Mil Mi-26: The Biggest Helicopter Ever Built

hello everybody welcome back to another brand new episode of mega projects this one is the mill mi26 it's a massive helicopter before we get started by the way i've got something to say about massive helicopters when i was at school every year this giant chinook i was in the cadets like where you pretend to be soldiers and every year this giant chinook would come and it would land on one of the school fields and take the cadets up for like this tour on this giant helicopter around and it was awesome and i was like 12 years old and there was nothing i was looking forward to forward to more than getting on this giant helicopter and then by the time i'm 14 and i can join the cadets they didn't do the helicopter trips anymore so i'm very bitter about helicopters anyway this video is made possible by the great courses plus an on-demand video learning service you can learn at your own pace no tests no schedules free trial through the link below they of course make this stuff possible so thanks to them and i'll tell you a little bit more about them in a bit but enough rambling let's get into the video [Music] 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 german 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 it's got these two giant er rotor blades it's a huge machine while its rotators have the same wingspan as an airbus a380 but to tell you the truth of the mi-26 we need to start with another helicopter [Music] quite astonishingly the mi-26 was actually a smaller lighter version of what the soviets had first envisioned because the soviets always think well absolutely massive you've seen enough megaprojects videos to know that well hopefully maybe this is the first one you've ever seen in that case welcome to megaprojects go back and watch the old stuff if you want to no pressure the prototype named mill v12 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 mill v12 with the registration ssr21142 important information there took to the skies for the first time on the 10th of 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 of august 1969 when it heaved 44 tons to a height of 2255 meters that's 7 398 feet and i'm saying the feet here and i know i said i'll just do metric and put the feet on screen but that's because even though i primarily use metric i still think of planes flying at 30 000 feet so i feel like the comparison is useful i mean passenger planes flying at 30 000 feet the second prototype was also constructed but didn't fly for the first time until march 1973. while the mill v12 had been a great success it was discontinued in 1974 primarily because its intended use to carry heavy nuclear weapons was no longer needed and that's not because we no longer need nuclear weapons although that would be nice but because we found more efficient ways to get them across the world at other people while the milvi12 was an astonishing record breaker the soviets decided they needed something smaller the project was named ize delight 90 or project 90 with the designation mi26 coming later and it was required to have an empty weight less than half its maximum takeoff weight the mi-26 was designed by marat deschenko who had worked under the famed mikhail mill founder of the okb329 design bureau moscow's primary helicopter plant which opened in 1947 and built the first soviet mass-produced helicopters the soviets already had several heavy-lift helicopters namely the mi6 and the m12 at the time the mi6 was the world's largest and fastest production helicopter with a top speed 300 kilometers an hour and a wing area of 35 meters 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 arsenal 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 and if you've been following along with megaprojects you'll know that the an-22 still holds the world record for a payload capacity of any aircraft but while most things could be carried in the anatole of an-22 its large landing requirements limited its use a powerful heavy lifting helicopter would therefore be needed in order to move military hardware to more remote areas the prototype mi26 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 nearby 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 ivchenko progress ai-136 turboshot engines the helicopter is capable of operating on only one engine in the event of the other failing i guess that's what 11 000 horsepower gets you the mi-26 has a payload capacity of up to 20 tons which is 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 mill v12 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 when things are dire 60 stretches the crew of five is composed of two pilots a flight engineer a navigator and a flight technician the mi-26 has a maximum speed of 295 kilometers an hour and a range of 800 kilometers its service ceiling is 4 600 meters the height of 14 eiffel towers but it would rarely go anywhere near this now before we get into some more incredible facts and stats and stories about this absolute beast of a helicopter let me thank today's sponsor the great courses plus you can learn from the world's best professors on the great courses plus now if you're enjoying this channel and you really wanted to dive more into sort of the detailed engineering the science behind it all look i'm not a professor i don't know all of that incredible stuff but you know who who does have great professors the great courses plus they're not gonna let you down when it comes to learning some engineering indeed they've got a whole course 29 lectures all about the science of flight it's a great watch if you're enjoying this one you probably love it basically the great courses plus it's a university education but it's at your own pace there are no tests no schedules and it's incredibly easy to access pc tablet phone however you like they've also got audio streaming super convenient so you can listen and learn on the move and there are thousands of lectures to choose from so it's great stuff try it for free get a free trial at thegreatcoursesplus.com forward slash megaprojects or click the link in the description below of course doing that supports the show keeps me making more mega projects videos and let's get back to it [Music] by the time the mi26 came into service the cold war it was already winding down but the world's most powerful helicopter had still seen plenty of action one of the earliest programs that the mi 26 was involved with was the buren space program when the 225 was initially