King of Helicopters - Russia's HUGE Mi-32

This video is brought to you by Squarespace. You're not seeing double, you're seeing triple. In the early 80s, the Russians developed, in top secret, the king of all helicopters, one that was so big and so loud that it would have changed aviation forever. And it's likely the craziest helicopter concept you've ever seen. Weighing a shocking 150 tons, it was an aircraft made to carry, well, pretty much anything and would have paved the way for the Soviets to conquer the far east of their empire and perhaps even conquer the United States itself. But such an insane design should have an equally insane story behind it. And so welcome aboard the Soviet Flying Triangle, the Mi-32. Oh, and also side note, if you're loving this content so far, then consider subscribing and leaving a like, it helps out a lot. Siberia, and in general the territory of east and north modern day Russia, is largely unpopulated and unexplored due to harsh climate conditions, lack of infrastructure and endless forest. But here's the thing with remote locations, they happen to be extremely rich with resources and the perfect place to hide nuclear weapons. Hence in the 1970s, the Soviet government issued a proclamation to manifest destiny the east and bring its full remoteless to bear on those degenerate capitalists in the west. And thanks to the Siberian terrain, the government was faced with a rising need for super heavy helicopters to carry building materials, people and other construction equipment to remote areas. Helicopters available at the time, like the Mi-6 and Mi-10K, were not up to the task of transporting vast and heavy items, like generators or mining machinery. Thus the engineers had proposed some interesting projects around this problem, like the Ka-22, which we covered before here on the channel, as a true next generation heavy lift helicopter. But at the end of the contest, it was the Mi-26 that was born as the solution to this Siberian problem, becoming the largest serial production helicopter to ever exist. But why stop there? The Soviets wanted more. Looking at this helicopter above, you can see the very impressive triangle shape, possibly chosen because the triangle is the second most strongest shape in nature. But I'm left wondering if they should have skipped it and gone right to the square, the same shape as today's video sponsor, Squarespace. That's right, if you need a heavy lifter to carry your business, then Squarespace is the easiest web platform to use and get you going. Their sites are already optimized for mobile phones, have the ability to run powerful email campaigns, and they have fantastic e-commerce tech built right into their framework. Additionally, they also have the SEO tools that you need to appear on the front page of Google, even out in the middle of Siberia. To launch your own site, go to www.squarespace.com found and get 10% off your first site and domain. Every single click from every viewer, including you listening right now, helps the channel keep on making content that you love to see. So please do check it out if you're interested. Back to the show. The Mill Design Bureau, already very experienced with various helicopter projects, started working on something completely off the books. It was so insane that it was half an amusement and half a serious pursuit by the engineers edging themselves to push the limit. The first idea behind the project actually came from the Mi-V-12. The engineers managed to create a large multi-propeller helicopter and they were looking at a similar concept for the get-go, either by making a single fuselage with multiple propeller craft like the Chinook or simply connecting two separate fuselages together. The second option prevailed. Sort of. After all, if you can get away with combining two fuselages together, why not do three? The final design was shaped like a triangle made out of three fuselage segments, each of them having two Mi-26 engines, namely the Progress D-136 and was able to carry cargo up to 55 tons. That's more than the weight of the fully loaded Mi-26. And let's talk about the size and design of this humongous thing. It was to be 40 by 36 meters and that's not including the diameter of the rotors that would be spinning above the fuselage. Just by comparison, the fuselage was larger than that of the Airbus A320, so this helicopter was positively huge. The cockpit was located on the front section of the fuselage with a crew of four, two pilots and two crew members to operate the cargo cranes. They would be situated below the pilots, very similar to the Mi-10K for better visibility during the cargo loading or detaching operations. The maximum range of this giant was only to be up to 1,200 kilometers, but it would surely be enough for a special cargo that it was to carry. The cargo itself was anchored on three points, each on one of the fuselage segments to provide maximum stability during flight. It would hang in the middle, either leveraged sideways for optimum airflow during flight or strung vertically to help fit into tight areas. You could imagine it carrying an ICBM and lowering it directly into the launching mechanism, something that other helicopter designs to this day are unable to do. So as you're probably asking yourself now after watching all this 3D animation, how the heck would this thing even fly? Hey, don't forget that I have a new channel all about space travel right here. This week's episode will be all about NASA's crazy 1960 ambitions for the solar system, so be sure to check it out after this video. Normal helicopters use a rotor on top and a tail rotor to control their flight. Bigger helicopters, like the tandem rotor helicopter such as the Chinook, are able to a tail rotor by using the secondary rotor as a steering wheel by having each rotate in different directions. These counter-rotating rotors eliminate the need for an anti-torque vertical rotor, allowing all power to be used for lift and thrust. The ability to adjust lift in either rotor makes it less sensitive to changes in the center of gravity, which is important for the cargo lifting and dropping. This dual setup also is much more stable during hovering mode, and if one of the engines fails, the other can drive both rotors. So what about our tri-rotor helicopter? You can't have one blade turn opposite if there are another two going the other way, and then it wouldn't be in balance. Or can you? You see, tri-rotor helicopters are not new. In fact, it was the British who first came up with one, and it actually flew, which was then the world's largest helicopter, the Siova W-11 Air Horse. Its three rotors would actually all spin in the same direction, but were aligned to avoid the influence of torque on the fuselage. For the Soviet Mi-32, a similar design would be used, with each rotor changing speeds depending on the current flight path. Without computers, done manually by the two pilots. Man, these Soviet engineers really were insane. So the Soviets had the plans, the means, and the reason. Why wasn't it built? When the Mil Bureau was previously developing the legendary Mi-V-12, the largest helicopter ever made, the project proved to be too complicated, very hard to pilot, and not really feasible for serial production. Karmov failed with their super heavy lifter, the Ka-22, and also further with the Ka-35 design, and the Mi-26 was already built and in service. So a crazy flying triangle thing wasn't really a top priority, even though it would have been something like a distant helicopter brother to the Antonov An-225 at some point. Being unique in carrying extremely heavy or bulky cargo by air. Plus it could carry the Mi-26, which in turn could carry its smaller counterpart, a real-life Matryoshka doll. Nonetheless, Mil actually did end up presenting the concept to the authorities in 1982, with a plan for serial production by the end of the decade. However, a change in government during the mid-80s in the USSR saw many aviation projects cancelled, as they focused on more important things, like a failing economy. Just like many other interesting Soviet projects, this one also died along with the USSR. With no large government funding, nor reason to develop a large helicopter, its only purpose was to end up in a found and explained video. So maybe subscribe, so all that hard work didn't go to waste.