Russian Giants

[Music] [Music] in the summer of 1989 as the Cold War draws to a close Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska plays host to the world's largest aircraft Soviet an-225 with its enormous wingspan of nearly 300 feet is a haunting reminder of the past but ironically it will be the last of the Russian giant [Music] from the earliest time Soviet designers had a reputation for producing large aircraft before World War two most Russian Giants began life as bombers some like the tb-3 designed by tupolev were converted for use as transport aircraft [Music] but not all Soviet transport aircraft of the 1930s were large nor were they necessarily soviet designs the PS 84 was a Soviet version of the American Douglas dc-3 built under license in 1936 the Russian aircraft engineer Paris Nazareth was sent to America to see the construction of the vc2 at first hand Aeroflot had bought one and Liz unas visit was intended to give the Russian some technical background and while he was in America Liz une of saw the dc-3 and sent enthusiastic reports back to the Soviet Union as a result the Soviet government negotiated the license to manufacture a Russian version of the dc-3 nazuna returned to the Soviet Union to supervise production at first the Russian version was called the PS 84 lisanna modified the design for Soviet conditions and concentrated on making it suitable for cold weather operation the value of laser nerves work was recognized by changing the designation of the aircraft from PS 84 to Li to the Li to was used in the Great Patriotic War as a transport and troop carrier and it was produced in its thousands like its American cousin the dc-3 it remained in service for many years and was a classic aircraft [Music] the n2 was the work of designer alig and torna in comparison with the Li - it looks old but even though it's a biplane it's actually a post-war design it flew for the first time in August 1947 and Thomas began his career designing gliders and the n2 was his first powered aircraft it was an extraordinarily successful heavy even though the design is almost half a century old a and twos are still flying in large numbers these days some of them have updated avionics and instrumentation and they've been adapted for many different purposes they can carry passengers or cargo and operate in a great variety of climatic conditions this one is fitted as a parachute trainer the landing gear of the an-2 is fixed it's very strong capable of landing on the worst unprepared aspect the wheels are interchangeable with skis for operation from Russia's winter snow the n2 was produced continuously in the Soviet Union for almost twenty years and was also produced in Poland in great numbers originally it was called the shell Scott has a nice Ginny a Jean meaning general-purpose agricultural aircraft number one but when its potential was recognized it was renamed the an-2 after anton anton of himself was awarded a Stalin prize and a hundred thousand rubles in 1952 he was on his way to becoming a great designer of Russian giant the aleutian design bureau was to become another producer of large Soviet aircraft its first transport aircraft was the il-12 designed in 1944 as a successor to the Soviet dc-3 copy Ellucian was famous for the production of the enormous ly successful storm of ik ground-attack aircraft of the Great Patriotic War but neither the il-12 nor its success of the il-14 would share these storm of extinction like most Soviet aircraft the il-12 and 14 were designed for a combination of civil and military youth the il-12 went into service with both the red Air Force and the Soviet airline Aeroflot immediately after the war [Music] as an airliner the il-12 had shortcomings it needed a crew of five and could only carry a maximum of 32 passengers its fuel consumption was high and I Western standards it was not an economic proposition for airline operation but its prime purpose was military Chancellor and the design was effective enough to warrant the development of this aircraft its successor the il-14 the il-14 was given an unfortunate NATO code name it was called the crate for the design bureau that produced the stone mobic this was less than flattering the crate certainly compared poorly with Western transports of the time but in three post-war decades Ellucian would establish a strong reputation as the designer of giant transport [Music] in the early 50s the American Lockheed company produced a design that set a new standard for military transport aircraft it was the c-130 Hercules it had four powerful turboprop engines and a fat fuselage with the greatest possible internal capacity for its size it entered service in 1956 the development of Soviet transport aircraft had fallen behind the West in 1956 the best Soviet transport was the twin-engine crate Nikita Khrushchev encouraged the development of new Soviet transports but it was almost four years before Soviet military transport aviation answered the c-130 the new aircraft was from the intolerant Bureau it had high wings and for turboprops it looked remarkably like the Hercule the an-12 was codenamed covered by NATO its configuration size and mission all coincided closely with c-130 but in some ways it was prudent the c-130 was completely pressurized in air-conditioned the an-12 cargo hold was not the original engines of the c-130 at four and a half thousand horsepower each was slightly more powerful than those of the an-12 the wingspan of the Hercules was 132 feet 8 feet greater than the a and 12 but the an-12 was about 8 feet longer [Music] the an-12 was significantly faster than Hercules capable of more than 480 miles an hour but the Hercules had a greater range with its maximum payload for a transport aircraft the most important statistic is payload and here the Hercules was a clear winner its maximum takeoff weight of a hundred and seventy five thousand pounds was about 40,000 pounds greater than the an-12 [Music] the an-12 was not a new design it was a development of the antonov a and 10a a commercial transport that had considerable teething troubles in 1959 design conferences were held to improve its performance and adapt it for military use the wingspan was reduced to give extra speed and the fuselage was lengthened to increase cargo and fuel capacity a defensive gun position was added to the tail and the large rear door was fitted the result was the an-12 it could carry 44,000 pounds of useful load or eighty to a hundred fully armed troops it could operate from poor airfields and it could be fitted with skis for use in snow at last the post-war Soviet Union had a competitive transport aircraft the n12 came just at the right time in the early 60s a new doctrine of air mobility was added to Soviet military thinking it involved a variety of concept from air mobility nuclear war to air transport support of deep offensive operations although the emphases of Soviet military thought in the 60s was on nuclear war the possibility of conventional conflict was not ignored throughout the 60s paratroops dropped from Soviet transport aircraft were a feature of Soviet military exercises in March 1970 in a military exercise called Vina 8000 paratroops and 160 combat vehicles were unloaded in 22 minutes most of them from a and 12 tons the cub has been used for a variety of tasks in addition to its straight cargo or troop-carrying Road this one is being used at the Zhukovsky Institute outside Moscow to test ejection seat systems less unusual variants of the cub have included two different versions adapted for electronic intelligence some in service with Soviet Naval Aviation there's also an electronic countermeasures version designed to fly in orbit just inside Soviet borders it carries equipment to jam the radars of NATO Hawk missile batteries the adaptation to test ejection seats is one of the more unusual variations of the basic cub [Music] although the an-12 was a breakthrough for soviet military transport from a world point of view it was not particularly significant but the next Soviet military transport was when it was introduced in 1965 it was the largest aircraft in existence it came from the Antonov Bureau and was called the a and 22 NATO gave it the codename talk but it's Soviet nickname was anthias the name was an unfortunate choice because in Greek mythology the wrestler and fierce was invincible so long as he had one foot in contact with his mother like its namesake the antonov an-22 and face was more impressive when it remained in contact with the earth then when it was in the air the anthias was designed to carry the largest of the Soviet fighting vehicles including the t-62 t-72 and t-80 battle tanks and Sam missile launchers [Music] originally there was great hope for its development as a military transport and as a civil airliner capable of carrying more than 700 passengers a production run of about 30 aircraft a year was planned but by the time production was halted in 1974 only 75 had been built likely an-12 cub the an-22 was in some ways crude pressurization was restricted to the flight deck and forward cabin which could hold about 28 passengers but it had enormous load capacity the floor of the cargo hold was reinforced titanium which allowed you to support the weight of the giant tanks it was designed to carry it had a combination door and ramp which opened to the rear two winches and for traveling gantry's the wingspan of this giant turboprop aircraft was 211 feet it had a top speed of 460 miles an hour and it could lift a hundred and eighty thousand pounds of Freight in one record attempt it lifted a hundred metric tons about two hundred and twenty thousand pounds to a height of twenty-five thousand feet but in spite of its success as a record-breaker the a and 22 was a disappointing aircraft in service the Antonin Bureau would have to wait some years before it could establish genuine preeminence as a designer of giant aircraft in the late 60s the aleutian design bureau was given the task of designing a transport aircraft with four turbofan engines it was to be in the same class as the US air force's c-141 Starlifter the result was the il-76 codenamed Candide by NATO the prototype flew for the first time in March 1971 it was similar in appearance to the star lifter but a bit larger overall its wingspan was a hundred and sixty-five feet and its lengths are 153 it was a big aircraft but by no means of giants one of the briefs of the il-76 was that it should replace the turbo powered a and twelve cub it's designers were required to produce an aircraft that could carry almost 90,000 pounds of freight a distance of 3100 miles in less than six hours all this had to be achievable in the harshest conditions of a Siberian winter it was a versatile aircraft this version is able to carry and drop large quantities of fire retardant in July 1975 the il-76 established 25 official payload to height and payload at speed record nature identified five different versions of the basic il-76 there is also an airborne early warning and control version known by NATO as mainstay another major variant of the Isle 76 was the result of ten years of