The USSR created jet aviation itself. and what kind!!! VLG - personal jet aircraft The first jet aircraft were created by the USSR
It's always difficult to be first, but interesting
On the morning of March 27, 1943, the first Soviet jet fighter "BI-1" took off from the Koltsovo Air Force Research Institute airfield in Sverdlovsk region. The seventh test flight to achieve maximum speed was underway. Having reached a two-kilometer altitude and picked up a speed of about 800 km/h, the plane suddenly went into a dive at 78 seconds after running out of fuel and collided with the ground. Experienced test pilot G. Ya. Bakhchivandzhi, who was sitting at the helm, died. This disaster became an important stage in the development of aircraft with liquid rocket engines in the USSR, but although work on them continued until the end of the 1940s, this direction of aviation development turned out to be a dead end. Nevertheless, these first, although not very successful steps, had a serious impact on the entire subsequent history of the post-war development of Soviet aircraft and rocketry.
“The era of propeller airplanes should be followed by the era of jet airplanes...” - these words of the founder of jet technology K. E. Tsiolkovsky began to receive real embodiment already in the mid-1930s of the twentieth century. By this point, it became clear that a further significant increase in aircraft flight speed due to an increase in the power of piston engines and a more advanced aerodynamic shape is practically impossible. The aircraft had to be equipped with engines whose power could not be increased without excessively increasing the engine's mass. Thus, to increase the flight speed of a fighter from 650 to 1000 km/h, it was necessary to increase the power of the piston engine by 6 (!) times.
It was obvious that the piston engine had to be replaced by a jet engine, which, having smaller transverse dimensions, would allow it to reach higher speeds, giving more thrust per unit of weight.
Jet engines are divided into two main classes: air-breathing engines, which use the energy of oxidation of flammable air with oxygen taken from the atmosphere, and rocket engines, which contain all the components of the working fluid on board and are capable of operating in any environment, including airless ones. The first type includes turbojet (TRJ), pulsating air-jet (PvRJ) and ramjet (ramjet) engines, and the second type includes liquid-propellant rocket engines (LPRE) and solid-fuel rocket engines (STRD).
The first examples of jet technology appeared in countries where traditions in the development of science and technology and the level of the aviation industry were extremely high. These are, first of all, Germany, the USA, as well as England and Italy. In 1930, the design of the first turbojet engine was patented by the Englishman Frank Whittle, then the first working model of the engine was assembled in Germany in 1935 by Hans von Ohain, and in 1937 the Frenchman Rene Leduc received a government order to create a ramjet engine.
In the USSR, practical work on “jet” topics was carried out mainly in the direction of liquid rocket engines. The founder of rocket engine building in the USSR was V.P. Glushko. In 1930, then an employee of the Gas Dynamics Laboratory (GDL) in Leningrad, which at that time was the only design bureau in the world for the development of solid fuel rockets, he created the first domestic liquid-propellant rocket engine ORM-1. And in Moscow in 1931–1933. scientist and designer of the Jet Propulsion Research Group (GIRP) F.L. Tsander developed the OR-1 and OR-2 liquid propellant engines.
A new powerful impetus for the development of jet technology in the USSR was given by the appointment of M. N. Tukhachevsky in 1931 to the post of Deputy People's Commissar of Defense and Chief of Arms of the Red Army. It was he who insisted on the adoption in 1932 of the Council of People’s Commissars resolution “On the development of steam turbine and jet engines, as well as jet-powered aircraft...”. The work that began after this at the Kharkov Aviation Institute made it possible only by 1941 to create a working model of the first Soviet turbojet engine designed by A. M. Lyulka and contributed to the launch on August 17, 1933 of the first liquid-propellant rocket in the USSR GIRD-09, which reached an altitude of 400 m.
But the lack of more tangible results prompted Tukhachevsky in September 1933 to unite the GDL and GIRD into a single Jet Research Institute (RNII), headed by Leningrader, military engineer 1st rank I. T. Kleimenov. The future Chief Designer of the space program, Muscovite S.P. Korolev, who two years later in 1935 was appointed head of the rocket aircraft department, was appointed his deputy. And although the RNII was subordinate to the ammunition department of the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry and its main topic was the development of rocket shells (the future Katyusha), Korolev, together with Glushko, managed to calculate the most advantageous design schemes of the devices, types of engines and control systems, types of fuel and materials. As a result, by 1938, his department had developed an experimental guided missile system, including designs for liquid-propelled cruise missiles “212” and long-range ballistic missiles “204” with gyroscopic control, aircraft missiles for firing at air and ground targets, and anti-aircraft solid-fuel missiles with guidance by light and radio beam.
In an effort to gain support from the military leadership in the development of the high-altitude rocket plane "218", Korolev substantiated the concept of a missile fighter-interceptor capable of reaching high altitude and attack aircraft that have broken through to the protected object.
But on June 30, 1939, the German pilot Erich Warsitz took into the air the world's first jet aircraft with a liquid-propellant engine designed by Helmut Walter "Heinkel" He-176, reaching a speed of 700 km/h, and two months later the world's first jet aircraft with a turbojet engine "Heinkel" He-178, equipped with a Hans von Ohain engine, "HeS-3 B" with a thrust of 510 kg and a speed of 750 km/h.
In May 1941, the British Gloucester Pioneer E.28/29 made its first flight with the Whittle W-1 turbojet engine designed by Frank Whittle.
