Modern-Aviation

The Mi-6 combined a brilliantly eccentric aesthetic with being the world’s largest production helicopter. It was a truly glorious machine, and the lack of a nose-mounted conservatory in its successor, the Mi-26, leaves us all the poorer. The Mi-10, on the other hand, was a flying crane derivative of the Hook, which failed to live up to the glory of its older sister.

Removing the bottom half of the fuselage the resulting gap between the aircraft and the ground was filled with a stalky 3.75 metre tall, 6-metre-wide undercarriage. For reasons to do with helicopter aerodynamics, the right-hand legs were 300mm shorter than the left. Having built possibly the most ridiculous-looking landing gear known to man, there must have been some disappointment when it was found to shimmy while ground taxiing.

It was discovered that underslung loads were problematic due to the poor view from the cockpit even when using the CCTV system. Realising the requirement to carry a bus or prefab building underneath the fuselage wasn’t very useful, the later Mi-10K featured a two-metre shorter undercarriage and a second aft-facing cockpit underneath the first.

This made it much better for carrying underslung loads up to around 11,000kg in weight. Or about what you could get inside a Mi-6. This probably explains why only 55 or so Mi-10s were built in total; there are only so many times you need to move something you can’t get in or under a hook.