Kamov V-80 - HOKUM Emerges
One meaning of the word HOKUM is "nonsense". It may also be trite, sentimental, or unrealistic situations and dialogue in a movie, play, or piece of writing that is too dramatic or sentimental and not very original. Merriam Webster suggests that hokum is a device used (as by showmen) to evoke a desired audience response. Synonyms may include bunk, bunkum (or buncombe), claptrap, guff, hogwash, hokeypokey, hoodoo, malarkey, nonsense, nuts, poppycock, rubbish, senselessness, silliness, stupidity, taradiddle (or tarradiddle), tommyrot, tosh, trash, or trumpery. The first known use of hokum was in 1908.
Some Western critics concluded that the HOKUM was a bumbling exercise in Soviet industrial policy that fitted a non-rigid, close spaced, heavily articulated ASW platform rotor system to a supposed-to-be agile mission threat. There is no indication that the V-80 program undertook any systematic effort to evaluate the decision to design a helicopter with a single crew member. It is unlikely that whatever benefits might accrue to an American single pilot helicopter from the Pilot's Associate [also known as "God is my copilot"] would have been available to a pilot of a Soviet helicopter, given the Soviet lag in computers and avionics.
The combat helicopter was believed in the West to have begun testing in 1984. Actually, on June 17, 1982, test pilot Nikolai Bezdetnov for the first time performed a hovering on this machine, and on July 23 - a flight in a circle. The new helicopter was named in the NATO coding system, the helicopter was named Hokum (literally - a liar, a werewolf). Recall that the "NATO" designations assigned to the samples of Soviet and Chinese aircraft, as a rule, did not carry a certain semantic load. The main requirement for them was that the words were not in tune with the previously entered and begin with a letter corresponding to the class of the aircraft (for helicopters - with the letter H, from the English helicopter). So, Mi-6 received the code name Hook, Mi-24 - Hind (doe), etc.
For many years, the V-80 program had been one of the most classified. The first V-80 had to fly near the Moscow Ring Road, where a VIC was located in the Novoryazanskoye Highway, i.e. a top-secret machine was tested near the capital, in front of many prying eyes. To hide the true purpose of the machine, the first V-80 decided to 'turn' into a transport helicopter. To do this, additional windows and doors were painted with bright yellow paint on the sides of the fuselage, painted in non-military blue. For greater credibility, thin transparent linings have been riveted to these 'windows'. In one of the flights, such an overlay fell off, having landed in the engine intake. They managed to land the helicopter on one engine, and after that they refused to imitate windows, but the color remained the same.
Foreign experts tried to compensate for the lack of any information about the new Kamov machine, the very fact of which was impossible to hide, with their unbridled imagination. In particular, the V-80 was presented as a fighter helicopter equipped with a radar station, short-range and medium-range air-to-air missiles and a fixed six-barrel cannon mount. The operator of the weapons system by the will of overseas "authors" was located behind the pilot in a fully enclosed cockpit. There were other, equally incredible, descriptions.
However a great deal of information managed to reach the West about the HOKUM's history and characteristics. The first U.S. announcement of the aircraft's existence came in the fifth edition of Soviet Military Power (SMP) in 1985. A year previously it was public knowledge that a new co-axial contra-rotating helicopter was under flight test in the Soviet Union. Bit by bit, the information about the HOKUM began to depict that there was something revolutionary about the aircraft. The 1986 SMP added a more-refined lateral rendering of the HOKUM and was quickly followed by a full-color painting of the aircraft in 1987. With this painting, the "cat was out of the bag" and together with a remarkably detailed 1/72nd scale model offered by the ANT Corporation during the same year, the aircraft was finally revealed to the public.
A Soviet designation of Ka-41 had been widely quoted, but senior members of the Kamov OKB denied the existence of a Ka-41 Hokum. This suggested, erroneously that other references to an original OKB designation of Ka-136 and Ka-34 may be nearer to the mark. Since the true name V-80 (Ka-50) was not known in the West for a long time, there they often attributed to it fictional "names" - such as Ka-34.
