Posted on 11/28/2014 4:44:39 AM PST by WhiskeyX
Sat rusting away in a field 555 miles east of Moscow, these relics are all that's left of a bygone era of Soviet innovation in military and civilian aircraft.
Among them are some of the former Communist regime's greatest achievements in air travel, that have since been superseded many times and rendered redundant.
Nine thousand of the hulking Cold War wrecks can be seen at the vast plane and helicopter graveyard at Russia's largest aviation museum in Ulyanovsk, in the Middle Volga region.
Each off the exhibits had to make their last flight here, touching down at the Ulyanovsk-Central airport, just a few hundred yards from the museum.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
See the below satellite image with a few dozen of the aircraft seen at the museum.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ulyanovsk+Baratayevka+Airport/@54.270984,48.2091656,6900m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x415d347b00209523:0x20f756a5c26394f2
Stupid headline; aluminum doesn’t rust.
There were some photos on there of a worker that was painting these...maybe they got some funding to repaint and clean up the park???
I didn’t know airplane engine blocks, landing gear, etc were all made of aluminum.
just about all auto engine blocks are aluminum now also. the cylinder heads have been aluminum for many years..cast iron just doesn’t exist much anymore
Mike
cold war ping 2
“...a bygone era of Soviet innovation...”
“...the...Communist regime’s greatest achievements in air travel...”
Hyperbole, communism drives everything to the graveyard.
From the looks of the planes very few are recent designs. I’m betting there is a fair amount of steel, not iron, in those planes. Unless they’ve been stripped of steel and sent to china.
I’d like to know how much actual “innovation” came from the old CCCP. Looks to me like a great deal of it was stolen or reverse-engineered from US designs.
What a gold mine!
“Stupid headline; aluminum doesnt rust.”
Saying, “aluminum doesnt rust” is a commonly held and mistaken belief. One of the definitions of the word, “rust”, provided the the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is: “corrosive or injurious influence or effect.” Rust is an oxidized material, and the oxidation of aluminum produces Aluminum oxide, whereas the oxidation of Iron produces Iron oxide. Iron oxide rust is more corrosive than Aluminum oxide rust, because the Iron oxide rust does not produce a protective layer the way in which Aluminum oxide produces a layer protecting against further corrosion.
See:
The Amazing Rusting Aluminum
Rust can hold an airplane together or dissolve it to bits
By Theodore Gray By Theodore Gray Posted September 22, 2004
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-09/amazing-rusting-aluminum
This is a find!
For airplane buffs, this is even better than the museum in Monino!
You can see the past glories of Soviet aviation. Rugged and well-built aircraft.
Time simply passed them by.
Correction, it was, past tense. Look at the current Google satellite view at the provided link. It looks like all but a few dozen aircraft located in the museum grounds have been removed. Perhaps they went to the smelter?
In Soviet Russia, Mathias Rust!
Now you have learned something important about aerospace engineering.
Ha! Good one.
Crackerjack air defense radars there.
Fortunately, Mathias didn’t rust in prison more than about a year and a half. :-)
Thanks for your cold war ping 2.
Are you claiming that every part on a plane is aluminum?
Well the diesel guys still like it....
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