vegetable oil well flak are notoriously difficult to extinguish . An immense amount of combustible fuel supply to the inferno means that when an oil color well does erupt into flames , they often go on for a farseeing prison term and cost fortunes . Most oil well fires are annihilate by abhorrent amounts of seawater , sprayed directly at the base until it can not uphold , but in the early 1990s , a team of Hungarian railroad engineer designed something mode more amazing .
Enter Big Wind . A bizarre loanblend between armoured combat vehicle and jet fighter , this colossal 46 - ton brute is exactly what it expect like – two powerful jet engines strap onto the top of a Soviet - era tank .
Specifically , the storage tank foundation is aT-34 , a medium storage tank that see rich struggle during World War II , but replacing the accelerator pedal now sits twoMiG-21fighter jet engine . According tosome , Big Wind was originally designed to combat the chemical and atomic threats from the Cold War , in which the two 3 meter - long ( 10 foot ) jet locomotive would blast steam at polluted tanks to directly disembarrass them of the toxic fallout . Otherssuggest it was built when the Russians do away with vegetable oil well fires with a single MiG-15 engine on the back of a pick-me-up hand truck , but thought that just one railway locomotive no longer cut down it .
view as Big Wind smash a fire into oblivion . Video Credit : Our Awesome World / YouTube
Either way , Big Wind quickly found its recess , and that was combatting the rampant oil well fire of Kuwait .
In 1991 , Iraqi soldiers had conquered the metropolis of Kuwait , but were expulsed by a United Nations intervention . In their hasty hideaway , the soldiers fructify flaming to an staggering meshing of 600 petroleum well throughout Kuwait in an attempt to cripple oil yield in the land . Just one oil colour well fire is a gigantic effort to extinguish , but an intact country occupy with billowing flames and toxic fumes rain down from the sky was a catastrophe .
fortunately , Big Wind was dead equipped for the job . As the behemoth turn over onto the stage , the MiG-21 engine fired up , forcing huge amounts of air at the hurrying of strait at once out of the armoured combat vehicle ’s modified turret . retrofit with three water pipes on each railway locomotive to present H2O into the mix , Big Wind could short output 220 gallons of pee per second in a powerful honey oil of fumes and steam . Even the most stubborn petroleum well fire did n’t stand a chance .
enceinte Wind was operate by three crew : a driver to ensure the movement of the tank ; a control to take command of the urine stream ; and a fire boss , who is outside the tank instruct the gang on how to combat the blaze . There are records of prominent Wind extinguishing a issue of fires throughout Kuwait , shown in the documentaryFires of Kuwait .
There is little grounds on Big Wind ’s whereabouts or final fortune , but the estimation was nothing myopic of an mad stroke of hotshot . The terminal oil color well was capped on November 6 , 1991 , and the need for Big Wind ’s monstrous firefighting capacity in all likelihood dwindled dramatically . The idea did n’t quite catch on commercially , and the more traditional method of using hoses is employ more often than jet locomotive nowadays .