Thus, Nazi Germany became the leader in the jet race, which, in addition to aviation programs, began to implement a missile program under the leadership of Wernher von Braun at the secret training ground in Peenemünde.
In 1938, the RNII was renamed NII-3, now the “royal” rocket plane “218-1” began to be designated “RP-318-1”. New leading designers, engineers A. Shcherbakov, A. Pallo, replaced the ORM-65 liquid-propellant engine V. P. Glushko with the nitric acid-kerosene engine “RDA-1–150” designed by L. S. Dushkin.
And now, after almost a year of testing, in February 1940, the first flight of the RP-318-1 took place, towed behind the R 5 aircraft. Test pilot? V. P. Fedorov at an altitude of 2800 m unhooked the towing cable and started the rocket engine. Behind the rocket plane a small cloud appeared from the incendiary squib, then brown smoke, then a fiery stream about a meter long. “RP-318–1”, having reached a maximum speed of only 165 km/h, began flying with a climb.
This modest achievement nevertheless allowed the USSR to join the pre-war “jet club” of the leading aviation powers.
The successes of German designers did not go unnoticed by the Soviet leadership. In July 1940, the Defense Committee under the Council of People's Commissars adopted a resolution that determined the creation of the first domestic aircraft with jet engines. The resolution, in particular, provided for the resolution of issues “on the use of high-power jet engines for ultra-high-speed stratospheric flights.”
Massive Luftwaffe raids on British cities and the lack of sufficient numbers in the Soviet Union radar stations identified the need to create a fighter-interceptor to cover particularly important objects, the project of which began to be worked on in the spring of 1941 by young engineers A. Ya. Bereznyak and A. M. Isaev from the Design Bureau of designer V. F. Bolkhovitinov. The concept of their Dushkin-powered missile interceptor or “short-range fighter” was based on Korolev’s proposal put forward back in 1938.
The “close fighter”, when an enemy aircraft appeared, had to quickly take off and, having a high rate of climb and speed, catch up with and destroy the enemy in the first attack, then, after running out of fuel, using the reserve altitude and speed, plan for landing.
The project was distinguished by its extraordinary simplicity and low cost - the entire structure was to be made of solid wood from plywood. The engine frame, pilot protection and landing gear were made of metal, which were retracted under the influence of compressed air.
With the start of the war, Bolkhovitinov attracted the entire design bureau to work on the aircraft. In July 1941, a preliminary design with an explanatory note was sent to Stalin, and in August the State Defense Committee decided to urgently build an interceptor, which was needed by Moscow air defense units. According to the order of the People's Commissariat of the Aviation Industry, 35 days were allotted for the manufacture of the aircraft.
The aircraft, called “BI” (short-range fighter or, as journalists later interpreted it, “Bereznyak-Isaev”), was built almost without detailed working drawings, drawing life-size parts on plywood. The fuselage skin was glued onto a blank of veneer, then attached to the frame. The keel was made integral with the fuselage, as was the thin wooden wing of the caisson structure, and was covered with canvas. Even the carriage for two 20-mm ShVAK cannons with 90 rounds of ammunition was made of wood. The D-1 A-1100 liquid-propellant rocket engine was installed in the rear fuselage. The engine consumed 6 kg of kerosene and acid per second. The total fuel supply on board the aircraft, equal to 705 kg, ensured engine operation for almost 2 minutes. The estimated take-off weight of the BI aircraft was 1650 kg with an empty weight of 805 kg.
In order to reduce the time needed to create an interceptor, at the request of A. S. Yakovlev, Deputy People's Commissar of the Aviation Industry for Experimental Aircraft Construction, the airframe of the "BI" aircraft was examined in a full-scale wind tunnel at TsAGI, and at the airfield, test pilot B. N. Kudrin began jogging and approaching in tow . The development of the power plant required a fair amount of tinkering, since nitric acid corroded tanks and wiring and had a harmful effect on humans.
However, all work was interrupted due to the evacuation of the design bureau to the Ural village of Belimbay in October 1941. There, in order to debug the operation of the liquid-propellant rocket engine systems, a ground stand was installed - the “BI” fuselage with a combustion chamber, tanks and pipelines. By the spring of 1942, the ground testing program was completed.
Flight testing of the unique fighter was entrusted to Captain Bakhchivandzhi, who made 65 combat sorties at the front and shot down 5 German planes. He previously mastered the control of systems at the stand.
The morning of May 15, 1942 forever went down in the history of Russian cosmonautics and aviation, with the takeoff from the ground of the first Soviet aircraft with a liquid jet engine. The flight, which lasted 3 minutes 9 seconds at a speed of 400 km/h and with a rate of climb of 23 m/s, made a strong impression on everyone present. This is how Bolkhovitinov recalled it in 1962: “For us who stood on the ground, this takeoff was unusual. Picking up speed unusually quickly, the plane took off from the ground after 10 seconds and disappeared from view after 30 seconds. Only the flame of the engine told where he was. Several minutes passed like this. I won’t lie, my guts were shaking.”
Members of the state commission noted in an official act that “the takeoff and flight of the BI-1 aircraft with a rocket engine, used for the first time as the main engine of an aircraft, proved the possibility of practical flight on a new principle, which opens up a new direction for the development of aviation.” The test pilot noted that the flight on the BI aircraft was extremely pleasant in comparison with conventional types of aircraft, and the aircraft was superior to other fighters in terms of ease of control.