development from the mid 70s to the mid 80s it is the in-flight refueling version known to nato as Midas this Midas is refueling a group of Sukhoi 27 s present-day Russia's premiere frontline fighter in the 1950s the Soviet Air Force used a wingtip to wingtip system if your line from the wingtip of the tanker connected to a fuelling nozzle on the wingtip of the receiving aircraft in the system used by the my desk multiple lines are extended from the fuselage and wings of the tanker they connect to the extendable refuelling nozzles in front of the pilots canopy on the su-27 using this system it's possible to refuel three aircraft at one time the tanker version of the il-76 was originally designed to refuel larger aircraft than the su-27 one of its purposes was to extend the range of the tupolev tu-22m backfire the Soviet Union's supersonic swing wing strategic bomber in the mid seventies this function theoretically became irrelevant the in-flight refuelling probe was removed from backfire B's as a result of strategic arms limitation talks however many Westerns authorities of the time believed the refueling probe could be replaced at short notice if that is the case the Midas still has the potential to extend the backfires somewhat disappointing grain the Midas is certainly an effective companion to the superb Russian issue 27 and mig-29 fighters allowing their operational radius to extend deep into Europe and Asia Soviet practice was always to use its aircraft as flexibly as possible this is 76 is performing extremely low level cargo dropped test runs [Music] in 1967 just after the arab-israeli war an article in the london economist was headed bears can't fly it suggested that the reason the Soviet Union had not intervened on the Arab side was lack of strategic mobility it suggested that the same problem affected any Soviet military action outside the Eurasian landmass and that the Soviet Union was incapable of using small mobile forces to further its policies in remote parts of the world the article went on to say that if the Soviet Union attempted to solve this problem by improving its ability to move troops by air it would be a bad omen for east-west relations in fact the Soviet Union was already moving in that direction it had already negotiated permission to overfly Yugoslavia and very shortly after the arab-israeli war was busy carrying arms and equipment to the defeated Arab states via Yugoslavia and Iraq [Music] by the time the 1973 arab-israeli conflict broke out the Soviet Union was in a position to offer far greater air transport systems than had been the case in 1967 in October 1973 Soviet military transport aviation made over a thousand resupply flights to Cairo into NASA u.s. President Nixon was concerned that the Soviet Union would airlift some of his Airborne Division's to intervene directly in the fighter [Applause] [Music] Nixon declared a defense condition 3 alert and placed the u.s. 82nd Airborne Division on an advanced state of readiness Soviet military transport had come a long way in just six years as il-76 s began to replace the a and 12 cub it improved even more by the second half of the 70s Soviet military transport aviation and arif lot were able to reach deep into Africa and Asia supplying arms equipment and troops the use of Aeroflot aircraft which appeared to be civilian allowed the Soviet Union to avoid overt infringement of mutual in December 1979 5000 Soviet airborne troops were airlifted into the Afghan capital Kabul these troops assisted in overthrowing the Afghan regime and replacing it with a pro Soviet group by 1981 it was clear that the Soviet Union held an advantage in any race with the u.s. to intervene in a military situation in the Eurasian landmass in Soviet eyes the situation recalled the glory days of the 1930s when soviet TV threes could overwhelm enemy positions by dropping their large loads of paratroops into the heart of the action an estimate in the early 80s was that it would take six days for the u.s. to get a marine amphibious Brigade of sixteen thousand five hundred troops to the Persian Gulf at the same time the Soviet Union using Soviet military transport aviation and arif lot could have 20,000 troops on the ground there in two days in those circumstances the comparative crudité of Soviet transport aircraft became an advantage they were generally more capable of landing on primitive airfields their onboard cargo handling equipment made them very self-contained they had auxiliary power units for takeoff from poorly equipped airfields they often carried their own ground engineers to solve any problems that might arise in the field [Music] outside Eurasia Soviet Airborne Division's of the a and twelves a and 20 tools and il-76 s had their shortcomings and America compared them [Music] Soviet military exercises were impressive but there was a problem with the aircraft that delivered tanks and troops during battle production of Vijayan an-22 had finished in 1974 and it had not been replaced smaller il-76 was the only Soviet jet-powered heavy transport in 1980 the first flight of a jet-powered Russian capable of delivering battle tanks and troops in great numbers was still two years [Music] in 1968 the lockheed c-5 a galaxy took the title of the world's largest aircraft from the Antonov anthias the galaxy's wingspan was 222 feet its maximum takeoff weight almost seven hundred and seventy thousand pounds was more than 200,000 pounds greater than the Russian giant it was much faster and its range was great it was unchallenged as the world's largest aircraft