designed to be able to carry the buren space shuttle on its back something that it only did once before this the soviets had the idea of using the mi26 to transport the shuttle but tests proved dangerous and they were fortunately abandoned on the 26th of april 1986 reactor number four at the chernobyl nuclear power station exploded in the coming days weeks and months as many as 30 specially designed mi26s took part in the operation to prevent an all-out nuclear disaster an even worse nuclear disaster the helicopters were used both to measure radiation above the reactor and also drop insulating material to cover it this new design came with a filter system and protective screens mounted in the cabins to protect the crew from radiation but how much this really worked we don't know soviet union a little bit was a little bit tight-lipped about this stuff but moving on from that and by the way if you'd like to learn more about chernobyl we did a video all about the new sarcophagus which covers chernobyl the new save confinement i think that might have been the first video on this channel or one of the first at least go back and check it out if you fancy it anyway no question the most bizarre use of this giant helicopter occurred in october of 1999. an mi26 was called into action to transport something that hadn't moved for around 23 000 years the 25-ton block a frozen soil that was moved contained the preserved remains of a woolly mammoth who would later be christened yarkov mammoth after the young boy who had found it this was a good five tons over what it was designed to carry and after the trip from the siberian tundra to a lab in katunga in northern russia the helicopter was returned to the factory to have checks done on its airframe the helicopter was fine but we're sorry to report that the mammoth was definitely dead upon arrival and currently sits in an ice cave in katanga where he still is studied by scientists maybe it'll wake up when they thaw it it won't in 2002 two american chinook helicopters went down in the mountains of afghanistan at altitudes of 2 600 meters 8 500 feet and 3 100 meters 10 200 feet 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's military sikorsky ch-53e could carry there was only one helicopter that would be able to do the job now the u.s 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 u.s 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 six months later another chinook made a hard landing north of bagram and once again mi-26 was called into action on the 12th of may 2008 the ground in szechuan province in china began to shake the magnitude 8 earthquake killed almost 90 000 people with many rivers becoming blocked because of landslides the results of this were the so-called quake lakes these large bodies of water steadily built up behind many dams that have been created across the rivers eventually some of these small dams burst sending torrents of water downstream at least one mi-26 belonging to a branch of china's civil aviation service participated in the operation around szechuan province bringing in heavy earth-moving tractors to tangjiashan mountain an area difficult to access even in the best of times over 1 200 soldiers and experts arrived in the area shortly after the earthquake and 200 000 were evacuated down river from the slowly expanding quake lakes but while most of the mi26's operational history has been through peaceful means let's not forget that they were designed as military helicopters on the 19th of august 2002 an overloaded mi26 with 142 people on board was traveling near the chechen capital of grozny a service to a missile fired from an apartment block on the outskirts of the city by chechen separatists hit the mi-26 the helicopter began to spin out of control and crash-landed near the cancala military air base 127 people died in the incident the greatest loss of life in helicopter aviation history over the years there have been no less than 14 variations of the mi26 ranging from disaster specific models to improved military versions the mi 26 tm comes with an under-nosed gondola to be used as a crane the mi-26 tp 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 26 t2v appeared in august 2018 and is the latest model of the mi26 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 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 just in case you're interested in purchasing one of these yourself the cost of a single mi 26 ranges from between 20 to 25 million [Music] 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 mi26 their expertise has even been recruited by the chinese government eager to develop their own heavy lifting helicopter that will be able to operate in the mountains of tibet what has been designed is slightly smaller than the mi26 but it still bears all of the hallmarks a few years ago a retired tupelov tu-134 airliner needed to be transported to saint petersburg where it would become a training tool at the emergency situations training center this is by no means enormous airliner but it still weighs roughly 28 tons now while it couldn't fly there itself we aren't quite sure but hey when you've got plenty of mi-26s lying around i mean why not use those videos and images of the event provide evidence of something you might not otherwise believe the thunderous engines of the mi-26 roaring its rotor rhythmically lapping above it the line linking the tu134 and the mi-26 goes tense and suddenly the airline are lifted the almighty power of the mi-26 is something to behold as it steadily climbs into the sky the tupolev t-134 trailing below it if ever there was a single image that defined a truly wonderful piece of mechanical engineering it was this a small passenger airliner weighing slightly less than the statue of liberty heaved into the sky by this indomitable beast of burden that is the mi-26 so i really hope you found that video interesting that is an incredible machine an incredible helicopter if you've got suggestions i think it's a mega project some people have been like simon the planes aren't mega projects and i mean like you've seen a bunch of money goes into them right it's extraordinary i think it qualifies let me know if you've got other suggestions below and i shall make them and thank you for watching [Music] you

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 617,585

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Id: g6L0kUCw62k

Length: 15min 40sec (940 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 26 2020