Museum of Army Aviation – Torzhok

When I get my few photos scanned in, I’ll post them here. However this was the story of how we got in.

My wife is Russian and we had been to Lake Seligor for a few days with our young kids and a family friend. On the way back to Moscow he said that he knew where there was a museum of helicopters and was I interested? Eventually we found it in Torzhok just off the St Petersburg-Moscow highway and it turned out to be on a very busy army base. Our friend marched up the gate and said we were from Moscow and that the kids wanted to see these helicopters, keeping quite that I was not Russian. After 15 minutes discussion we were in.

The museum is quite a way into the base and you pass a stuffed Mi-24 12 white outside the headquarters building on the way there. The museum is right next to the airfield and I was warned not to photograph anything on the field itself, they having sussed out by now that I was British. There was a school party getting shown round a Mi-26 10 yellow c/n 34001212608 so we joined in. They also had a Ka-50 c/n 3538053003002 26 yellow on show for us to inspect. The museum has 14 vertilotyi on display with most carrying fake marks with all identifying c/ns oversprayed.

Just as we were leaving three buses turned up obviously carrying a bunch of enthusiasts – it turned out that they were on the Aeroprints tour and those of you on the mil-spotters list will know the rest of the story.

The circuit was quite active while we were there with pairs of Mi-17 and Mi-24 flying around along with a single Mi-26. Very nice.

More details when I find the appropriate pieces of paper