Antonov An-24
48 SEATS ■ 450km/h (280mph)
Ivchenko AI-24 (2x 2,100ehp) ■ MTOW 21,000kg (46,3001b) ■ Normal Range 600km (375mi)
48 SEATS ■ 450km/h (280mph)
Ivchenko AI-24 (2x 2,100ehp) ■ MTOW 21,000kg (46,3001b) ■ Normal Range 600km (375mi)
The pictures and drawings on this page summarize the amazing diversity of the range of helicopters that have been put into use by Aeroflot, ranging from the diminutive 20- foot-long Kamov Ka-18 to the 108-foot-long Mil Mi-10, They can carry everything, from band-aids to buses, paramedics to pipelines. They have — unlike their opposite numbers in the West — taken their place alongside the fixed-wing aircraft, wherever they are needed, for carrying people from inaccessible villages, where even the Antonov An-2 dares not land (i. e. cliff faces or swamps), and for hauling large and ungainly cargoes like transmission towers for electric power lines. With these fine aircraft, the helicopter design bureaux of the Soviet Union have secured their place in aeronautical development history.
(Top right) A Kamov Ka-25K (SSSSR-21110). (J. M.G. Gradidge via John Stroud) (Right) A Mil Mi-10 transports an electricity transmission tower.
A large percentage of the nationwide high-tension electricity powerline grid of the Soviet Union was constructed with the help of flying cranes.
(V. Grebnev) (Top left) The Mil МІ-26Т, developed from the Mi-6, with more powerful engines to drive and eight-bladed rotor, is the champion heavy – lifter, able to lift vertically a load of twenty tons. (R. E.G. Davies) (Bottom left) A Kamov Ka-26 (SSSR-19S29) on ambulance duty. (V. Grebnev)
Had civil war not intervened in Russia, Irgor Sikorsky’s Il’ya Murometsy might have put his country in the forefront of air transport in Europe. But as the map shows, the massive foreign invasion after the Bolshevik Revolution postponed any development in this direction. |
The Preparations
Aviaarktika had already reached ever northwards during the late 1920s and had spread its wings far and wide across the expanses of the Soviet Union, in those areas where Aeroflot had no reason to go, for lack of people to carry in a vast mainly frigid region that was almost completely unpopulated, except for isolated villages and outposts. Rather like expeditions on the ground, such as those to the South Pole, Otto Schmidt, assisted by his deputy, Mark Shevelev, pushed further beyond the limits, very methodically.
The northernmost landfall in the Soviet Union is the tiny Rudolf Island, an icy speck on the fringes of the island group known as Franz Josef Land (named after an Austrian explorer). At a latitude of 82° North, Rudolf is only about 1,300km (800mi) from the Pole and a good location for a base camp and launching site. Access to Franz Josef Land, while haz
ardous because of the severe climate and terrain, is feasible as the twin-island territory of Novaya Zemlya accounts for about 800km (500mi) of the distance from the Nenets region.
On 29 March 1936, Mikhail Vodopyanov set off with Akkuratov in a two-plane reconnaissance of the possible air route to Rudolf Island (see map). Flying blind for much of the time, and having to contend with inconveniences such as boiling six pails of water before starting the engines with compressed air, they reached their destination, and reported that the conditions, while not ideal, were not impossible. On his return to Moscow on 21 May, Schmidt was sufficiently satisfied to make plans. He arranged for the ice-breaking ship Rusanov to carry supplies to Rudolf, appointed Ivan Papanin to lead the assault on the Pole, and selected a combination of four ANT-6 (G-2) four-engined bomber transports, and one ANT-7 (G-l) twin-engined aircraft for the task. Vodopyanov was to be the chief pilot.
The Assault
The working party sent to Rudolf did their work well. In addition to setting up a base camp and a small airstrip on the
shoreline, they rolled out a longer runway, with a slight slope to assist take-off, on a dome-shaped plateau about 300m (1,000ft) above the base camp. The squadron of aircraft flew up from Moscow, leaving on 18 March 1937. Reaching Rudolf, they began final preparations. The ANT-6s were estimated to need 7,300 liters (l,600USg) of fuel for the 18-hour round-trip to the Pole, and 35 drums were needed for each aircraft. Ten tons of supplies of all kinds were to be taken, and elaborate steps were taken to design light-weight and multipurpose equipment.
There were frustrating delays, as they waited anxiously for Boris Dzerzeyevsky, the resident weather-man, to report favorable conditions, and for Pavel Golovin, pilot of the ANT-7 reconnaissance aircraft, to confirm Dzerzeyevsky’s forecasts, and to test the accuracy of the radio beacons. On one flight, Golovin was stranded for three days when he had to make a forced landing on the ice. But eventually, the expedition received the all-clear.
Flying an ANT-6 (registered SSSR-N170), Mikhail Vodopyanov, with co-pilot M. Babushkin, navigator I. Spirin and three mechanics landed at a point a few kilometers beyond the North Pole (just to make sure) on 21 May 1937, at 11.35 a. m. Moscow time. Ivan Papanin, with scientists Yvgeny Federov and Piotr Shirsov, together with radio operator Ernst Krenkel, immediately established the first scientific Polar Station (PS-1) on the polar ice, on which they eventually drifted on their private ice-floe in a southwesterly direction until they were picked up off the coast of Greenland by a rescue ship on 19 February 1938.
