Rare Visitor

Last week a rare visitor popped by the Windsor Airport. A relic of the cold war, this Russian built Ilyushin Il-76 with a load of cargo on board.

According to Airliners.net

Development under the design leadership of G V Novozhilov in the late 1960s resulted in the type’s first flight on March 25 1971. Series production commenced in 1975 and the first examples entered Aeroflot service that year. In the now classic military freighter configuration, the Il-76 features a high mounted wing passing above the fuselage, four engines, Tail, rear loading ramp and freight doors.

The Il-76 was also designed with short field performance in mind, operating from austere strips. To this end the Il-76 features wide span triple slotted trailing edge flaps, upper surface spoilers and near full span leading edge slats for short field performance, while the aircraft rides on a total of 20 low pressure tyres, the front nose unit featuring four wheels, the main wheel bogies having two rows of four tyres each. Freight handling is largely mechanised, requiring only two freight handlers which can be carried as part of the standard crew complement of seven.

Over 900 Il-76s of all models built, most for the Russian military, but over 300 are in service with Aeroflot and other civilian operators.

There’s still a mystique at least for me, having grown up in the Cold War era, that is attached to the old Red Army.

The russian ID plate on the landing gear.

Note the windows in the tail for the tail gunner.