Folks, I have found the Russian Hind Mi-24 helicopter absolutely fascinating for decades. Both I and the Hind are old enough to truly say decades in this case as it was delivered to the Soviet Air Force in 1970 but NATO and the West didn’t find out about them until 1972.
The HIND is a huge helicopter gunship and unique in that it has room for eight passengers. At the same time it is fast, armored and loaded with weapons. Soviet pilots called it the “flying tank: and other nicknames include Galina, Crocodile/Krokodil and Drinking Glass.
At any rate, it is very interesting and has evolved over the years plus the Soviets and later the Russians exported it to many countries including Bulgaria, Macedonia and many others plus it has served in a number of conflicts (click here for the Wikipedia Mi-24 page if you want more details).
The purpose of this blog post is to share with you an amazing video assembled by Erik Johnston where Bruce Stringfellow, a Hind pilot, gives a detailed walkround tour of the helicopter. How detailed? It has an hour and 16 minutes of detail – it is the best video I have ever seen if you want to really know more about the design, capabilities and what a preflight check looks like from a pilot’s view. Here it is:
Note, the photo shown at the top is extracted from the video and shared under fair use. I do not own the rights to the video and imagery – the video was created by and presumably owned by Erik Stone Photography. Please visit the actual Youtube video page if you wish to subscribe to Erik Stone’s videos or buy some of his merchandise to support his efforts.
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