A day after the tests, a ceremonial meeting and rally was organized in Bilimbay. A poster hung above the presidium table: “Hello to Captain Bakhchivandzhi, the pilot who flew into the new!”
Soon followed by the decision of the State Defense Committee to build a series of 20 BI-VS aircraft, where, in addition to two cannons, a cluster bomb was installed in front of the pilot’s cockpit, which housed ten small anti-aircraft bombs weighing 2.5 kg each.
In total, the BI fighter made 7 test flights, each of which recorded the best flight performance of the aircraft. The flights took place without incidents, with only minor damage to the landing gear occurring during landings.
But on March 27, 1943, when accelerating to a speed of 800 km/h at an altitude of 2000 m, the third prototype spontaneously went into a dive and crashed into the ground near the airfield. The commission that investigated the circumstances of the crash and the death of test pilot Bakhchivandzhi was unable to establish the reasons for the plane being pulled into a dive, noting that the phenomena that occur at flight speeds of about 800–1000 km/h have not yet been studied.
The disaster hit hard the reputation of the Bolkhovitinov Design Bureau - all unfinished BI-VS interceptors were destroyed. And although later in 1943–1944. A modification of the BI-7 with ramjet engines at the ends of the wing was designed, and in January 1945, pilot B.N. Kudrin completed the last two flights on the BI-1; all work on the aircraft was stopped.
The concept of a rocket fighter was most successfully implemented in Germany, where since January 1939, in the special “Department L” of the Messerschmitt company, where Professor A. Lippisch and his employees moved from the German Glider Institute, work was underway on “Project X” - “ object" interceptor "Me-163" "Komet" with a liquid-propellant rocket engine running on a mixture of hydrazine, methanol and water. It was an aircraft of an unconventional “tailless” design, which, for the sake of maximum weight reduction, took off from a special trolley and landed on a ski extended from the fuselage. Test pilot Ditmar performed the first flight at maximum thrust in August 1941, and already in October it exceeded the 1000 km/h mark for the first time in history. It took more than two years of testing and development before the Me-163 was put into production. It became the first aircraft with a liquid propellant engine to participate in combat since May 1944. And although more than 300 interceptors were produced before February 1945, no more than 80 combat-ready aircraft were in service.
The combat use of Me-163 fighters showed the inconsistency of the missile interceptor concept. Due to the high speed of approach, the German pilots did not have time to aim accurately, and the limited fuel supply (only for 8 minutes of flight) did not provide the opportunity for a second attack. After running out of fuel during gliding, the interceptors became easy prey for American fighters - Mustangs and Thunderbolts. Before the end of hostilities in Europe, the Me-163 shot down 9 enemy aircraft, losing 14 aircraft. However, losses from accidents and disasters were three times higher than combat losses. The unreliability and short range of the Me-163 contributed to the fact that the Luftwaffe leadership launched other jet fighters, the Me-262 and He-162, into mass production.
Messerschmitt Me.262 (German: Messerschmitt Me.262 “Schwalbe” - “swallow”)
The leadership of the Soviet aviation industry in 1941–1943. was focused on the gross production of the maximum number of combat aircraft and improving production models and was not interested in developing promising work on jet technology. Thus, the BI-1 disaster put an end to other Soviet missile interceptor projects: Andrei Kostikov’s “302”, Roberto Bartini’s “R-114” and Korolev’s “RP”.
But information from Germany and the Allied countries became the reason that in February 1944 the State Defense Committee, in its resolution, pointed out the intolerable situation with the development of jet technology in the country. Moreover, all developments in this regard were now concentrated in the newly organized Jet Aviation Research Institute, of which Bolkhovitinov was appointed deputy head. This institute brought together those who had previously worked at various enterprises a group of jet engine designers led by M. M. Bondaryuk, V. P. Glushko, L. S. Dushkin, A. M. Isaev, A. M. Lyulka.
In May 1944, the State Defense Committee adopted another resolution outlining a broad program for the construction of jet aircraft. This document provided for the creation of modifications of the Yak-3, La-7 and Su-6 with an accelerating liquid-propellant engine, the construction of “purely rocket” aircraft in the Yakovlev and Polikarpov Design Bureaus, an experimental Lavochkin aircraft with a turbojet engine, as well as fighters with air-breathing motor-compressor engines in the Mikoyan Design Bureau and Sukhoi. For this purpose, the Sukhoi design bureau created the Su-7 fighter, in which the liquid-propellant RD-1, developed by Glushko, worked together with a piston engine.
Flights on the Su-7 began in 1945. When the RD-1 was turned on, the aircraft's speed increased by an average of 115 km/h, but the tests had to be stopped due to frequent failure of the jet engine. A similar situation arose in the design bureaus of Lavochkin and Yakovlev. On one of the experimental La-7 R aircraft, the accelerator exploded in flight; the test pilot miraculously managed to escape. When testing the Yak-3 RD, test pilot Viktor Rastorguev managed to reach a speed of 782 km/h, but during the flight the plane exploded and the pilot died. The increasing frequency of accidents led to the fact that testing of aircraft with the RD-1 was stopped.
