RM-10 Bombushka Appreciation Thread

[Willy A. Jeep]

The Soviet Union, 1955. Reconstruction of the republics is going as well as they can, even if that little bit of Germany managed to slip through Khrushchev's fingers. The arms race is ratcheting up and all of those capitalists on the other side of the curtain are scared silly of mighty Russia's wielding of the atom. There's even talk about putting a man-made-moon up in the sky, signalling that the mastery of the proletariat is not only of the Earth, but of the universe itself.

 

Unfortunately, agrarian peasantry and beeping balls don't win wars. Tanks, trucks, guns, and planes do, and the United States has a brand-new heavy-lift cargo-and-troop transport airframe already flying. This American Titan is far beyond anything left over from yesteryear's war - it's powered by four turboprops, has a 37-ton payload capacity, and they say it can land literally anywhere. There's even talk about putting guns on it, what with that whole Indochina thing the French are dealing with looking like it's getting pretty serious. So, never to be outdone in engineering, the apparatchiks in Moscow went on down to Kiev and asked the Rachmaninoff design bureau  if they had anything to offer. Scrambling to come up with something that would keep them out of the gulag, the boys at Rachmaninoff pulled out a bunch of schematics of a design they'd been working on since '51 and promised that it'd be an epic-worthy Titan-killer by 1960.

 

Well, after a few hundred bottles of Cherenkov, they managed to get something vaguely resembling their original design into the air. In typical Soviet fashion, a philosophy of brute force was applied to every hurdle thrown at Rachmaninoff. Needs more thrust? Two more engines. Needs more firepower? Here's a tail-mounted turret. Needs to be able to fly? Make the wings longer. Needs to fly straight? Have a few more stabilizers. Needs broad-spectrum aeronautical monitoring equipment? Stick some vacuum tubes in there and call it a computer. By 1959, this hulk of Marxist philosophy and melted-down Vom Feuer rifles was ready for serial production, christened the RM-10. Western forces quickly caught on to this smoke-coughing, window-shaking skywhale and gave it the moniker "Babushka". Not quite the Zeus that Rachmaninoff was hoping for, but hey, points for originality.

 

While production of the RM-10 ceased in the early 1970s, these planes, like a lot of the USSR, have stayed long past their welcome. Many now fill simple cargo carrier roles in far-flung corners of Eurasia, though a few remain in military service among the post-Soviet states. Never holding a candle to the Titan, even Rachmaninoff has moved on from their drunken miracle, but it isn't to say Babushka has aged poorly. Indeed, in the new dot-com economy of San Andreas, where anybody can be a vendor online, a beat-up old cargo plane can be very useful. Can the bay hold a dozen dismantled Principes? How about a quartet of not-quite-authentic Annis sports coupes? 10,000 packs of Chihuahua wieners? They'll fetch a nice mark-up if you can get them to Canada without falling out of the sky. And if you can find one of the gunships, then you're well on your way to starting up an all-new PMC on top of whatever illegitimate cargo operation you've got going on. Yes, I'd say the old lady still has a few tricks up her sarafan.

 

So, here's mine. Or, rather, here's the one I've leased from Warstock for the past year or so. They've had a whole blowout of ex-Russian hardware since that submarine wrecked off the Paleto coast. It's a gunship model, built in 1967, and I don't expect to know much else. It's a good idea to brush up on your Cyrillic if you're planning to fly one of these things, but you don't have to know the whole Tolstoy library. I mainly bring it out for flights up to San Fierro when they've got air shows going on, but moving the car collection between lock-ups doesn't always need to mean renting a semi and trailer. Have yet to see another in such good shape as this, if another is out there, but that's for another day. Dasvidaniya.

 

 

As always, more images in the spoiler below.

Spoiler

 

[suicidal_banana]

Recently bought mine as i learned that you CAN use the cargo bay, as long as you leave out half the vehicle modifications (what blew my mind is that even a livery blocks the cargo door?! wtf R* at least armor makes some vague kind of sense, but livery?!?!?!) but was sad to find out we cant even go inside that detailed interior? well apart from when the cockpit is full anyway. I wish we could just get in the back like we can in an Avenger (hold use-btn) or like how it works with some of the planes (hold vehicle-enter-btn when outside for a few seconds to hop in the back)

[SummerFreeze]

5 hours ago, Willy A. Jeep said:

That's a great looking Bombushka.

 

It really sucks that Rockstar decided to mess with the cargo bay. I wish we could at least use liveries and keep the bay functional.

 

Just last week I've used my Bombushka several times to complete four bikes MC sales. Mine is just solid blue like this: link.

Edited October 10, 2019 by SummerFreeze

[Rebellion9998]

The Bombushka is obviously a flying battleship.

[taken250]

Anyone wanna kill people in my bombushka. Need a 4 man team

[DanDaFreakinMan]