What is the most weight a helicopter has ever lifted ?

Question

I just read an article on the China quake and it stated that bulldozers were brought in by helicopter. It made me wonder what the most weight ever lifted was , thanks..

Answer 1

The Mil Mi-12 is by far the biggest helicopter made. It holds the world lift record for a helicopter at 44 tons! Only two of these Russian monsters were ever made, but unfortunately none of them is operational.

Answer 2

Your question is interesting and evoked good answers.  However Helicopter rigs typically use Bell 212's to airlift D6 Caterpillar Bulldozers in pieces.  It takes about four lifts and for jungle use, can be deployed into a small clearing.  Once assembled they will clear the larger area required to set up the rig.  While max payload is nice, it's often the method that determines success.

Answer 3

except the "Homer" that was not much more than experimental/preserie, the Mi-26 is probably the biggest helicopter that saw production(and is quite diffused)

Also in Italy with the end of "cold war" we bought(actually in leasing) some of this big helicopters and also bought Sikorsky/Ericsson S-64"skycrane" for  firefighting.

S-64 can carry 9900kg(21825 lbs) of water in a tank.

Mi-26 can carry 20000kg(44100lbs) of water in flexible buckets (more than 6 times a Canadair CL-215).

But Bulldozers can be carried also by helicopters that are quite smaller....for example  Ch-53, Ch-47(in a movie set in vietnam war you can see a Ch-47 "chinook" carry a bulldozer to a base in the forest)...

Answer 4

I'm not sure what the record is but yes i saw what you are talking about on the news, and it looked like a bigger helicopter then what Ive seen here in California.

I'm surprised the helicopter blades can handle that much weight.

Answer 5

John got it correct.