One of the most interesting projects interceptors with a rocket engine was the project of the supersonic (!) fighter “RM-1” or “SAM-29”, developed at the end of 1944 by the undeservedly forgotten aircraft designer A. S. Moskalev. The aircraft was designed according to the “flying wing” design of a triangular shape with oval leading edges, and in its development the pre-war experience in creating the Sigma and Strela aircraft was used. The RM-1 project was supposed to have the following characteristics: crew - 1 person, power plant - RD2 MZV with a thrust of 1590 kgf, wingspan - 8.1 m and its area - 28.0 m2, take-off weight - 1600 kg , maximum speed - 2200 km/h (and this was in 1945!). TsAGI believed that the construction and flight testing of RM-1 is one of the most promising areas in future development Soviet aviation.
In November 1945, the order to build RM-1 was signed by Minister A.I. Shakhurin, but in January 1946, the order to build RM-1 was canceled by Yakovlev. A similar Cheranovsky BICH-26 (Che-24) supersonic fighter project based on a “flying wing” with a rudder and a variable-sweep wing was also cancelled.
Post-war acquaintance with German trophies revealed a significant lag in the development of the domestic jet aircraft industry. To bridge the gap, it was decided to use the German JUMO-004 and BMW-003 engines, and then create our own based on them. These engines were named “RD-10” and “RD-20”.
In 1945, simultaneously with the task of building a MiG-9 fighter with two RD-20s, the Mikoyan Design Bureau was tasked with developing an experimental interceptor fighter with an RD-2 M-3 V liquid-propellant rocket engine and a speed of 1000 km/h. The aircraft, designated I-270 (“Zh”), was soon built, but its further tests did not show the advantage of a missile fighter over an aircraft with a turbojet engine, and work on this topic was closed. In the future, liquid jet engines in aviation began to be used only on prototypes and experimental aircraft or as aircraft boosters.
“...It’s scary to remember how little I knew and understood then. Today they say: “discoverers”, “pioneers”. And we walked in the dark and stuffed huge cones. No special literature, no methodology, no established experiment. The Stone Age of Jet Aviation. We were both complete mugs!..” - this is how Alexey Isaev recalled the creation of “BI-1”. Yes, indeed, due to their colossal fuel consumption, aircraft with liquid-propellant rocket engines did not take root in aviation, forever giving way to turbojet engines. But having taken their first steps in aviation, liquid-propellant rocket engines firmly took their place in rocket science.
In the USSR during the war years, a breakthrough in this regard was the creation of the BI-1 fighter, and here a special merit goes to Bolkhovitinov, who took under his wing and managed to attract to work such future luminaries of Soviet rocketry and cosmonautics as: Vasily Mishin, first deputy chief designer Korolev, Nikolai Pilyugin, Boris Chertok - chief designers of control systems for many combat missiles and launch vehicles, Konstantin Bushuev - head of the Soyuz - Apollo project, Alexander Bereznyak - designer of cruise missiles, Alexey Isaev - developer of liquid propellant rocket engines for submarine missiles and spacecraft, Arkhip Lyulka is the author and first developer of domestic turbojet engines.
I-270 (according to NATO classification - Type 11) is an experienced fighter aircraft of the Mikoyan Design Bureau with a rocket engine.
The mystery of Bakhchivandzhi’s death has also been solved. In 1943, the T-106 high-speed wind tunnel was put into operation at TsAGI. It immediately began to conduct extensive research on aircraft models and their elements at large subsonic speeds. The BI aircraft model was also tested to identify the causes of the disaster. Based on the test results, it became clear that the BI crashed due to the peculiarities of the flow around the straight wing and tail at transonic speeds and the resulting phenomenon of the aircraft being pulled into a dive, which the pilot could not overcome. The BI-1 crash on March 27, 1943 was the first that allowed Soviet aircraft designers to solve the problem of the “wave crisis” by installing a swept wing on the MiG-15 fighter. 30 years later, in 1973, Bakhchivandzhi was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Yuri Gagarin spoke about him this way:
“... Without the flights of Grigory Bakhchivandzhi, April 12, 1961 might not have happened.” Who could have known that exactly 25 years later, on March 27, 1968, like Bakhchivandzhi at the age of 34, Gagarin would also die in a plane crash. They were truly united by the main thing - they were the first.
Jet planes
During the first four years of the war, the maximum speed serial aircraft increased, on average, by 100 km/h: from 500–550 km/h to 600–650 km/h. To do this, the engine power needed to be increased approximately twice: from 1000 to 2000 hp. (figures are for fighters). At the same time, the weight of not only the power plant has increased significantly. but also the entire aircraft.
Further increase in speed turned out to be almost impossible. As is known, the power expended to overcome aerodynamic drag is proportional to the square of the speed, and the propeller thrust is inversely proportional to the speed. Thus. the required power of a propeller-driven power plant increases in proportion to the cube of the speed and the higher the speed the aircraft flies, the more power is required to be added for the same increase in speed (Fig. 4.62).
This is a theory. In practice, even more power would be required, since: 1) with an increase in engine displacement, its dimensions and aerodynamic resistance would increase; 2) specific fuel consumption is approximately proportional to power, therefore, to maintain the required flight range it would be necessary to increase the fuel supply; 3) due to the increased weight of the power plant and a larger amount of fuel, in order to maintain the same load on the wing, it is necessary to increase its size, which, in turn, would lead to an increase in the weight and aerodynamic drag of the aircraft.
