry
to see some Russian military aircraft flying at
the MAKS airshow. Also high on my list of planned
activities was a visit to the official Russian
Air Force museum at the town of Monino, about an
hour's train ride north of Moscow. The museum
used to be operated by the air force but it's now
independent, which means you no longer need an
invitation to visit. This is the view from the
main gate.  
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At the top of the list of things I wanted to see
was this helicopter, the largest which has ever
flown. It has the NATO code name "Homer" and is
usually referred to as the Mi-12, however since
it never entered production its correct name is
actually V-12. Two or three prototypes were built
and did quite a bit of flying, including a trip
across Europe to the Paris Air Show. Depending on
which source you believe, this was either in
1965, 1971, 1981 or 1985 as far as I can tell
1971 is the correct date. The V-12 used two of
the power plants and rotors from the already
massive Mi-6 "Hook", which you can see later on
this page and also in Vietnamese Air Force
colors. The fuselage is 37 meters long and 12.5
meters high (121 x 41 feet). The rotors are each
35 meters (114 feet) in diameter and it can lift
up to 25 tons (55,000 pounds) of cargo, though in
a special record-breaking effort in 1969 it
lifted 40 tons (88,600 pounds) to a height of
2250 meters (7400 feet). With a more normal load
the maximum range was a very useful 1000
kilometers (625 miles).
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 This is the inside of the main hangar, visible
in the photograph taken from the front entrance.
On the far left hand side is an Ant-25 which flew
from Moscow to California in the 1930s, and there
are also some original and replica early Russian
aircraft, as well as a few space exhibits. A new
hangar is being built near this one, which bodes
well for the future of the museum. It would
certainly be a good thing to get some more of the
museum's unique aircraft out of the nasty Russian
weather.
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This was one of the few other space exhibits at
the museum, the MiG 105-11 single-person lifting
body craft, which actually has a turbojet engine
to allow it to divert or reattempt a landing
after a failed approach. This craft did several
flights after being dropped from a modified Tu-95
"Bear". As you can see, the grass in this display
area could really use a cut, though most of the
aircraft looked to be in quite good condition.
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As you might expect, the museum had examples of
pretty much every single type of Russian jet
fighter, arranged by manufacturer with separate
sections for Sukhoi, Mikoyan-Gurevich (MiG) and
Yakolev. Quite a number of the exhibits are the
actual prototypes used to test the aircraft and
there are also a number of experimental aircraft
which never went into production, including this
Sukhoi S-26 experimental ski-equipped jet
fighter, which apparently performed very well.
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There weren't too many naval aircraft on display,
apart from a two-engined Beriev Be-12 "Mail"
seaplane and this Yak-38 "Forger", which is a
vertical takeoff and landing fighter which went
into production in 1975 and served aboard Soviet
Kiev-class aircraft carriers. Near the Yak-38 was
another Yakolev designed VTOL naval fighter, the
supersonic Yak-141 "Freestyle".  
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I'm not a great expert on Soviet aircraft, so it
was a real treat to see some of the less common
types which I wasn't familiar with, like this
Myasischev M-50 "Bounder" supersonic
intercontinental nuclear bomber which first flew
in 1959. This is one weird looking aircraft, the
long tubular fuselage with pointed nose mounted
above a bicycle style undercarriage with
outrigger landing gear at the end of the wings.
An engine is mounted at each wingtip, leading one
person to comment that it looked like it had been
designed by a ten year old boy! Very few of these
aircraft were built, because Khruschev decided
that all efforts in this area should be
concentrated on ICBMs. This decision spelled the
end for both the Myasischev and the Lavochkin
design bureaus.  
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This extraordinary aircraft is the Sukhoi T-4, a
Russian attempt to emulate the USAF XB-70
Valkyrie mach-3 bomber. The T-4 (sometimes
incorrectly referred to as the Su-100) is largely
constructed from titanium and stainless steel and
featured the world's first "fly by wire" control
system. It started its flight test program in
1972, but made only 10 flights before the program
was scrapped. Like Concorde and the Tu-144, the
T-4 has a drooping nose to provide better forward
vision when taking off and landing however,
unlike either of these aircraft, there are no
forward windows to look through when the nose is
lifted. Instead the pilots must use a periscope
for forward vision, and a couple of small windows
(one of which is visible through one of the front
windows in this photo) to provide a view sideways
and up. Interestingly, the bilingual sign in
front ! of the T-4 states its purpose as
"destruction of attack aircraft carriers and
reconnaissance".  
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In the last photo you can see a part of the field
set aside for the display of Russian designed
helicopters. There must have been a total of 15
or 20 helicopters at the museum, just a couple of
the interesting Kamov models with contra-rotating
rotors, and almost all of the others being Mils,
like the well-known Mi-24 "Hind-D" gunship at the
front of this photo, standing next to its less
well-known Mi-24 "Hind-A" predecessor.
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This Mi-10 "Harke" was a great sight, tucked away
at the back of the display. The Mi-10 was a
flying crane dating back to 1960 which, like the
V-12, used the same powerplant and rotor as the
Mi-6 "Hook". As you can see, the Mi-10 also
featured a platform which could be used to carry
a vehicle. Although all of the display areas were
surrounded by low chain-link fences, the
custodians quickly gave me permission to go past
them in order to get better photographs. Although
they didn't speak English and I didn't speak
Russian, I was able to make my request known to
them by sign language and acting out what I
wanted to do!
