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Mi-24 Hind in combat in Afghanistan (2002) |
Vietnam. Probably one of the most famous wars in history, the war in Vietnam was a breakthrough concearning aviation technology and military technology in general. The Mi-24 Hind page is All rights reserved
Also called "the chopper war", Vietnam has seen not only the first wide-spread usage of the helicopter as means of transport of evacuation, but also the development of a specialized version of the helicopter, namely the attack helicopter.
Of course, the Soviets could not have let themselves falling behind, so soon after they have developed their own attack helicopter.
Studying the usage and especially the weak-points of the American UH-1 Iruqois, most commonly known as the Huey, the Russians have come up with a design which was suposed to, at least in theory, to be the perfect attack helicopter.
After reading thousands of secret American reports in which the Huey pilots claimed about the under-powered, non-protected and very vulnerable Huey missions during strikes, as well as its reduced payload and the fact that almoust all the units that were lost were shot down by small arms fire, the Soviets designed a super-chopper, super-robust, lightly armoured, with two very powerful gas turbine engines (compared to only one in the original Huey) and fitted with massive firepower to punish the enemy.
Mil Design Bureau came up with this, the Mi-24A Hind, which had armour protection, which used high speed to quickly get in and out of the combat area, as well as to confuse the enemy and give it little time to fight back, fitted with a huge array or unguided rockets, guided anti-tank missiles, as well as a whole range of 7.62 mm, 12.7mm and 20mm machineguns and cannons, and even boms.
The first version of the Hind had a common cockpit for both the pilot as well as the weapons officer. Later versions had separate cockpits placed one on top of the other.
(AutoRec Data Internal: 12700kg for Hind.)
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
1999-2001 by Sorin
A Crasmarelu from Sorin® Air Group