Rice. 4.62. Dependence N-f(V)
In the 1930s, the speed of aircraft was increased not only by increasing power, but also by reducing the specific weight of the engine, switching to higher wing loads, improving the external shape of the aircraft and propeller efficiency, and increasing flight altitude. However, by the mid-40s these possibilities were practically exhausted. Moreover, as the speed of aircraft increased, the influence of air compressibility began to affect itself, which led to the deterioration of some aerodynamic parameters. Thus, a decrease in propeller efficiency was noticed; With an increase in flight speed and altitude and an increase in the size and number of revolutions of the propeller, shock waves began to appear at the ends of the blades. Attempts to avoid this by increasing the number of blades while simultaneously reducing their length, changing the shape of the twist and profile of the blade had only a limited effect (Fig. 4.63).
Sometimes the effect of compressibility was manifested on the aircraft itself, usually when diving at high altitudes, where the wave crisis occurs about 150 km/h earlier than when flying near the ground. Due to the occurrence of shock waves, vibration began on the wing, and the plane was pulled into a dive. Most often this happened on American P-38s and P-47s. having Mcrit = 0.7 (they even had to install special flaps for recovery from a dive), less often - on the P-51 with a laminar profile (Mcrit = 0.8), even less often - on the Spitfire, which was distinguished by a thin wing profile (Mcrit=0.9) . On Soviet fighters operating on low altitudes, no cases of compressibility influence were noted.
So, it became clear that, despite all the tricks (the introduction of forced engine operating modes, the use of superchargers, the use of exhaust energy using special jet nozzles), the capabilities of the internal combustion engine with a propeller were exhausted. To master new ranges of speed and flight altitude, a transition to another type of power plant was required - a jet engine.
A palliative measure was the creation of combined-type engines, using jet thrust as an additional accelerator in flight. To do this, small jet engines such as ramjet or liquid propellant engines were installed under the fuselage or on the wings. These works had the greatest scope in the USSR, where by the end of the war, due to the lower power of piston engines, military aircraft began to lag behind the best examples of foreign aviation technology in altitude and speed. For the first time, the possibility of using ramjet engines on a fighter was tested in 1940 on the I-15bis and I-153 aircraft, placing two such engines under the wings. Later, as an experiment, ramjet engines were installed on LaGG-3 and Yak-7B fighters.
Rice. 4.63. Change in propeller efficiency at transonic speeds
Turning on the ramjet gave a speed increase of 30–50 km/h, however, due to the high aerodynamic drag of these engines, the maximum speed of a fighter with inoperative ramjet engines was noticeably lower than that of the same aircraft without auxiliary power units. In addition, the straight-through units consumed a lot of fuel (60–70 kg/min). Therefore, this method was soon abandoned.
Installation of a liquid-propellant rocket engine in the rear fuselage did not lead to an increase in Cxo. In addition, during tests in 1943–1945. on the Pe-2 bomber and Yak-3, Jla-7 and Su-7 fighters, it was found that the use of a liquid-propellant rocket engine (RD-1 with a thrust of 300 kg) gives a more noticeable increase in speed: from 70 to 180 km/h. But the insufficient reliability of the liquid-propellant rocket accelerator and the need to have on board a supply of caustic nitric acid, used as an oxidizer, greatly hampered operation. In addition, the RD-1 turned out to be more “voracious” than ramjet boosters: in one minute it burned 90 kg of fuel. Therefore, this method of increasing maximum flight speed was not widespread in the Air Force.
Another type of combined air-breathing engine was a motor-compressor power plant. The first aircraft of this type was built in Italy by Caproni in August 1940 (Fig. 4.64). The power plant consisted of a 900 hp Isotta-Fraschini piston engine, which drove a three-stage compressor located at the rear of the air-breathing engine. This design made it possible to do without a turbine, which was a stumbling block to the creation of a turbojet engine due to the fact that the material of the blades could not withstand ultra-high temperatures behind the combustion chamber. However, flight tests showed the futility of this power plant - due to its low efficiency, the maximum speed of the aircraft was only 330 km/h.
Rice. 4.64. Experimental aircraft Caproni-Campii
In an experimental rocket-propeller motor installation, designed in 1943–1945. in the USSR under the leadership of K.V. Kholshchevnikov, thrust was created by the combined action of an air propeller and a jet engine with an axial compressor driven by a VK-107 piston engine using an extension shaft. Fighters with such an engine, the I-107 (Su-5) and I-250 (MiG-13), were tested in March-April 1945, and the latter was even built in a small series.
Due to the large weight of the piston engine and unresolved problems caused by a drop in propeller efficiency at high speeds, the creation of combined type power plants was not justified. A real leap in the development of flight technical characteristics aircraft was achieved only when the internal combustion engine was finally replaced by the jet engine.
The first country to establish serial production of jet aircraft was Germany. As noted, German designers began experiments with jet aircraft even before the war. Work was carried out in two directions: the creation of rocket aircraft with liquid propellant engines and the creation of turbojet aircraft (Table 4.15).
Table 4.15. Characteristics of jet aircraft during the Second World War.
