Soviet "heavyweight" Mi-26. Despite a rather long trial period and the state acceptance procedure, the first production Mi-26 had flaws.
The first helicopter, which got to the Center for Combat Use and Retraining of Flight Personnel (Torzhok), was lost due to the disaster on January 26, 1983, in which the entire crew of the head of the Center, Major General Nikolai Andreevich Anisimov, died. The reason was the destruction of the spar of one of the rotor blades during the flight from Torzhok to the Vydropuzhsk airfield. The tragedy forced the pilots to "fly" for the first time on Mi-26 equipped with a cable or chain connecting the aircraft to the ground. On the first helicopters, half-hour tethered flights sometimes revealed up to 7-9 malfunctions that required immediate elimination. Moreover, at first, not all the shortcomings were eliminated in 100% of combat vehicles. One of them was the place of docking of the tail boom with the helicopter fuselage, which was characterized by insufficient strength, which is reflected in the reports of the Flight Safety Center of the RF Armed Forces. In conditions of oblique blowing from the main rotor, the tail boom works in flight to create additional lift - this is helped by the characteristic profile. However, this requires a high strength of the joint, which was not available on the first machines.
The story of Vladimir Mitin, an engineer for the operation of the Ukhta detachment, who in 1990 worked in the group of adaptation of the modernized civilian Mi-26T for the conditions of Papua New Guinea, is indicative:
“We prepared a helicopter and flew. Suddenly, a technician, frightened to death, flew into the vestibule of the pressurized cabin.
- What is there, a fire? I asked.
- Beam …
- What is the beam?
- Look for yourself!
I went out into the empty cargo compartment, walked to the edge of the ramp. Below, in the breaks of the clouds, the mountains covered with jungle flashed. He put his hand on the frame and looked at the beam. My mother is a woman! She was spinning like a fish tail! The amplitude of the fluctuations was very large. The beam went up and to the left with some kind of twisting and, as if thinking whether to fall off or not, dived downward with a twist to the right along the flight. On the Mi-6, there were no such tricks near the beam: there it vibrated, rather, trembled in time with the vibrations of the helicopter. Not quite confidently, I got to the pressurized cabin.
- Saw?
- Saw. The latest design. Everything is as it should be, - I reassured the interlocutor …"
Later, after analyzing the situation, Mitin suggested:
"Theoretically, a situation is possible (for example, dropping a heavy load from the suspension), when, when the beam is swinging upward, the lightweight helicopter jerkily changes its altitude and falls down for a few moments (and then there will be trouble)."
Only by the end of 1990, on all Mi-26s produced, they reinforced the fastening of the problem beam. This was the result of a large debriefing at the Rostov Helicopter Plant, which was organized to summarize the operating experience of the giant. It was Mitin's remark at this event that became one of the key ones:
"Something needs to be done with the beam - it works abnormally."
Thus, at first, working on a giant helicopter could well be equated to the category of records. However, it was a common practice in those years to release a crude product with further improvements throughout the entire life cycle of the machine.
After carrying out the acceptance tests, which were mentioned in the previous parts of the cycle, the test pilots began to study the outrageous capabilities of the Mi-26. On February 4, 1982, test pilots A. P. Kholupov, S. V. Petrov, G. V. Alferov and G. R. heights with a load. And in December 1982, the female crew of Inna Kopets on the Mi-26 broke nine world records for height and carrying capacity at once. The next world achievement on the Soviet rotorcraft giant had to wait until August 1988, when the car passed the route Moscow - Voronezh - Kuibyshev - Moscow with a length of 2000 km at an average speed of 279 km / h. The helicopter was piloted by the crew of 1st class test pilot Anatoly Razbegaev, who tragically died on December 13, 1989 while testing the Mi-26.
Chernobyl diary
In 1986, the outstanding capabilities of the Mi-26 were brought in to liquidate the Chernobyl disaster. A squadron of heavy transport helicopters from Torzhok was alerted on April 27 and transferred to the Chernihiv airfield. And on April 28, the first vehicles began blocking the blazing block of the nuclear power plant. On May 2, another Mi-26 replenishment from Novopolotsk arrived in the radiation damage zone. The helicopter cabins were equipped with improvised lead shielding, and the transport compartment was equipped with containers for throwing overboard a special adhesive liquid to bind radioactive dust on the ground. Also, sand and lead were dropped onto the reactor from the Mi-26. In the first hours of operation, the main tactics were single sorties of helicopters, which were later replaced by a "carousel" of several machines. The Mi-26 of Lieutenant Colonel N. A. Mezentsev was engaged on a special mission - video filming of a reactor bursting with radiation, which made the rotorcraft stay in the air for a long time over the affected area.
An unpleasant story happened to the sticky liquid that the heavy trucks poured into the vicinity of the working area. The fuselage of the Mi-26 was literally covered with this "molasses" in many places, and the radioactive dust raised by the rotor at low flight altitude was firmly deposited on the helicopter. This, of course, added a dose of radiation to the crews and maintenance personnel. The Mi-26 is an expensive unit, and the management did a lot to save the helicopters that were pretty “radioactive”. At the plant in Rostov-on-Don, in an attempt to deactivate the equipment, workers scraped off the dried crust from the bottom of the fuselage with wooden shovels. Needless to say, the factory workers worked without appropriate protective equipment? The level of radioactive radiation, 1.8 times higher than the threshold (this is after decontamination!), Was considered the norm, and the car continued to serve. The military was forced to bury the Mi-26 only by a tenfold excess of the safe level of radiation.
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Cemetery Mi-26 in Ukraine
Test pilots also worked in the Chernobyl affected zone on the Mi-26. Thus, G. R. Karapetyan and A. D. Grishchenko were involved in the development of a 15-ton dome-shaped cover installation for the reactor mouth. It was planned to deliver the huge cover on the external suspension of the helicopter, and the pilots performed 30 preliminary tests on mock-ups, repeating the ruined reactor. After a full cycle of tests, the test pilots left for rest from the affected area, and then the order to start the operation followed. At the disposal were only combat pilots, who could not take into account all the factors of the flight and broke the cover. Most of the testers in the affected area worked Anatoly Demyanovich Grishchenko - he supervised the installation of 20-ton special filters on the surviving power units and taught "combat" crews the intricacies of working with an extended external suspension. Standard-length ropes could not be used, as the extremely powerful main rotor lifted clouds of dust even with adhesive-treated earth. All this ended tragically for Anatoly Grishchenko - he died in 1990 from leukemia. The title of Hero of Russia was awarded posthumously …
Grave of Anatoly Grishchenko
The feat of the helicopter pilots in Chernobyl has become an event not only on a national scale, but also on a global scale.
"The American Helicopter Society is presenting this award to pilots who participated in the initial helicopter operations to eliminate the nuclear reactor accident at Chernobyl, in recognition of their demonstrated courage and self-control."
This is an explanatory text of the Captain William J. Kossler award of the American Helicopter Society, which was presented on May 6, 1991 to Colonels N. A. Mezentsev, E. I. Meshcheryakov, Lieutenant Colonels S. V. Kuznetsov, A. A. Murzhukhin, V. A. Prasolov, N. I. Sheverdin and Major V. A. Kulikov from the Center for Combat Use and Retraining of Flight Personnel in Torzhok. Mi-26 became excellent tools in that fight against an invisible enemy.