for 14 years the performance of the an-22 anthias was disappointing to the soviet authorities its production run was cut short in 1974 and development began on a successor a jet-powered aircraft larger still than the Lockheed galaxy the prototype did not fly until December 1982 but when it eventually took to the air it assumed the title of the world's largest aircraft [Music] it was designed by the antonov Bureau building on what Antonov had learned from the anthias it also benefitted from American experience with the galaxy [Music] the fact that the Soviet Union was able to build an aircraft of this size that was more than just a showpiece came as something of a surprise to the West in the early 80s Western authorities were not sure of the state of large jet engine development in the Soviet Union they didn't know where the Soviet turbofan engines were comparable with those of the West in power and fuel economy this vast aircraft dispelled any doubts its four giant low tariffs turbofans produced more than 50,000 pounds of thrust each they made it a very effective performer in the air on July the 26th 1985 an an-124 said 21 official world records it lifted a payload of more than three hundred and seventy-seven thousand pounds to a height of 35,000 feet this was 53 percent greater than the previous record which had been set by the galaxy the first and one to fall scene in the West appeared at the Paris Air Show in 1985 it was named the Ruslan after the giant Russian hero immortalized by pushing Soviet designers have been very sensitive about the code names applied to their aircraft by NATO and a time some NATO names that were considered by the West to be too flattering were changed they were replaced with something that more accurately reflected the degree of bitterness existing in the east-west relations at the time but in the case of the an-124 nature made an appropriate and even generous choice they named it the Condor after the world's largest flying bird [Music] but rondure is similar in appearance to the Lockheed galaxy the major difference is that the galaxy has a t-tail arrangement with the tail plane mounted high on top of the fin and in the Condor the tail is mounted low on the rear fuselage the Condor is a great leap in size past the galaxy its wingspan 240 feet is almost 20 feet greater its maximum takeoff weight exceeds the galaxy by more than a hundred thousand pounds but it's not as fast as the galaxy and its range carrying maximum payload is shorter [Music] saving accounts of the development of the condor say that it was relatively trouble-free once it entered service there was little need to make significant changes either to the structure or the subsystems of the aircraft by 1986 there were five in service they were being used principally for heavy lift work in Siberia on one flight a condor carried an 80 metric ton turbine into Central Asia it had to be loaded with a specially built cradle but rondall started making international air show appearances in 1985 in Paris in 1986 it made a non-stop 12-hour flight from Moscow to abbotsford in British Columbia for an air show there this aircraft is landing at Farnborough in 1988 one of the great challenges in an aircraft of this size is the design of landing gear and brakes the Condors braking system includes protection against overheating that could lead to tire bursts small air foils are placed inside the wheel hubs to draw in cooling air during the aircraft's Grand row the Condor was developed in the days before perestroika but even so helped with the design of the landing gear and braking system of salt in the West anton off tried to arrange meetings with the european landing gear and brake manufacturer to ask for information about their carbon brakes the requests were rejected in the end the landing gear was a major achievement there are 24 wheels and the system is designed so that the aircraft can operate from a variety of substandard surfaces these include unprepared airfields hard packed snow and ice covered swampland but it must take great courage to land an aircraft as heavy as this on ice [Applause] [Music] in 1989 the Soviet Union began to offer the an-124 for charter to international customers who needed access to an aircraft with unusually large lift capacity this in 1 to 4 is landing in Hamburg Germany for a very special mission it has been hired to carry a 50 year old aircraft the yonkers ju 52 to the united states for a 10 month goodwill tour the tour is sponsored by the German airline Lufthansa the English 52 has been disassembled and packed into a large container ready for loading into the vast cargo hold of the condor the main hold is cavernous it's a hundred and 18 feet long and 21 feet wide the whole of this area is floral titanium to give the strength necessary to support the immense loads it's designed to accommodate the structure of the hold also uses a large amount of trumpet material which gives great strength with less weight than metals the condor has two enormous openings for access one at the nose and one under the rear of the fuselage the rear opening is a combination door and ramp the aircraft can be loaded from the front and the rear at the same time it has a crew of seven with accommodation for reserve crew for long flights when the Soviet Union offered the Condor international charter work in 1989 the Antonis Bureau felt that it had an advantage because of the aircraft's enormous load capacity and its ability to operate from surfaces of course standard at the time the an-124 was far ahead of its rivals as the