As a plane zips through the morning sky above Kyiv's Zhulyany airport, another 80 stay buried under the snow. But neither poor weather conditions nor repairs keeps them grounded.
A part of the State Aviation Museum, these aircrafts – both civil and military – are decommissioned. But in their day, they were all a part of something momentous enough to save them from the scrap heap.
In winter, there’s hardly anyone around to appreciate their past glory. This 11-hectare field of Soviet-designed steel monsters was a pilot training ground for more than 60 years before it became a museum. The curators started with some 23 models from the Antonov, Tupolev and other famous bureaus. Now, the 80-strong piece collection is a way to study the evolution, success and failures of the Soviet aviation industry.
A cockpit of an old Ilyushin plane in the museum of aviation in Kyiv. (Joseph Sywenkyj)
Historian Borys Antonenko has many stories to tell about this museum. “It was my childhood dream to become a pilot but my poor eyesight would not let me,” said Antonenko. After 28 years of teaching history at a university, he took the job as a guide at the airfield.
“This plane could carry three missiles, each of them having a destructive power 10 times more than a bomb dropped on Hiroshima,” he said of a supersonic strike bomber Tu-22 M3, nicknamed Backfire. “Two of its missiles could completely wipe out Kyiv. Equipped with a special refueling system, they could reach any point on earth,” he added. These military planes still fly in Russia and India.
Before landing in Zhulyany museum, this particular model raised some stardust. “In 1998, it was a part of an exhibition in London. The Duke of Edinburg, the king of Saudi Arabia and all NATO leaders, among other important guests, inspected the aircraft from the inside. After this, it was donated to our museum,” said Antonenko.
Other notable machines include the MiG-25, which still holds the world’s altitude record of 37.7 kilometers among serial airplanes. Another record-breaker is the world’s largest helicopter Mi-26. Apart from admiring these muscular giants from the ground, visitors can climb inside five aircrafts and sit in the pilot’s cabin.
But it has not always been uphill for Soviet engineers. One example is the Be-12 amphibious anti-submarine aircraft. “It was developed in the ‘60s but failed to surpass marine engineering at the time. For 10 years the plane didn’t locate a single submarine,” said Antonenko laughing. “Its radars were placed too close to the engine, blocking the signal. But its later adaptations were much more successful.”
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the aviation industry went into a tailspin. None of the planes exhibited on these grounds was engineered during Ukraine’s independence.
With little publicity, the museum still manages to get some 25,000 visitors a year, including foreign delegations, mostly from aviation clubs. It gets busy on special war commemoration dates, as well as during the Soviet holiday, the Defender of Fatherland Day on Feb. 23. People who used to fly these machines sometimes stop by.
Viktor Hrechanyuk, 54, is one of them. He used to be a flight engineer on an Il-76, which is now parked in the museum. His last flight was in 1994.
“Once I saw this museum in the news. I came to see the Il-76 but then decided to stay,” said Hrechanyuk. During the Soviet-Afghan war in the 1980s, Hrechanyuk used to deliver provision supplies to soldiers. Now he trains young flight engineers from the Kyiv State Aviation University on the museum’s site in Zhulyany.
www.aviamuseum.com.ua
1, Medova St.
451-8314, 451-8324
Open: Wednesday- Sunday, 10 a.m.- 5 p.m.
Tickets: Hr 5-15
Kyiv Post staff writer Nataliya Horban can be reached at horban@kyivpost.com
