Workhorse of Russian Aviation: An-26B

This time we’re going to tell you about the workhorse of the Russian aviation, the Antonov An-26B. Here you’ll find detailed photos of the aircraft, its characteristics, and more!

In the picture: the An-26B.

The Antonov An-26 (NATO reporting name: Curl) is a twin-engined turboprop military transport aircraft, designed and produced in the USSR from 12 March 1968. The Antonov OKB adapted the ramp design of the An-40 to the An-24 fuselage, thus was born the An-26.

A joint of the loose piece of wing and its middle part. The wing consists of 23 wing ribs, skin and stringers.

The thickness of the wing skin differes in different part of the wing. Wing leading edges are heated. In trailing edge assemblies, there are wing flap control shafts and aileron clutch rods.

PRF-4 lights, installed in the left and the right half-wings.

‘Neutral gas faucet’, ‘Attention! To take off the fairing, take off these bolts’, ‘Booster pump’.

The neutral gas system is intended for filling fuel tanks with CO2 to prevent an explosion.

Its fuselage is divided into four sections. The majority if its elements are made of duralumin sheets D16T and aluminium alloy. In the fuselage, there are a cockpit and a cargo bay.

The cockpit canopy is glazed with 10-12 mm glass. The triplex glass in front of each pilot is heated .

The canopy has two ventilator windows: on the left and on the right.

The fuselage skin is made of 0.8-1.8 duralumin sheets.

The fuselage has 9 windows with a diameter of 310 mm. The radioman’s window is smaller – 340 mm.

Each window is made of two glasses: a 4 mm outer glass and a 3 mm inner glass. The space between them is sealed with a rubber packing.

One window of the four on each side of the cargo bay is a part of the escape hatch.

The hatch cover opens inside and consists of a cup and a shell. The hatch cover lock can be opened both from the inside and from the outside of the fuselage.

The empennage is cantilever, single-fin and metal.

The factory number of the aircraft.

The dihedral angle of the horizontal tail is +9 degrees.

The fin-tip fairing consists of glass cloth skin and diaphragms. It has shutters on its sides which vent the air heating the fin tip.

The cargo hatch has an opening of 3300 mm long and 2340 mm wide.

The skin of the lower part of the fuselage is made of bimetal sheets consisted of inner duralumin and thin outer titanium layers. This kind of sheets is less damage-prone.

Signal rockets electrified cassettes EKSR-46. There are two of them on the plane. Each cassette has four cartridges: white, red, green and yellow. The shooting can be made in series of shots or in single shots.