Central Museum of the Russian Air Force. Unique
Not all aircraft on the site are open air and visible. Some of them are hidden in a hangar with the intriguing name “Unique aerial vehiclets”.
Main publication: Central Museum of the Russian Air Force. Introduction.
Previous publication: Central Museum of the Russian Air Force. Helicopters.
Please note – not airplanes, but vehiclets. Although right from the entrance your gaze is directed directly at the plane.
The legendary bomber of the Russian aircraft designer and the American helicopter designer I.I. Sikorsky.
It is immediately necessary to clarify that this is a model of an aircraft created for the filming of the film “Poem of Wings” (1979) about the life and work of aircraft designers Tupolev and Sikorsky. The model cannot fly, only run and taxi on the ground.
It should be noted that this is one of a small number, namely a damn dozen, models in the museum.
After Muromets, his smaller contemporary, Voisin, catches the eye. We don’t have much equipment from the period of the First World War and the Civil War in our museums.
And only then, behind them, do you notice aircraft that are not planes, but gondolas of stratospheric balloons.
Well, or, above them, an unusually shaped glider.
There is not only one glider there, there are many of them, but somehow they did not interest me.
Maybe when I get here next time, I’ll be able to look at them carefully, but now I gave all my attention to the truly unique exhibits. And, you see, the triplane is clearly one of those.
The long red wings of the ANT-25 are distracting,
отвлекают длиннющие красные крылья АНТ-25,
which made history with the first transpolar flight.
By the way, also a layout.
More precisely, it is “…a technological copy of the ANT-25, manufactured at the experimental plant of the Design Bureau named after. A.N. Tupolev, based on the model of the aircraft on which the Moscow-Sant Jacinto flight was made.”
And only after that, under his wing, do you notice a tiny ANT-2 – the first and only copy.
A little further there is a corner of miracles: each one is unusual and unique.
True, not all of them are flying machines: snowmobiles even have a propeller, but they don’t fly.
What’s interesting is that this is not a prototype, but quite a production car. It’s just one thing in Pobeda to ride along the city streets, and quite another thing to carry mail across virgin snow.
A fashionable pre-war craze was aviettes.
Next there is a very strange design.
This is not an independent flying unit, but a test bench. Then they “attached” a cabin, wings and everything else to it: the result was the Yak-36 – the first Soviet vertical take-off and landing aircraft. It turns out that the previous report is not complete: not all helicopters are reflected there.
One of them hid here.
Its homely appearance and frail physique are compensated by a revolutionary rotor drive. True, he was the only one left.
Then the uniqueness fades away. Shavrov’s amphibian may be unique only in that this specimen has survived to this day.
The plane is significant and famous, but…
Then came a series of first Soviet jet fighters from various design schools, which is interesting and informative.
The exhibition ends with the first combat Soviet jet fighter MiG-15.
Colorful, but not entirely up-to-date, map of our route around the hangar (in case anyone gets lost).