* - calculated values
Tests of the world's first rocket aircraft, the He-176, in the summer of 1939 showed the fundamental possibility of flight using a liquid-propellant rocket engine, but the maximum speed that this aircraft reached after 50 seconds of engine operation was only 345 km/h. Believing that one of the reasons for this was the conservative “classical” design of the Heinkel aircraft, the leaders of the Research Department of the Ministry of Aviation proposed using a “tailless” rocket engine. At their order, the German aircraft designer A. Lippisch, who had previously been designing flying-wing type aircraft, in 1940 built an experimental tailless aircraft DFS-I94 with the same Walter R1-203 liquid-propellant rocket engine. Due to the low engine thrust (400 kg) and the short duration of its operation (1 min.), the speed of the aircraft was no greater than that of propeller-driven aircraft. However, the Walter R2-203 liquid-propellant rocket engine was soon created, capable of developing a thrust of 750 kg. Having secured the support of the Messerschmitt company, Lippisch released a new rocket aircraft, the Me-163L, with an R2-203 engine. October 1941 X. Dittmar, after lifting the aircraft in tow to a height of 4000 m, started the engine, and after a few minutes of flight at full thrust reached an unprecedented speed - 1003 km/h. It would seem that this would be immediately followed by an order for mass production of the aircraft as a combat vehicle. But the German military command was in no hurry. At that time, the situation in the war was in Germany's favor, and the Nazi leaders were confident of an early victory with the help of the weapons they had.
However, by 1943 the situation became different. German aviation quickly lost its leading position, and the situation on the fronts worsened. Enemy aircraft appeared more and more often over German territory, and bomb attacks on German military and industrial facilities became more and more powerful. This made us think seriously about strengthening fighter aircraft, and the idea of creating a high-speed missile interceptor fighter became extremely tempting. In addition, progress was made in the development of liquid propellant engines - the new Walter HWK 109-509A engine with an increased fuel combustion temperature could develop a thrust of up to 1700 kg. The aircraft with this engine was designated Me-163B. Unlike the experimental Me-163A, it had cannon armament (2x30 mm) and armor protection for the pilot, i.e. it was a combat aircraft.
Due to the fact that the development of the HWK 109-509A was delayed, the first production Me-163B took off only on February 21, 1944, and a total of 279 such aircraft were built before the end of the war. Since May 1944, they took part in combat operations as fighter-interceptors on the Western Front. Since the range of the Me-163 was small - only about 100 km, it was planned to create a whole network of special interception groups located at a distance of about 150 km from each other and protecting Germany from the northern and western directions.
The Me-163 was a “tailless” aircraft with a swept wing (Fig. 4.65). The fuselage had a metal structure, the wing - wooden. The wing sweep, combined with aerodynamic twist, was used to longitudinally balance the aircraft without horizontal tail. At the same time, as it turned out later, the use of a swept wing made it possible to reduce wave drag at transonic flight speeds.
Due to the high engine thrust, the Me-163 was superior to others in speed jet planes period of the Second World War and had an unprecedented rate of climb - 80 m/sec. However, its combat effectiveness was greatly reduced by its very short flight duration. Due to the high specific consumption of fuel and oxidizer by the liquid-propellant rocket engine (5 kg/sec), their reserve was only sufficient for 6 minutes of operation of the liquid-propellant rocket engine at full thrust. After gaining an altitude of 9-10 km, the pilot had time for only one short attack. Take-off and landing were also very difficult due to the unusual landing gear in the form of a retractable trolley (landing was carried out on a ski pulled out from the fuselage). Frequent engine stops, high landing speed, instability during take-off and run, a high probability of explosion of rocket fuel upon impact - all this, according to an eyewitness to the events, was the cause of many disasters.
Technical deficiencies were compounded by rocket fuel shortages and a shortage of pilots late in the war. As a result, only a quarter of the Me-163B built took part in combat operations. The plane did not have any noticeable effect on the course of the war. According to the foreign press, only one unit was actually combat-ready, which accounted for 9 downed bombers with its own losses of 14 aircraft.
At the end of 1944, the Germans made an attempt to improve the aircraft. To increase the flight duration, the engine was equipped with an auxiliary combustion chamber for cruising flight with reduced thrust, the fuel supply was increased, and a conventional wheeled chassis was installed instead of a detachable bogie. Until the end of the war, only one model was built and tested, designated Me-263.
In 1944–1945 Japan tried to organize the production of Me-163 type aircraft to combat B-29 high-altitude bombers. A license was purchased, but one of the two German submarines sent from Germany to Japan to deliver documents and technical samples was sunk, and the Japanese received only an incomplete set of drawings. Nevertheless, Mitsubishi managed to build both the aircraft and the engine. The aircraft was given the name J8M1. On its first flight on July 7, 1945, it crashed due to engine failure while climbing.
The incentive to create rocket aircraft was the desire to find a means of counteraction in the conditions of the dominance of enemy aviation. Therefore, in the USSR, work on a fighter with a rocket engine, in contrast to Germany and Japan, was carried out in the initial stage of the war, when German aviation ruled the skies of our country. In the summer of 1941, V. F. Bolkhovitinov turned to the government with a project for a fighter-interceptor BI with a liquid-propellant engine, developed by engineers A. Ya. Bereznyak and A. M. Isaev.
Rice. 4.65. Messerschmitt Me-163B
Rice. 4.66. Fighter BI
Unlike the Me-163, the BI aircraft had a conventional design with a non-swept wing, tail unit and retractable wheeled landing gear (Fig. 4.66). The structure was made of wood and differed small in size, the wing area was only 7 m?. Located in the rear fuselage, the D-1A-1100 liquid-propellant rocket engine developed a maximum thrust of 1100 kg. The military situation was difficult, so already on the first prototype, weapons were installed (2 cannons of 20 mm caliber) and armor protection for the pilot.
