Soviet plane graveyard - 9000 exhibits

[Blackpuddin]

Sorry it's the Wail, but what an astonishing place this must be to visit.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2247870/Th...

[LotusOmega375D]

Must be pretty remote: they've still only got black & white film.

What's with all the pointless nose shots?

Photographers, eh? Too arty-farty for their own good.

[pidsy]

i want those pics in original hi-res.

awesome photo's.

sure there will be some members from the urbex thread over shortly.

[croyde]

Looks great. I wonder if you can actually get inside them?

[bob1179]

That is a place I would love to visit. I have always been fascinated by Soviet built aircraft, I suppose it is quite sad to see all these aircraft sat there slowly corroding away, a left over of a bygone era.

[Huntsman]

doogz said:

"One of the exhibits that takes pride of place in the museum is the world's first and last Soviet supersonic passenger aircraft, the Tu-144"

Who writes this stuff?!

Cheers for the link though, away to find it on google earth.

I had never heard of the TU 144 so have been on wikipedia, seems that it flew first but entered service second, not clear which flew most recently.

[RealSquirrels]

that's not a graveyard, I flew on one of them last week.

[Eric Mc]

Some of the captions are just dumb.

The head on shot of the biplane actually shows an Antonov An-2. Far from being an "early" design, as biplanes go it is quite a late design. The An2 first flew after World War 2 and remained in producction right into the 1980s.

The Tu144 was not withdrawn from airline service because of the 1973. It hadn't entered service at that point. It entered service in 1977 and was withdrawn in 1978 after another "in-service" accident.

One of those Tu144s looks like one of the original prototypes - which were very different to the production aircraft.

Looks like an interesting place.

[Eric Mc]

Huntsman said:

doogz said:

"One of the exhibits that takes pride of place in the museum is the world's first and last Soviet supersonic passenger aircraft, the Tu-144"

Who writes this stuff?!

Cheers for the link though, away to find it on google earth.

I had never heard of the TU 144 so have been on wikipedia, seems that it flew first but entered service second, not clear which flew most recently.

The Tu144 was retired from airline service after only omne year of operation. It was a bit of a disaster economically - even for Aeroflot. A Tu144 was brought back to life in the late 1990s under a contract with NASA. It was re-engined with the same engines used on the Tu160 Blackjack bomber and was used by NASA as a supersonic testbed aircraft for about a year.

[miniman]

Eric Mc said:

Some of the captions are just dumb.

This is the Daily Mail, though, Eric. I think their attempts are rather good actually. I would expect captions such as "this is a plane, they burn carbons" or "aircraft are made of metal and sometimes trees".

[Fishtigua]

Eric Mc said:

The head on shot of the biplane actually shows an Antonov An-2. Far from being an "early" design, as biplanes go it is quite a late design. The An2 first flew after World War 2 and remained in producction right into the 1980s.

There is one thats been shot-up by the Yanks during the invasion of Grenada still sitting off to the side of the disused runway there.

Is that the last Bi-plane shot by a NATO force?

[miniman]

A quick look on Google Maps suggest that there aren't 9,000 "giants of the sky left to rust" at all...

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Ulyanovsk&ll=...

[LotusOmega375D]

miniman said:

A quick look on Google Maps suggest that there aren't 9,000 "giants of the sky left to rust" at all...

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Ulyanovsk&ll=...

Well I can make out about 30 of them from your image, so nothing special for an aviation museum. Has the Daily Mail perhaps been hood-winked by some publicity-seeking photographer, who wanted to get his trip paid for by someone else? Maybe he works for the local tourist board!

[24lemons]

LotusOmega375D said:

miniman said:

A quick look on Google Maps suggest that there aren't 9,000 "giants of the sky left to rust" at all...

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Ulyanovsk&ll=...

Well I can make out about 30 of them from your image, so nothing special for an aviation museum. Has the Daily Mail perhaps been hood-winked by some publicity-seeking photographer, who wanted to get his trip paid for by someone else? Maybe he works for the local tourist board!

I just did the same search and expected to find a vast aeroplane graveyard however, upon checking the wedsite linked through one of the google earth community icons http://www.aviationmuseum.eu/World/Europe/Russia/U... it does state 9000 exhibits, not aircraft which in fairness to the Mail is the same wording that they use in the article.

[Some Gump]

9000 xibits? Thats a lot of things on other things, both of which you like.

[VX Foxy]

Great pictures! Shame the article was written by an illiterate.

[anonymous-user]

24lemons said:

I just did the same search and expected to find a vast aeroplane graveyard however, upon checking the wedsite linked through one of the google earth community icons http://www.aviationmuseum.eu/World/Europe/Russia/U... it does state 9000 exhibits, not aircraft which in fairness to the Mail is the same wording that they use in the article.

Me too, I thought it would look great on Google maps but then thought, 'is that it'

[pushthebutton]

Ramenskoye/Zhukovsky is good to look at as well, but there aren't loads of aircraft.

[fatboy b]

"Sat rusting away in a field"