So here's the next batch of photos from my trip to Russia earlier this month. This time it's form the aviation museum in Monino. While it's about the same distance away form central Moscow as Kubinka, getting there was quite a bit easier. First get to Yarovslavsky station, which is right next to the Komsomolskaya subway station. It's also basically welded together with the Leningradsky station, facing the rail yard you want the outdoor stuff on the right, not the main station building. Then as always with these things try to buy a return express ticket, and if you're lucky the cashier will guess correctly what it is you want and sell you the right ticket.
That done we get to the main thing that makes Monino easier to get to than Kubinka, despite how scary the suburban railway map looks it's the end station for most trains going that way. So all you have to do is to find the train going to Móнинo.
Once there I didn't see any signs around the station, but the layout of the town is about as complex as a chessboard. Bring a map and it'd take a miracle to get lost. Kinda close to the museum there's a few small signs that to western eyes look a lot like they say "MY3EÑ BBC", follow those.
Starting with some stuff from the main museum building, here's an I-16
Didn't they have plan to severly scale back the musem a couple years ago because of budget ? Do they have any info in English or is it just Russian ? Regarding access, this seems to be a common theme with post-Soviet states, getting to the Kiev Aviation Museum wasn't exactly easy as well. Anyway, keep the pictures coming !
I have no ideas what plans there may be or may have been for the place, as we're about to see their maintenance budget isn't what it could be at least. Signs were usually dual language, but sometimes Russian-only.
Now the indoors part is just a very small bit of it all. They may not have as many vehicles here as they do in Kubinka, but as some of them are "kinda big", the main collection sits outside a bit down the road form the main building.
Starting out in one end of what I for reasons soon to be very obvious thought of as "Bomber row" we have a Tu-4, the USSR rivet-by-rivet copy of the B-29.
Gabriel Ion steam engine for aviation. That's Tupolev's glider, he used it to fly over Yauza river in Moscow and it was his first experience of making something flying. Idea was to unite Monino's collection with exhibition in Kubinka and Park Patriot. So it would be a huge war machine hub.
Oliver Turner
>Gabriel Ion steam engine for aviation For airships, to be precise.
And at the very end of bomber row, fitting in quite well size-wise (all of 12cm shorter than the "B-29" and with an empty weight 50% greater than a B-17G) we have... an interceptor. If you though the flanker was big, say hello to the Tu-128.
why is the preservation of WWII russian aircraft so bad? As far as I know, not a single LAGG-3, LA-5 or a complete 100% original MIG-3 surivied to this day thats a replica mostly
Christopher Butler
Sitting forgotten and sign-less off to the side, a PLZ M-15 Belphegor. A polish, jet-powered biplane crop duster.
Charles Gutierrez
Men va faen.
Probably a number of factors. A lot of them simply didn't survive the war, plenty of things have a tendency to go from "we have tons so why worry" to "they're all gone" frighteningly fast, Russia seldom seems prone to spend of its very limited money to preserve these things, and so on.
I like both types of Tu-22, even if the first one was considered unsafe even by Soviet standards. I've heard crews practically boycotted to fly them and the Tu-22M kept the designation for budgeting purposes even though it's obviously a different aircraft. That M variants looks like an early one. Used to seeing the M3s in service.
Oliver Reed
Yeah that's an early model intake on the 22M. >Used to seeing the M3s in service. Where was that ?
>even if the first one was considered unsafe even by Soviet standards. I've heard crews practically boycotted to fly them Not having to fly in the bloody things does allow us to indulge in the luxury to love the most horrendous missteps in vehicle engineering. As for this one, better or worse than their Not-a-concorde?
Now, a little on the inventor. Gabriel Yon was one of the followers of Henri Giffard, one of the french airship pioneers and creator of one of the first airships with engine. In 1886 russian ministry of army had made and arrangement with Ion to create a "controllable aerostat" - the airship with an engine. The engine was the most troublesome part to invent and build, and the project resulted in the overrun. The arrangement was broken, but the engine and the airship parts were shipped to Russia anyway. They failed to fit it into another airship, so they used it to generate electricity for street lights.
