Historic aircraft will be destroyed in move to Putin's 'military Disneyland,' museum says

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Capetonian

Historic aircraft will be destroyed in move to Putin's 'military Disneyland,' museum says

#1 Post by Capetonian » Sat Jan 05, 2019 3:31 pm

5 January 2019 • 2:49pm

The La-7 fighter plane of top Allied ace Ivan Kozhedub and the Po-2 biplanes flown by the "Night Witches," the first female combat pilots, survived machine guns and anti-aircraft cannons during the Nazi invasion.

But now these and other historic aircraft at the air force museum in the Moscow suburb of Monino, one of the largest such collections anywhere, face destruction at the hands of Russia's military leadership, according to employees.

An order signed by defence minister Sergei Shoigu and leaked online revealed a two-year plan to close the state museum and move some of its showpieces to Patriot Park, the "military Disneyland" opened by Vladimir Putin in 2015.

There they will become interactive exhibits in what the defence ministry claims will be the biggest military aviation museum in the world, with over 1 million square feet of territory.

Former pilots at the Monino museum, however, argue that disassembling the aging aircraft for transport to Patriot Park will irreparably damage them.

"What patriots are they if they're destroying history?" said Alexei Drachyov, a former pilot who flew several fighter jets to the museum. "They'll cut up the planes and won't be able to put them back together. It's old metal, you can't weld it."

The five design bureaus that produced most of the aircraft have similarly warned against moving them.

"The planes will lose their historic and technical value, becoming short-lived mock-ups," said a letter from Ilyushin aviation complex.

The museum's 194 aircraft offer 250,000 visitors each year a journey through flying milestones, from the first four-engine bomber built in 1913 to the Tupolev Tu-144, which narrowly beat the Concorde to become the first supersonic passenger airliner.

One-of-a-kind planes include the MiG-15 in which Yury Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova, the first man and women in space, learned to fly.

While the oldest aircraft are stored in frigid hangars, more than 90 MiG and Sukhoi fighter jets, Tupolev airliners, Mil helicopters and huge Antonov and Ilyushin cargo planes stand nose-to-nose in a field, their wings and rotors heavy with snow.

The museum territory is set to be transferred to the city, raising fears of real estate development in place of the former academy and airfield, which opened in 1932 and hosted a bomber unit during the war.

In response to reports about the move, the defence ministry said a commission was considering measures to preserve the aircraft, which were "suffering the unfavourable effects of weather".

"Monino isn't a museum now, it's just a car park with planes," retired air force commander Vladimir Mikhailov told a Russian newspaper.

An employee blamed the poor conditions on a total lack of state funding to maintain the aircraft, however. The government procurements website showed expenditures only on utilities, building upkeep, a booklet print run and model missiles at the museum.

Volunteers gather every Saturday to clear snow and clean and fix the planes.

In contrast, the government has spent at least £236m on Patriot Park, where spectacular events like an annual tank biathlon show off the resurrection of Russia's military might under Mr Putin. Last year, more than 2,000 people re-enacted the 1945 storming of the Reichstag by the Red Army.

In light of a 2015 report linking a £12 million pagoda palace to the defence minister, whose family's declared income for 2010-12 was only £1.8 million, some suspect corruption may be involved in the transfer of the Monino aircraft.

"What's the use of this move?" asked Vladimir Yurtayev, an electrical engineer who was visiting the museum with his wife and two children on a recent Sunday. "It isn't any use to the people, it's of use only to those who want to line their pockets."

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