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Here finally is the Mi-6 "Hook", the grey one a
regular version with the wings mounted just
behind the rotor head, and a fire-fighting
version without the wings. There were three Mi-6s
at the museum, another one being in the main
helicopter display area. For many years the Mi-6
was the largest helicopter in the world, able to
carry twice the load of the largest helicopter
ever produced in America.
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Behind the grey Mi-6 in the previous photo is
this Mi-26 "Halo", currently the world's largest
operational helicopter. It's essentially an
enlarged Mi-6 with an eight-bladed rotor,
allowing it to carry 66 more payload. It has
been exported to several countries, including
India, Greece, Peru and Laos.
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Mil and Kamov were the dominant Russian
helicopter design bureaus, but early on Yakolev
also tried their hand, producing this Yak-24
"Horse" which was intended as a troop transport.
To my surprise, parked behind the Yak-24 was an
American twin-rotor Vertol H-21 helicopter,
complete with American flag painted on the
vertical tail surfaces! Strange as it might seem,
this was apparently sold to the Russians in the
late 1950s.
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During world war two, three American B-29
Superfortress bombers landed on separate
occasions in the Russian city of Vladivostok,
unable to return to their home base because of
battle damage or mechanical problems. The
Russians, who weren't officially at war with
Japan, interned the aircraft and their crews, who
were later allowed to "escape" back to their own
forces. The aircraft remained in Russia and
Stalin ordered the Tupolev design bureau to
reverse engineer them, resulting in the Tupolev
Tu-4 which you see here, which was assigned the
NATO code name "Bull". About 1200 Tu-4s were
built, some of which were supplied to China which
used them until the late 1960s.
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Although they had no equivalent to the B-29, the
Russians had always been capable of developing
large aircraft, and home-grown alternatives to
the Tu-4 soon came into existence, such as this
Tu-95 "Bear". The Tu-95 is one of the classic
Soviet cold war aircraft and was frequently
encountered by western military aircrews as the
Tu-95s shadowed NATO naval forces. It has the
world's most powerful turboprop engines driving
contra-rotating propellers mounted on a wing
swept back by 35 degrees, making it almost as
fast as jets of the time, and has a range of
15,000 kilometers (9,400 miles). It first flew in
1952 and has been phenomenally successful,
remaining in production into the mid-1980s and
serving in a wide variety of roles. It's still in
service and as recently as 1999 some Tu-95s on
simulated nuclear bombing missions against
America were intercepted by American fighter
planes.
The Antonov design bureau specialized in large
transport aircraft and to this day they hold the
records for the largest transport aircraft, the
An-124 with four jet engines and the even more
massive An-225 with six jet engines, which has a
maximum takeoff weight of over 575 tonnes
(1,250,000 pounds). The museum doesn't have an
An-124 or An-225 but it does have this An-22
Antheus (NATO code name "Cock"), which is the
largest propeller-driven plane ever built. It has
the same model of turbo-prop driven
contra-rotating propellers as the Tu-95 and is
capable of carrying 80 tonnes (80 tons) of cargo.
Behind it you can see one of the most unusual
aircraft at Monino, the remains of an
"Ekranoplan" or Beriev VVA-14 ground-effect
hydroplane, designed in 1972 as an anti-submarine
craft.
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This is a Tu-114 "Russiya", a civilian derivative
of the Tu-95 "Bear", which has the distinction of
being the largest propeller-driven airliner to
ever go into service, seating up to 220
passengers. It also still holds the record for
the world's fastest turbo-prop aircraft, aided by
its swept wings. It's said that this is the very
aircraft in which Khruschev flew when he visited
the United States. If you fly into Russia through
Domodedovo airport (DME) then you'll see one
displayed at the front of the airport, in better
looking condition than this one.
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No doubt this Tu-144 airliner will be the
highlight of Monino for many people, even though
it's difficult to get photographs because of the
aircraft surrounding it. This is the Russian
version of the Anglo-French Concorde airliner,
whose plans the Russians had acquired from the
French by a bit of industrial espionage. The
"Concordski", as it was dubbed, flew two months
before Concorde, and had a number of differences
from the Concorde, including a main wing more
optimized for high-speed flight, and a small
auxiliary canard wing just behind the cockpit
which was extended at low speeds to improve
takeoff and landing performance. The Tu-144 was
about 4 meters longer than Concorde and also had
a maximum speed of Mach 2.35 (2,500 km/h or 1,550
mph) compared to the Concorde's maximum speed of
Mach 2.2 (2,330 km/h or 1,450 mph). Some think
that the French got their re v! enge when a
Tu-144 crashed at the 1973 Paris Air Show, the
theory being that the plane's pilot had to take a
drastic evasive maneuver to avoid hitting a
French Mirage chase plane which had been launched
without telling the Russians. Another theory is
that the Russians tinkered with the controls
before the flight to allow a faster and more
dramatic rate of climb, which lead to the
aircraft stalling and crashing, killing the
entire crew of 6 as well as 8 people on the
ground. In the end the Tu-144 only flew 102
scheduled flights with Aeroflot, about half of
which carried only freight. In 1996 NASA started
a series of flights of a refurbished Tu-144 in
order to research the possibilities of a
second-generation supersonic jet airliner, but
this program was cancelled in 1999.