When a person dies away from home tend to repatriate his body, that is, return the ashes to his homeland for burial.This can be done in various ways, for example by freezing in the refrigerator.Sometimes the body cremated, in this case, the procedure is simplified - only carry the urn with the ashes, but this is not always acceptable for religious or ethical reasons.Most often, the container serves as a zinc coffin.This is a terrible phrase means a metal box in the shape of the box, sometimes equipped with a transparent window.
reasons why buried in zinc coffins, quite prosaic.Firstly, they are relatively cheap.Second, zinc - a metal light.Third, it is easily soldered.Fourth, zinc has aseptic properties, which prevent decomposition.Fifth, the metal is soft, and work with him.
The most common problem with the delivery of the dead facing the armed forces of a country at war abroad.In the thirties, Italian soldiers are killed in Abyssinia, sent home for a final resting place in a hermetically sealed rectangular metal boxes.Of course, the family buried their sons in ordinary wood, even the closed coffins, because, in addition to the hot African climate, the appearance of the deceased soldier could spoil battle wounds.
During the Vietnam War practical Americans killed soldiers carried in plastic containers.However, when a zinc coffin was not necessary: in Indochina delivered a huge amount of cargo every day committed dozens of direct and return flights, and the delivery of dead bodies was carried out very quickly.Today, the US military still uses plastic coffins.
in the Soviet Union until the end of the eighties there was no established tradition of military funerals of those who gave their lives defending the country's interests away from native forests and fields.The Afghan War was the first armed conflict in which the victims began to return home.At the same time, and there was a reason why zinc coffin was called "cargo 200".The main transport for this sad mission served as military transport aircraft, also had a sad nickname of "Black Tulip" and the air in order to avoid overloading impossible without weighing.Zinc coffin and its contents has a mass of no more than two quintals, this figure appeared in overhead.
secrecy also had some value, loss tried not to advertise for political reasons, but in the year of the Moscow Olympics (thanks to "word of mouth") about what the code means, knew almost all the population of the USSR.Then there was another bureaucratic instruction Do not open a zinc coffin (even parents).Its implementation was entrusted to the military enlistment offices to which this task has been difficult to manage.Having lost a son, sometimes a single, mother and father were not afraid of nothing and no one.
addition wars there are other cases when they become necessary zinc coffins.In early September 1986 the Odessa plant "Electronmash" received an urgent order to produce hundreds of metallic boxes of specified sizes.It does not need to have special analytical skills in order to link a job with the death ship "Admiral Nakhimov" near Novorossiysk.
