Hey, if Charles Lindbergh could cross the Atlantic in a primitive aircraft with no provision for forward vision, who’s to say you can’t cruise at Mach 3 without a windshield? Meet the Sukhoi T-4, simultaneously one of the most original, derivative, and bizarre Soviet X-planes.
Just when you thought we’d exhausted the carbon-copy droopnose Soviet supersonic plane thing with the Tu-144 SST, the SuT-4 (as I’ll abbreviate it -and not to be confused with the Tu-4, the reverse-engineered B-29.) comes along appearing to be a shameless ripoff of the awesome-in-its-own-right North American Aviation XB-70 Valkyrie. “So what’s the deal?” you think. And then you think, “… and while we’re at it, the SuT-4 looks to have a perfectly functional windshield. What’s your deal, man?”
Image courtesy of http://hsfeatures.com
The deal, skeptical reader, is that the SuT-4 had a Concordeski-esque droop snoot, giving the pilot better landing visibility, but which in the “up” (or as I like to call it, “cross your fingers and pray”) position completely obscured the windshield. Thus, the pilot had no forward view. Well, that’s not completely true. Apparently below 373 MPH, you could deploy a periscope for a degree of visibility. Above 373 MPH, you’re S.O.L. I’ve never flown so much as a Piper Cub, let alone a Mach 3 experiemental bomber, but you can be damn sure I’d feel more comfortable being able to see out the front. Hell, one of the more distinctive features of Soviet military vehicles were the traditional window-studded conning towers of Soviet subamarines, whereas the American subs (wisely?) had none. So it’s somewhat interesting that the SuT-4 had this solution to an aerodynamic problem.
Image courtesy Monino Aviation
Then again, if you’re at the undoubtedly high altitudes that the Sukhoi was designed to travel at, there’s probably not a ton to look at. Plus, people have been flying in instrument-only situations since they had the bright idea to put altimeters into those glorified kites of the early days of aviation. And lest anyone make a “trust your life at Mach 3 with Russian instrumentation” joke inwardly, I’d like to point out that an enduring charactersitic of Soviet design philosophy was the almost Eastern philosophy sounding, “it cannot fail, because there is no backup.” Simply put, where most American engineers prefered a less-robust system with multiple failsafes and backups, the Soviets simply engineered the damn things not to break. When they did, your Commie ass was grass … but mostly they didn’t break. Ingest a Makarov in the starboard engine nacelle? No problem. You can probably still take off, whereas a F-16 would be a pile of charred aluminum.
Now, was the SuT-4 a copy of the XB-70, as it seems externally? The best answer I can find is “not in so many words.” It was clearly inspired by many of the innovative features of the American aircraft, and was intended for a similar recon/strategic bombing mission profile. But unlike the Tu-4 “Bull,” for example, it was an approximation rather than an exact copy. Its four Kolesov RD36-41 afterburning engines which produced a total of 142,000 pounds of thrust, and while the airframe was theoretically capable of that Mach 3 number I’m bandying about, it only ever reached Mach 1.3 before the project was cancelled in 1974 due to cost and mission irrelevance. Like the XB-70, cancelled over a decade earlier, the reality was that manned supersonic strategic bombers were a really expensive way to do a job that a cheaper ICBM could do more effectively. The Soviets redistributed the costs into air superiority fighters, and the SuT-4s (all two of them) were retired. One survives at the Central Airforce Museum near Moscow.
Sources: Wikipedia, Moninoaviation.com, hsfeatures.com
A stunning idea, oddly executed. The combination of dropping the nose, and the very non-aerodynamic cabin must have made for quite the air-brake. NOt an optimal one, considering the location, but an effective one nonetheless.
It's not immediately obvious how one would get to the cockpit in that thing, but I'm sure it was a mix of yoga and slo-mo parkour.
I'd rather have one of the Hinds in the background of the first photo.
It took me a couple of minutes to notice it, but the tableau in front of the choppers made me giggle. The happy couple, him looking serious, her trying to look casual but not really pulling it off because she's in front of a gunship, all while the older guy taking the picture is getting into a semi-crouch to get the perfect angle.
Alright, sometimes I embarrass even myself. It just struck me as funny looking.
Strange idea. It's "Lindbergh", by the way.
Stupid me to trust autocorrect. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on me again.
Nice that they keep the bombs right there, hate to forget where they put them.
Russian Cold War-era aircraft are so sexy. It's as though all that oppression leaked out onto the draftsmen's tables (ewww). Between this Sukhoi and the Myasischev M-50 in the background, we've got two incredible-looking aircraft.
Gosh, how did I miss that Bounder?
Dunno, you cad.
I see what you did there, and I liked it. Made me do a laugh.
On the bright side, it appears this obviates the need for flash-blindness goggles.
http://www.flightgear.dk/flash.htm
I'd alway read the theory was to drop the payload, and then turn backside to it followed by hauling as much ass as possible for several minutes.
The nose of this plane was reminding me of something and I couldn't quite pin it down. Then it hit me…
<img src="http://i52.tinypic.com/29zps2o.jpg">
<img src="http://www.volny.cz/havlikjosef/galery/FSII_C64_Manhattan01.png">
Yer point exactly?
Dude, you need to upgrade to WorldMap v4.2. I betcha Kai Tak Airport is still on that one…
Kai Tak: Aim for the checkerboard and turn before you suck up a seat cushion…
Oh, you'll suck up a seat cushion anyway; your own, to be precise.
And looking back at OA's picture above I can't help but notice another meaning that could be drawn from it just by the virtue of juxtaposing that place with a Soviet plane. Dark stuff there, or I'm just thinking too much.
Yeah, I was wondering what road we were going down. Too much paranoia these days?
Although the T-4 certainly bears a resemblance to the XB-70, it was no where near the carbon-copy that the TU-144 was. For starters, it's about half the mass of the XB-70, has 75% of the wingspan, and half the wing area. That said, it was probably conceived as a response to the X-70 program.
It's always interesting to see what the Soviet counterparts to American aerospace projects were. For instance, this is the Soviet equivalent to the X-20 Dyna-Soar/M2-F3/X-24/HL-10 programs.
The TU-4 tastes like another example of following a set of "borrowed" blueprints without actually knowing what mission they were actually intended for.
So this is where the phrase "flying blind" came from? Radical.