Flying dozers

Problem - need to move Komatsu D85 dozers where there are no roads
Solution - pick them up and fly them with a helicopter

These photos were taken in the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea about 20 years ago. The task was to move some Komatsu D85 dozers from the top of one mountain to another where an oil refinery was to be built in some of the more mountainous areas of the world where no roads had yet been built. The helicopter used was a Russion MI26 and where we were working at 4000 ft altitude, lifting capacity was just under 20 tons. It is powered by twin 11,200 hp engines. More on this machine can be found at http://www.vannattabros.com/iron64.html
The blade, ROPS, tracks and rippers were all removed to get the weight down and the loast photo shows a Kamrov twin rotor machine carrying 2 sets of rippers.
Until roads were constructed, all the equipment required to prepare the construction site was flown in with this machine including Cat D300 artic trucks inside the chopper.

John

Beautiful pictures!

You must be familiar with this machine to quote the lift capacity at altitude - cool.

Also - mixed memories of seeing "SSSR" and "airofloat" (Roman) on that machine, I guess they hired the Soviet airline for this move?
Were you there?

I knew a bloke from kiwi land that was into that, was one of our diesel fitters, he went over there doing that about 20yrs ago, Noel Coulter was his name, he used to come back every now and then and tell us how they stripped the machines downand flew them in and out by chopper.

Yes, I was on this job for a while. Did not have much time to get many photos. This chopper was on lease from Russia to Heavilift. Used this machine to move 2 dozers. The third we had to strip down and move in components as this big bird would have caused a lot of damage due to down draft as the dozer was located near an oil drilling rig and accomodation camp. As we did not have a crane, some of the assembly was done with the Kamrov or Bell Jetranger and the rest with a hand operated gantry.

John