Soviet aircraft manufacturers....

[Graeme]

Excellent Wayne! Great info there! So there really was some 'truth' in that ridiculous looking bomber drawing I posted earlier after all. Thanks!

Crazy paranoid times...

 

[Waynos]

I bet the 'Mole' was well impressed when he got called an idiot for 40 years

 

[Venganza]

The large bomber is an interesting story. It was leaked to western intelligence in the early 50's who immediately gave it the fictitious name Tu-200 and we had it entering service. When the Tu-20 (Tu-95) was identified shortly afterwards this 'Tu-200' was immediately dismissed as, at best, a mis-identification of the Tu-20 or, at worst, a complete hoax.

It remained this way until after the end of the cold war when a lot of archive material became available and the following were revealed;

first there is this, a redesigned 6 engined derivative of the Tu-85 that dates from 1948 (there was an 8 engine version proposed as well) designed as 'Project 489'

This design then evolved into this one, still under the same number, it now has more highly swept wing and a fully glazed nose, but the tail is lower than on the Western created picture in my earlier post.

There were even some sketchy specs with the drawings, range was 'up to 12,430 miles' Span 183ft, MTOW 209,000lbs and powerplants were to be 6 x Shvetsov ASh-73TK turboprops.

Great drawings, Waynos! The first drawing is like a Soviet B-36, even more than the Tu-85. I thought I knew most everything about the Tu-4, Tu-80, Tu-85, Tu-95 family (and let's not forget the Tu-75), but these are news to me. I suppose these were "way stations" on the path to the Tu-95. What source did you get these drawings from?

Venganza

 

[Waynos]

They are from the 'Secret Projects' series, in this case Soviet Bombers since 1945, there is a companion volume on fighters too. I would love to scan and post all the exotic designs, mock ups, models and prototypes it features but I don't thinkt hat would be fair on the authors, rather I would recommend you to get a copy if you can. Needless to say there is much more to Russia's attempt to emulate the B-36 than the 2 drawings here. I now wonder what else is out there?

 

[Lucky13]

Must be quite few things that we still don't know about....8)

 

[Venganza]

They are from the 'Secret Projects' series, in this case Soviet Bombers since 1945, there is a companion volume on fighters too. I would love to scan and post all the exotic designs, mock ups, models and prototypes it features but I don't thinkt hat would be fair on the authors, rather I would recommend you to get a copy if you can. Needless to say there is much more to Russia's attempt to emulate the B-36 than the 2 drawings here. I now wonder what else is out there?

Thanks for the information, Waynos! You're right about it not being fair to the authors to post all their pictures; I will try and get ahold of the books.

Venganza