largest and most powerful aircraft in the world but Antonov were already testing a development of the an-124 that would take the concept of giant aircraft another major step forward the Antonov an-225 was designed to carry immense loads either inside its vast cargo hold or mounted on top of the fuselage one of its most important potential loads was the Soviet space shuttle the bore on it could be used to carry the Kuran piggyback fashion in the same way boeing 747s had been used to carry the American space shuttle for atmospheric testing and for transport to and from the launch site the combination of the giant an-225 and the boron was shown to the western world for the first time at the 1989 Paris Air Show by that time the first an-225 had been test-flying for six months the boron was mounted on the back of the an-225 for the first time in May 1989 at the Baikonur cosmodrome boron was the name of the Soviet Union's first shuttle orbiter at the time it flew to the Paris Air Show on the back of the an-225 Soviet authorities were debating whether one or two further shuttle orbiters would be built the boron made the Soviet Union's first unmanned shuttle test mission in November 1988 originally before the an-225 became available it was transported on the back of a converted me Ashish Jeff m4 bomber [Music] in August 1989 in an-225 landed at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska it was on its way with two mig-29 fighters to the Abbotsford Air Show in Canada the refuelling stop at Elmendorf was the first visit either Soviet aircraft had made to North America [Music] the evolution of this Soviet giant was extraordinary it flew for the first time just six years after the prototype of its predecessor da and one - for actual development time is three and a half years from the start of work to the prototypes first flight the speed of its development was only possible because it was based completely on the an-124 but even though the basic design components were the same it is a very different aircraft much bigger with far greater load capacity the an-225 s Russian name is Maria the dream and by Western standards it is just that almost impossibly larger than the largest Western transport aircraft the an-225 has the same engines as the a and when to fall looked at if da teens but it has six of them instead of four to accommodate the extra two engines a new central section adding almost 50 feet to the wingspan was incorporated into the center of the wing this means that the wingspan of the dream is 290 feet apart from the new central section the wings are identical to those of the an-124 the n22 5's maximum takeoff weight is more than 25 percent greater than any previous aircraft it is 600 metric tons about 1 million three hundred thousand five 250 tonnes of this is payload it's 100 tons greater than the payload VA and one to four could carry and it's about twice as much as the Lockheed c5 galaxy [Music] the nose gear has two side by side twin wheel units they can kneel allowing the nose to drop close to the ground for loading the main landing gear each have seven sets of two wheels 28 wheels in all this gives such a load bearing spread that the an-225 in spite of its immense bulk can operate from unprepared fields the front cargo doors of the two to five operate in the same way as the 1 to 4 but there is no rear door underneath the fuselage to compensate the 2 to 5 has the extra flexibility of being able to carry large external though the flight deck is almost identical to the an-124 with accommodation for a crew of seven the fuselage was lengthened 23 feet by adding two additions fore and aft of the wing almost all this new length is included in the cargo bay which is a hundred and forty-one feet long the an-225 needs eleven and a half thousand feet of runway to take off with a full internal payload it has a range of 2800 miles it is alone in the world of aviation in size it Dwarfs its antecedent the a and 1/2 for which in turn dwarfed other large aircraft like the c5 and the Boeing 747 the Antonov design bureau has made extraordinary progress a leg Antonis vision of quality in serbia transport aircraft began with the modest a and two biplane in 1947 within 40 years his Bureau has designed the world's two largest aircraft with the introduction of the condor and six years later the dream Antonov had dragged the Soviet Union back to the top of the worlds producers of large aircraft a position it had not held since the early 1930 [Music] the appearance of the dream coincided with perestroika and the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union the a and one to four and two to five are no longer protected by artificialities of the Soviet economy they are now fighting with a heavyweights of the capitalists for a continuing place in world [Music] whether they make it or not is for history to decide but at the moment there is nothing on the aerospace horizon to match the two splendid russian giant [Music] coming up next on the Discovery Channel explore your subconscious as experts in the field of dream research offer ways to interpret nocturnal thoughts and the power of dreams then they broiled by day and Fries by night explore the world's deserts on the living planet [Music]

Channel: Phil Cipher

Views: 263,547

Rating: 4.7768545 out of 5

Keywords: Russian Giants, Wings of the Red Star, Soviet Aviation, Tupolev Aircraft, An-2, An-124 Ruslan, Li-2, Il-12, An-12, An-22, Il-76, An-225 Mriya

Id: L18Y3gVx1is

Length: 44min 49sec (2689 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 26 2017