What if Tupolov designed another bomber insteae of the TU-4

edvader · Jul 11, 2004

Saw on the History Channel the story of how the Soviets copied the american B-29. Three bombers were interned and Tupolov the designer waw ordered to copy them. WI Tupolov designed another bomber rather than the TU4. Let's say he talked Stalin out of the copy. The TU4 it issaid could NEVER reach the west coast of US. What would the rplacement be? BTW-what bombsight did they use- a copy of the Norden? Thought that personell were given STRICT orders to destroy the bombsight on threat of capture.

Phoenix · Jul 12, 2004

The Norden bomsight was over-rated, or at least from what I've read.

Germans disregarded it after they pick up complete technical blue-prints for it in the early '30's, and the US government stopped any improvement of the sight for 10 years.

NapoleonXIV · Jul 12, 2004

Let's say a spy obtained the plans for Northrup's Flying Wing. The range was 7500 miles, nearly twice that of the B29 with a payload of 52000 lbs

Guilherme Loureiro · Jul 13, 2004

NapoleonXIV said:
Let's say a spy obtained the plans for Northrup's Flying Wing. The range was 7500 miles, nearly twice that of the B29 with a payload of 52000 lbs

...costing about the price of 2 1/2 B-47s, with a bomb bay unsuited to carrying the atomic bombs of the time(the shape of the bomb bay, dictated by the wing profile, meant that the atomic bombs of the time couldn't fit on it).

Roland Wolf · Jul 13, 2004

The Soviets were quite capable of designing their own bombers. During the 30`s they had a number of quite interesting planes flying, including a high-attitude strategig bomber. If not for the TU 4 they might have taken the work of their german engineers (like Brandner of Junkers fame) and designed something around the PTL engines that he designed for them. The finally did-the TU 95 Bear used PTL engines that his team developed.
The USSR could have something flying during the very early 50`s with swept wings and up to 4 7000 hp PTL engines.

zoomar · Jul 14, 2004

Roland Wolf said:
The Soviets were quite capable of designing their own bombers. During the 30`s they had a number of quite interesting planes flying, including a high-attitude strategig bomber. If not for the TU 4 they might have taken the work of their german engineers (like Brandner of Junkers fame) and designed something around the PTL engines that he designed for them. The finally did-the TU 95 Bear used PTL engines that his team developed.
The USSR could have something flying during the very early 50`s with swept wings and up to 4 7000 hp PTL engines.

Not exactly. While they did build a number of really big bombers in the 1930's, most soviet designers themselves recognized the Soviet aviation industry lacked the technological sophistication to emulate upcoming US and western technologies of the mid-40's - hence the importance given to making an exact copy of the B-29. Without this, the USSR would probably have been unable to develop a true long range jet-powered heavy bomber in the league of the B-52 (which they didn't anyway). I'm not sure more use of German technology would have been a big help as Germany herself had it's share of problems in developing reliable long-range heavy bombers. BTW, the Tu-95's airframe systems and technologies owed a lot to the B-29 as well as did every other long range bumber from the Tupolev design bureau until the Blinder. It used turboprops not because they were such outstanding powerplants, but mainly because the Soviets never created fuel-efficient turbojets until the 1980's.

edvader · Jul 14, 2004

Zoomar: did the Soviets EVER adapt any of thier bombers for Aeroflot-their "civilian" airline? I read somewhere -maybe it was in an SF mag that they were building a LITERAL atomic plane.

Roland Wolf · Jul 15, 2004

The german desgin teams were obviously a help for Sovjet aviation. The early turboprops were developed by a team around Brandel, former Junkers engineer. The Soviet bombers which used them had to have a realy long range since the USSR lacked bases near the CONUS (hence the hopla about the Cuba Crisis) and midair refueling was less of an option for the USSR. Since the Bear had a top speed of more than 900 kph it didn`t suffer from the engine choice.
The B29 real advancements were structural-since the plane was so big new construction methods had to be found. For example the time-proven practice of shaping the wing`s surface by bending the sheets around the structure had to go since the sheets were too thick for bending well by hand. As for aerodynamics or engines the B29 didn`t realy offer anything new. The USSR obviously needed a quick solution for a nuclear bomber. But if they would have a B29 standing around they might have chosen one of the planes I proposesed earlier.
The passenger plane developed from the Bomber was the TU 114 Rossia (Spelling) which shared a lot of parts with the TU 95 Bear. It caused lots of handling problems on western airports since the ground clearance was far higher than for Jets. Often two boarding stairs had to be combined with a working platform.