Workhorse for the Seventies
While the giant Tupolev Tu-114 was making headlines during the latter ‘Sixties with its trans-Atlantic and long-haul services to east Asia, another aircraft from the same Design Bureau entered the Aeroflot scene rather quietly. Produced at Kharkov, the Tupolev Tu-134 was a much-modified Tu-124, so modified, in fact, with engines moved to external nacelles at the rear and vertical stabilizer at the top of the fin, in the fashion of the ВАС One-Eleven and the DC-9, that the original designation Tu-124A, was soon dropped. Rather like the Antonov An-24, its wider deployment on Soviet domestic, rather than international routes, meant that its extensive use was not at first realized by western observers. But, after entering service on 9 September 1967, the new short-haul jet quickly made its mark, as its export potential was greater than that of any previous Soviet airliner.
A Standard Airliner
Because of the sharp political barriers between east and west that prevailed during the Cold War, the Tupolev Tu-134 was not seen much in western Europe; but it quickly became a common sight at all the major airports in eastern Europe. The six countries of the ‘East Bloc’ as well as an airline in communist Jugoslavia, all bought substantial numbers of the rear – engined short-haul jet. This success was aided by, if not inspired by, the Berlin Agreement of 27 October 1965, signed by Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and east Germany, known familiarly as the ‘Six-Pool’. Though outnumbered by the larger Tupolev Tu-154, the smaller twin – jet was still to be seen here and there throughout the former Soviet Union well into the 1990s, a quarter of a century after its introduction.
The World’s Largest Airline
The Tupolev Tu-134’s debut coincided with a notable milestone in Aeroflot’s history. For several years, annual announcements by the Soviet Ministers for Civil Aviation (for which Aeroflot was effectively its operating division) suggested that its statistical stature was growing to the level of parity with the largest western airlines. By 1967, the Soviet airline was able to claim that it was the largest airline in the world, whether measured in passenger journeys made, or in passenger-miles flown. As Aeroflot’s presence in overseas markets was still modest, and often unobtrusive, most of this achievement was drawn from the domestic network. Fares within the
U. S.S. R., measured in terms of percentage of discretionary income, were (and still are, even in the post-Soviet era) extremely low. With state – subsidized cheap housing, public utilities, and public transport, and with cheap food, the average Soviet citizen could take an air trip to visit relatives or to take a vacation without diving too deeply into the family budget, meager though this may have appeared by a straight comparison with western income levels. The first Tu-134 service was from Moscow to Sochi, the Black Sea seaside resort, an event that was possibly symbolic of the momentum for growth that was sustained by Aeroflot during the 1970s.
An early production Tu-134 at Helsinki in 1972. (John Wegg) |
Eugene Loginov was the U. S.S. R. Minister of Civil Aviation during the 1960s, and effectively the head of Aeroflot. He was in charge when the Soviet airline became the largest airline in the world, measured by passenger boardings. (Boris Vdovienko)
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Making the Case
Certain entomologists realized the possible applications of aircraft as aids to agriculture very early in the history of powered flight; B. Rosinski, as early as 1913; N. Yatsky, in 1919; and N. N. Bogdanov-Katkov, in 1921. Also, in 1921, N. D. Fedotov suggested the use of aircraft for crop-spraying with insecticide. In 1922, a group of pilots presented a paper to the National Colegium of Agriculture of the R. S.F. S.R., and with the help of Professor V. F. Boldyrev, a special commission was formed to study the subject and to carry out experiments. During the summer, 32 experimental flights were made, in which 4.5 hectares were treated per flying hour, and these experiments continued during the next two years.
The techniques were put to the test in 1925. Under P. A. Sviridyenko’s direction, aircraft were sent to combat a plague of locusts in the flood plains of the Kuma River, in the northern Caucasus region, and during the next four years, similar operations were carried out in Daghestan, Tadjikistan, Kazakhstan, the Ukraine, and other districts in European Russia; and even as far off as Lake Baikal. A total of 111,000 hectares was treated.
Getting Under Way
In 1930, the wholesale practical application of aviation to agriculture began. An all-Soviet joint-stock company was formed, with a fleet of eleven Polikarpov U-2 aircraft; and
60,0 hectares were worked during that year. In 1931, the fleet had increased to 65 and the work in corresponding measure. Authority passed, in 1932, to Vsesoyuznyi Naychno – Issledovatyelskiy Institut Selskokhozyastvennoy I Lecnoy Aviatsiy (NIISKHA) (the All-Soviet Scientific Research Institute for Farming and Forestry Aviation,
which set up branches in Chimkent, Krasnodar, and Leningrad. Finally, in 1934, the responsibility for agriculture aviation passed to the Civil Aviation Fleet Aeroflot), and during the next few years activity grew until by 1940, almost a million hectares were covered by agricultural aircraft.
Post-War Expansion
As shown in the table on this page, aircraft were deployed widely after the end of the Second World War for agricultural work. The workload increased from 4 to 50 million hectares in the 15 years from 1951 to 1965. It doubled again during the next 15 years, reaching a peak of 108 million hectares in 1980. Nevertheless, during the next five-Year Plan, 463 mil
lion hectares were covered, or 40 percent of the total agricultural work. Of this, about 40 percent was in Russia, 20 percent in Kazakhstan, 18 percent in the Ukraine, and 15 percent in North Caucasus.