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Aviation History
1959
1959 - 0151.PDF
FLIGHT, 9 January 1959 59 This sectional drawing, from a Russian source, shows details of the big Mi-6 DETAILS OF THE GIANT Mi-6 AND OF REMARK- ABLE EARLY DESIGNS SOVIET HELICOPTERS THE drawing at the head of this page is a Russian repre-sentation of the Mi-6 helicopter, largest of its kind in theworld. In the early 1930s its designer, Mikhail L. Mil',became a research engineer in the TsAGI helicopter department. For many years he worked on autogiro development, together withProfessor N. K. Skrzhinskii (who died last year), and, among others, he was responsible for the A-12 autogiro which in 1937 isclaimed to have attained a speed of 160 m.p.h. and an altitude of 16,500ft. Mil' has published several research reports on aero-dynamic design and controllability of .single-rotor helicopters. After World War 2 he became head of the design bureau producingsingle-rotor helicopters of the "Yuryev-Sikorsky" configuration; and he was also a professor at the Kazan Aerotechnical Institute(KAI). A recent Soviet report describes the power units of the Mi-6 as"special free turbines designed by Solovyev giving some 2,500 h.p. each." Haying regard to the immense size of the craft, however,the power is obviously too low. The official figure is 4,700 h.p. The five-blade rotor measures over 100ft in diameter, and thedisposable load is given as 12 metric tons. Possible loads are 80 fully armed soldiers or a maximum of 120 passengers. The Mi-6at present holds the absolute world record for useful load in the rotary-wing category, and also the record for maximum altitudewith a load of 12 tons. In an interview its designer has stressed the importance of the pressure-jet helicopter, which may meanthat his design team will be producing a machine of this class. The first of the small photographs shows the original Yuryeyhelicopter, built in 1912. Boris Nikolayevich Yuryev was a pupil of Professor N. Ye. Zhukovskii (Joukowski), the world-famousaerodynamicist. In 1911 Yuryev obtained a patent on a helicopter having a single main rotor and a torque-balancing tail rotor—a scheme which was later developed in the U.S.A. by one of his former fellow students at the Moscow Technical High School,Igor Sikorsky. Apart from using wire-braced main-rotor blades, the helicopter seen in the picture (in the backyard of the MoscowTechnical High School) is remarkably similar to single-rotor machines of far later production. After the October RevolutionYuryev became one of the leading scientists who reorganized the TsAGI research institute. For almost three decades he was theleader of the propeller and helicopter departments, and rose to the rank of Lieutenant-General of Aviation Engineering Services.He has been elected an Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.—the highest scientific rank obtainable in theSoviet Union. The second picture shows the first helicopter actually built bythe TsAGI research institute—the TsAGI 1-EA of 1930 vintage. In 1928 a rotor test-rig was built which was capable of testingrotors up to 20ft diameter, driven by an engine of 120 h.p. Cyclic- and collective-pitch variations were studied on this rig and experi-ments finally led to the 1-EA depicted. A major role was played in development and flight testing by Ing. (now Professor)Cheremukhin (pronounced Cheryomukhin). The 1-EA had two Left, the original Yuryev helicopter of 1912. Lower left, the TsAGI 1-EA of 1930. Lower right, the TsAGI U-EA (1938)
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