Mil Mi-8

28 SEATS ■ 200km/h (125mph)

The Thoroughbred

Rather as the Mil Design Bureau had developed the Mi-1 into the far superior Mi-2 by conversion to turbine power, so, in 1960, it turned its attention to doing the same with the Mi-4. The Mil Mi-8 first flew in 1961, and by the following year had been further improved with a five-blade rotor. It could carry 28 passengers — about the same as a DC-3/Li-2 — and for freight use, its rear fuselage was fitted with clam-shell doors.

Such a combination of characteristics made the Mi-8 into a thoroughbred aircraft, reliable and versatile. For example, during the construction of the BAM Railroad during a typi­cal year, 1976, seventeen construction organizations together employed helicopters for almost 22,000 flying hours. Almost exactly half of these were with Mil Mi-8s.

Helicopter Capital of the World

The Tyumen region of Russia, with its world’s largest deposits of natural gas, and one of the world’s largest producers of crude oil, has been remarkable for its extensive use of heavy – lift helicopters for pipe-laying and as flying cranes for build­ing tall towers for electricity transmission lines. Thus, the Mi-8 was quickly found to be an essential maid-of-all-work. The Tyumen sub-division of Aeroflot (or Tyumen Aviatrans, T. A.T. under the new reorganization) lists 450 helicopters in its fleet inventory of 660 aircraft. No less than 360 of the rotorcraft are Mil Mi-8s. Other regions of Aeroflot do not boast such numbers, but more than 1,000 Mi-8s are to be found east of the Urals alone.

Holiday-makers disembark from a Mil Mi-8 at the helicopter pad at Yalta. (Boris Vdovienko)

A Mil Mi-8 on an improvised ‘pad’ of oil pipes on the Yamal Peninsula, in northwest Siberia.

The good ship Inniy, stuck in the Arctic ice, but with a Mil Mi-8 available to prove that all is not lost. (Photos: Vasily Каїру)