Flight tests of the aircraft were delayed by forced evacuation to the Urals. The first flight took place on May 15, 1942, pilot G. Ya. Bakhchivandzhi). It lasted just over three minutes, but nevertheless went down in history as the first flight combat aircraft with a rocket engine. After the aircraft's airframe was replaced due to damage to its structure by vapors of nitric acid used as an oxidizer, test flights continued in 1943. On March 27, 1943, a disaster occurred: due to a violation of stability and controllability due to the occurrence of shock waves at high speed (this danger was not suspected at that time), the plane spontaneously went into a dive and crashed, Bakhchivandzhi died.
Even during testing, a series of BI fighters was laid down. After the disaster, several dozen unfinished aircraft were destroyed, recognizing them as dangerous to fly. In addition, as tests have shown, the reserve of 705 kg of fuel and oxidizer is enough for less than two minutes of engine operation, which cast doubt on the very possibility of practical use of the aircraft.
There was another, external reason: by 1943, it was possible to establish large-scale production of propeller-driven combat aircraft, which were not inferior in characteristics to German aircraft, and there was no longer an urgent need to introduce new, little-studied and therefore dangerous equipment into production.
The most unusual of the rocket-powered aircraft built during the war was the German Ba-349A Natter vertical take-off interceptor. It was designed as an alternative to the Me-163, designed for mass production. The Va-349A was an extremely cheap and technologically advanced aircraft, constructed from the most affordable types of wood and metal. The wing did not have ailerons; lateral control was carried out by differential deflection of the elevators. The launch took place along a vertical guide about 9 m long. The aircraft was accelerated using four powder accelerators installed on the sides of the rear fuselage (Fig. 4.67). At an altitude of 150 m, the spent rockets were dropped and the flight continued due to the operation of the main engine - the Walter 109-509A liquid rocket engine. At first, the interceptor was aimed at enemy bombers automatically, using radio signals, and when the pilot saw the target, he took control. Approaching the target, the pilot fired a salvo of twenty-four 73-mm rockets mounted under the fairing in the nose of the aircraft. Then he had to separate the front part of the fuselage and parachute to the ground. The engine also had to be parachuted out so it could be reused. Obviously, this project was ahead of the technical capabilities of the German industry, and it is not surprising that flight tests at the beginning of 1945 ended in disaster - during vertical takeoff, the plane lost stability and crashed, the pilot died.
Rice. 4.67. Launch of the Va-349A aircraft
Not only rocket engines were used as a power plant for “disposable” aircraft. In 1944, German designers experimented with a projectile aircraft equipped with a pulsating air-jet engine (Pvrjet) and intended for operations against sea targets. This aircraft was a manned version of the Fieseler Fi-103 (V-1) winged projectile, which was used to bombard England. Due to the fact that when operating on the ground the thrust of the thruster is negligible, the aircraft could not take off on its own and was delivered to the target area on a carrier aircraft. The Fi-103 did not have a landing gear. After separating from the carrier, the pilot had to take aim and dive onto the target. Despite the fact that there was a parachute in the cockpit, the Fi-103 was essentially a weapon for suicide pilots: there was extremely little chance of safely leaving the plane with a parachute during a dive at a speed of about 800 km/h. Until the end of the war, 175 missiles were converted into manned projectile aircraft, but due to numerous disasters, they were not used during testing in combat.
The Juncker company tried to convert unclaimed aircraft into Ju-126 attack aircraft, installing landing gear and cannon armament on them. Takeoff was to be carried out from a catapult or using rocket boosters. The construction and testing of this machine took place after the war, according to an order issued by the USSR to German aircraft designers.
Another manned projectile aircraft with a jet engine was to be the Me-328. Its tests took place in mid-1944. Excessive vibration associated with the operation of pulsating air-jet engines led to the destruction of the aircraft and interrupted further work in this direction.
Truly efficient jet aircraft were created on the basis of turbojet engines, which appeared after the problem of heat resistance of structural materials for turbine blades and combustion chambers was solved. This type of engine, compared to a ramjet or a ramjet, ensured take-off autonomy and caused less vibration, and compared to a liquid-propellant rocket engine, it differed favorably in 10–15 times lower specific fuel consumption, no need for an oxidizer, and greater operational safety.
The first fighter with a turbojet engine was the German Heinkel He-280. Design of the machine began in 1939, shortly after testing the experimental He-178 jet aircraft. Under the wings were 2 HeS-8A turbojet engines with a thrust of 600 kg each. The designer explained the choice of a twin-engine design as follows: “Experience in working on a single-engine jet aircraft has shown that the fuselage of such an aircraft is limited by the length of the air intake and the nozzle part of the power plant. With such an engine installation scheme, it was very difficult to install weapons, without which the turbojet aircraft was of no military interest. I saw only one way out of this situation: the creation of a fighter with two engines under the wing."
Otherwise, the aircraft was a conventional design: a metal monoplane with a non-swept wing, a wheeled landing gear with a nose gear and a twin-tail tail. At the beginning of the tests, there were no weapons on the aircraft; cannons (3x20mm) were installed only in the summer of 1942.
The first flight of the He-178 took place on April 2, 1941. A month later, a speed of 780 km/h was reached.
The He-178 was the world's first twin-engine jet aircraft. Another innovation was the use of a pilot ejection system. This was done to ensure rescue at high speeds, when a strong speed pressure would no longer allow the pilot to independently jump out of the cockpit with a parachute. The ejection seat was fired from the cockpit using compressed air, then the pilot himself had to disconnect the seat belts and open the parachute.
