When a person dies away from home, as a rule, his body is repatriated, that is, the ashes are returned to their homeland for burial. This can be done in various ways, for example, by freezing in a refrigerator. Sometimes the corpse is cremated, in which case the procedure is simplified - only an urn with ashes is brought, but this is not always acceptable for religious or ethical reasons. The most common container is a zinc coffin. This terrible phrase means a metal box in the shape of a parallelepiped, sometimes equipped with a transparent window.
The reasons why people are buried in zinc coffins are quite prosaic. First, they are relatively cheap. Secondly, zinc is a light metal. Thirdly, it is easily soldered. Fourth, zinc has aseptic properties that prevent decomposition. Fifth, this metal is soft, and working with it.
Most often, the problem of delivering the dead is faced by the armed forces of countries waging war abroad. In the thirties, Italian soldiers who died in Abyssinia were sent home to their final resting place in hermetically sealed rectangular metal boxes. Of courserelatives buried their sons in ordinary wooden, albeit closed coffins, because, in addition to the hot African climate, battle wounds could disfigure the appearance of a dead warrior.
During the Vietnam War, practical Americans carried dead soldiers in plastic containers. However, then the zinc coffin was not needed: a huge amount of cargo was delivered to Indochina, dozens of direct and return flights were made every day, and the delivery of the bodies of the dead was carried out very quickly. Today, the US Army still uses polymer coffins.
In the Soviet Union, until the end of the eighties, there was no established tradition of military funerals for those who gave their lives defending the interests of the country far from their native forests and fields. The Afghan war was the first armed conflict in which the dead began to return home. At the same time, the reason arose why the zinc coffin was called "cargo 200". The main transport for this sad mission was military transport aircraft, which also had the sad nickname "black tulips", and air travel is impossible without prior weighing in order to avoid overloading. The zinc coffin, together with the contents, weighs no more than two centners, this figure appeared on the invoices.
Secrecy was also of some importance, they tried not to advertise the losses for political reasons, but already in the year of the Moscow Olympics (thanks to word of mouth) almost everyone knew what this code meantpopulation of the USSR. At the same time, another bureaucratic instruction appeared that forbade opening the zinc coffin (even for parents). Its implementation was entrusted to the military registration and enlistment offices, which found it difficult to cope with this task. Having lost their son, sometimes the only one, mother and father were no longer afraid of anything and no one.
Besides wars, there are other times when zinc coffins are needed. In early September 1986, the Odessa Electronmash plant received an urgent order for the manufacture of hundreds of metal boxes of specified sizes. It was not necessary to have special analytical skills in order to connect such a task with the sinking of the steamer "Admiral Nakhimov" near Novorossiysk.
