MI-26 Helicopter || Indian AirForce

Mi-26

Introduction :

If you've ever wondered whether a helicopter would be able to lift a passenger airline I haven't but now I do I can confirm that not only is it possible but the Russians did it just a few years ago.

The Workhorse that day which lifted the Tupolev Tu-135 airliner was none other than the legendary MI-26 helicopter.

The largest most powerful helicopter to ever go into serial production this is a true mechanical monster in the most Soviet Union kind of way.

The MI-26's vast bulk has a payload capacity twice that size of the American Chinook helicopter which is massive as it is.

The MI-26 was actually a smaller lighter version of what the soviets had first envisioned because the soviets always think well absolutely massive.

The prototype named MI Mil V-12 remains to this day the largest helicopter ever to be built.

It had a brief short-lived history in which it shattered numerous world records while also laying the blueprints of what would come later with the MI-26.

The first prototype MI Mil took to the skies for the first time on the 10th July 1968 lifting with it a world record 31 tons to an altitude of 2, 951 meters that's 9,682 feet.

Less than a month later that record was eclipsed on the 6th August 1969 when it heaved 44 tons to a height of 2,255 meters that's 7,398 feet.

The second prototype was also constructed but didn't fly for the first time until March 1973.

Mi-26

The Need Of MI-26 :

While the MI Mil V-12 had been a great success it was discontinued in 1974 primarily because its intended use to carry heavy nuclear weapons was no longer needed because we found more efficient ways to get them across the world.

While the MI Mil V-12 was an astonishing record breaker the Soviets decided they needed something smaller the project was named Izdeliye 90 or project 90 with the designation MI-26 coming later.

It was required to have an empty weight less than half its maximum takeoff weight.

The MI-26 was designed by Marat Tishchenko who had worked under the famed Mikhail Mil founder of the OKB-329 design bureau Moscow’s primary helicopter plant which opened in 1947.

They had built the first soviet mass-produced helicopters the Soviets already had several heavy-lift helicopters namely the MI6 and MI-V12.

At the time the MI-6 was the world's largest and fastest production helicopter with a top speed 300 km/hr and a wing area of 35m squared but the new helicopter would need to replace it.

The MI-26 would go on to be used for both military and civilian use.

But it was primarily built to be able to lug the gigantic military hardware that the Soviets had in their arsenals such as the 13-ton amphibious carrier and mobile ballistic missiles.

The idea was that they could be used in conjunction with the other mighty transportation goliath the Antonov an-22.

The prototype MI-26 got airborne for the first time on the 14th of December 1977 but the first production version didn't arrive until the 4th of October 1980.

Full development was completed in 1983 and two years later it was being used both soviet military and commercial service.

 Specification :

MI-26 has the distinction of being the first factory-equipped helicopter with a single eight-blade main lift rotor made of titanium and is powered by two 11,000 horsepower ZMKB Progress D-136 turboshaft engines.

The helicopter is capable of operating on only one engine in the event of the other failing.

The MI-26 has a payload capacity of up to 20 tons which are roughly the same as 11 family sized cars.

It comes with an empty weight of just over 28 tons making it the second heaviest helicopter ever after the MI Mil-26.

The helicopter measures 40 meters in length and has a height of 8.1 meters.

In terms of human capacity, the MI-26 can accommodate 90 combat-ready troops 63 seated civilians or 60 stretches.

The crew of five is composed of two pilots a flight engineers a navigator and a flight technician.

The MI-26 has a maximum speed of 295 km/hr and a range of 800 km its service ceiling is 4600m the height of 14 Eiffel towers.

MI-26 Vs Chinook :

In 2002 two American chinook helicopters went down in the mountains of Afghanistan at altitudes of 2 600 meters and 3 100 meters.

The Americans do of course have their own heavy lifting helicopters but the weight of the chinooks exceeded the maximum payload of nine tons that the US military sikorsky ch-53e could carry

There was only one helicopter that would be able to do the job now the US was certainly not about to go asking the Russian government for direct assistance

Instead, it was done through scaling aviation in Toronto and sports flight a Russian company which operated three civilian mi-26s for a small fee of hundred thousand dollars

The US leased one of the helicopters and flew one of the chinooks out of the mountains and back to Kabul the other has since been deemed unrepairable and was just left there

6 months later another chinook made a hard landing north of Bagram and once again MI-26 was called into action.

MI-26 Variants :

While most of the MI-26's operational history has been through peaceful means let's not forget that they were designed as military helicopters.

Over the years there have been no less than 14 variations of the MI-26 ranging from disaster specific models to improved military versions.

The MI-26TM comes with an under-nosed gondola to be used as a crane.

The MI-26TP is a specific firefighting version complete with an internal 15 000-liter capacity fire retardant tank.

The MI-26MS has been specially designed as a medical evacuation helicopter to be used either as a field ambulance or even its own field hospital.

The MI-26T2V appeared in august 2018 and is the latest model of the MI-26 to be strictly used by the Russian military it comes with the new npk 92v avionics suite allowing for automatic mode airborne defense complex v2bisc anti-blast seats and new navigation and satellite communication systems.

The cockpit itself has also seen a significant upgrade and now comes with multifunctional displays.

Conclusion :

The MI-26 has also proven to be a huge success outside of Russia it has been exported for use in 15 different countries all of which use it for military purposes except for china who finds uses for both military and civilian purposes and Belgium who uses it just for civilian purposes.

The cost of a single MI-26 ranges from between 20 to 25 million USD.

This rugged powerhouse of a helicopter is now nearing 40 years in general production and as of 2015 316 have been built.

But it doesn't seem like this monster will be going anywhere soon the various upgrades that have been added show just how confident the Russians are about the MI-26.