In the 1987 edition of Soviet Military Power, the US Defense Intelligence Agency reported "The new HOKUM attack helicopter, flight-tested in the late 1980s, gave the Soviets a significant rotary-wing, air-to-air combat capability for which no Western counterpart existed. Development of the HOKUM and HAVOC (lower right) added to the serious Soviet conventional threat."
In 1988 the company ESCI/ERTL released a model entitled "Kamov Ka-34 Hokum" [Number: 9073] in the scale 1:72. The Italian manufacturer ESCI produced an exceptional series of aircraft and AFV models in the 1970s and early 1980s, setting new standards in terms of both accuracy and detail – pioneering, for example, the use of engraved panel lines. Sadly, the company found it difficult to make a commercial success, and – after a brief period of ownership by the American ERTL-AMT company, during which this particular boxing of this fine kit was issued – ESCI closed.
This kit certainly lives up to that standard in terms of quality of molding, but is not quite as accurate as it might have been, largely because ESCI rushed to get the kit out as soon as possible when the helicopter was first seen in public. That accounts for the incorrect “Ka-34” designation, but the major problem is that ESCI has modeled a two-seat variant with a tandem cockpit. However, if the second seat is omitted, and the rear canopy is faired into the fuselage, then a fairly good representation of the main single-seat version results.
The Ka-52 Alligator (NATO designation HOKUM B), a modification of the Ka-50, was introduced in November 1996. It seats two and can also serve as a C2 craft, a training craft, or as a platform for additional equipment that requires a dedicated operator.
The HOKUM was poorly understood in the West. One Western analyst in 1990 related that "During the 1970's the Soviets began to rationalize the developing impact that the attack helicopter would have on the modern battlefield. This process of analysis drove the Soviets to the conclusion that the modern attack helicopter could achieve exchange ratios of 12 to 19:1 when fighting tanks. This concept deeply bothered the Soviets for their doctrine relied upon the use of mass armor attacks to achieve success on the battlefield.... the Soviets realized that while necessary, ground-based air defense systems could never cover the entire requirement of killing enemy helicopters. Two-dimensional weapons can never hope to deal with four-dimensional platforms.
COL M. Belov perhaps stated it the best when he wrote: "It has become vital to possess a weapon which could compete with the helicopter in respect of such things as combat power and tactical possibilities. Logic and historical experience suggest that such a weapon is the helicopter itself." As a result the Soviets, applying their doctrine, judged that only a fighter aircraft in the form of a helicopter could deal with an enemy helicopter and thus the Kamov "HOKUM" was born." [GREG R. HAMPTON "Army Rotary-Wing Aggressors: The Key to Counter Helicopter Training"]
The first public presentations of the V-80 took place only in 1992. In January 1992, S.V. Mikheev made a presentation on the V-80 helicopter at an international symposium in the UK. Here, for the first time, the new name of the helicopter, the Ka-50, sounded. In February of the same year, the V-80 was demonstrated to representatives of the defense departments of the CIS countries and journalists at the aviation equipment exhibition at the Machulishche airfield (Belarus). In August 1992, V-80 No. 03 took part in the demonstration flights of the Moseroshow-92 in Zhukovsky near Moscow. In September of the same year, the second serial Ka-50 was shown at the international air show in Farnborough (Great Britain), where it became the highlight of the program. The rudder of the exhibited machine was decorated with an image of the head of a werewolf and the inscription Werewolf (German analog of the English Hokum).
By this time, the black-painted V-80 No. 05 managed to star in the feature film Black Shark. The shooting was carried out at a test site in Chirchik, near Tashkent, where in the 1980s. Army aviation pilots were trained before being sent to Afghanistan.
Later, the third production machine was repainted in a similar way, the rudder of which was crowned with the image of a black shark and the inscription Black Shark. Together with Werewolf, they were exhibited in June 1993 at the air show in Le Bourget (France). Helicopters were not only shown in the ground display of the cabin, but also participated in demonstration flights. After Farnborough and Le Bourget, the Ka-50 helicopter became a regular at most exhibitions of aviation and military equipment in our country and abroad.
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