The ejection system came in handy just a few months after the start of testing of the He-280. January 13, 1942, during a flight in bad weather conditions, the plane became icy, and it stopped obeying the controls. The catapult mechanism worked properly, and the pilot landed safely. This was the first practical use of a human ejection system in aviation history.
Beginning in 1944, by order of the Technical Department of the German Ministry of Aviation, experimental versions of all military aircraft were required to have only ejection seats. The ejection system was also used on most production German jet aircraft. Until the end of the Second World War, there were about 60 cases of successful ejections of pilots in Germany.
At the initial stage of the war, Hitler’s military leadership did not show much interest in Heinkel’s new aircraft and did not raise the question of its mass production. Therefore, until 1943, the He-280 remained an experimental machine, and then the Me-262 appeared with better flight characteristics, and the Heinkel jet program was closed.
The first production aircraft with a turbojet engine was the Messerschmitt Me-262 fighter (Fig. 4.68). It was in service with the German Air Force and took part in combat operations.
Construction of the first prototype Me-262 began in 1940, and from 1941 its flight tests took place. Initially, the aircraft was flown with a combined installation of a propeller engine in the nose of the fuselage and 2 turbojet engines under the wing. The first flight with only jet engines took place on July 18, 1942. It lasted 12 minutes and was quite successful. Test pilot F. Wend el writes: “The turbojet engines worked like clockwork, and the car’s handling was extremely pleasant. Indeed, I have rarely felt such enthusiasm during the first flight of any aircraft as I did on the Me 262."
Just like the He-280, the Me-262 was a single-seat all-metal cantilever monoplane with 2 turbojet engines in nacelles under the wing. The landing gear with a tail support was soon replaced, following the model of the He-280, with a three-wheeled one with a nose wheel; such a design was better suited to the high takeoff and landing speeds of a jet aircraft. The fuselage had a characteristic cross-sectional shape in the form of a downward expanding triangle with rounded corners. This made it possible to retract the wheels of the main landing gear into niches in the lower surface of the fuselage and ensured minimal interference resistance in the area of the wing and fuselage joint. The wing is trapezoidal in shape with a sweep along the leading edge of 18°. The ailerons and landing flaps were located on the trailing straight edge. The Jumo-004 turbojet engines with a thrust of 900 kg were launched using a gasoline two-stroke starter engine. Thanks to the greater engine power than the He-280, the aircraft could continue to fly when one of them stopped. The maximum flight speed at an altitude of 6 km was 865 km/h.
Rice. 4.68. Messerschmitt Me-262
In November 1943, the Messerschmitt jet was demonstrated to Hitler. This was followed by a decision to mass produce the aircraft, however, contrary to common sense, Hitler ordered it to be built not as a fighter, but as a high-speed bomber. Since the Me-262 did not have space for an internal bomb bay, the bombs had to be suspended under the wing, and due to the increased weight and aerodynamic drag, the aircraft lost its speed advantage over conventional propeller-driven fighters. Only almost a year later, the leader of the Third Reich abandoned his mistaken decision.
Another circumstance that delayed the serial production of jet aircraft was difficulties with the production of turbojet engines. These include design problems associated with frequent spontaneous stops of Jumo-004 during the raid, and technological difficulties due to the lack of nickel and chromium for the manufacture of heat-resistant turbine blades for Germany, blocked from land and sea, and production disruptions due to increasing bombing Anglo-American aviation and the resulting transfer of a significant part of the aircraft industry to special underground factories.
As a result, the first production Me-262s appeared only in the summer of 1944. In an effort to revive the Luftwaffe, the Germans rapidly increased the production of jet aircraft. By the end of 1444, 452 Me-262s were produced. in the first 2 months of 1945 - another 380 vehicles |52, p. 126 |. The aircraft were produced as a fighter with powerful weapons (four 30-mm cannons in the forward fuselage), a fighter-bomber with two bombs on pylons under the wing, and a photo reconnaissance aircraft. At the end of the war, the main aircraft factories were destroyed by bombing, and the production of aircraft and parts for them was carried out in small factories, hastily built in the wilderness to make them invisible to aviation. There were no airfields; the assembled Me-262s had to take off from a regular highway.
Due to an acute shortage of aviation fuel and pilots, most of the Me-262s built never took off. However, several jet combat units took part in the fighting. The first air battle between the Me-262 and an enemy aircraft occurred on July 26, 1944, when a German pilot attacked the high-altitude English reconnaissance aircraft Mosquito. Thanks to better maneuverability, the Mosquito was able to evade pursuit. Later, Me-262s were used in groups to intercept bombers. Sometimes there were skirmishes with escort fighters, and there were even cases when a conventional propeller-driven aircraft managed to shoot down a faster but less maneuverable jet fighter. But this happened rarely. In general, the Me-262 demonstrated superiority over conventional aircraft, primarily as interceptors (Fig. 4.69).
In 1945, in Japan, which received from the Krupp company the technology for the production of heat-resistant steels for turbines, a Nakajima J8N1 “Kikka” jet aircraft with 2 Ne20 turbojet engines was designed based on the Me-262 model. The only flight-tested aircraft took off on August 7, the day after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. By the time Japan surrendered, there were 19 Kikka jet fighters on the assembly line.
The second German aircraft with turbojet engines used in combat was the multi-role twin-engine Arado Ar-234. It began to be designed in 1941 as a high-speed reconnaissance aircraft. Due to difficulties with fine-tuning the Jumo-004 engines, the first flight took place only in mid-1943, and mass production began in July 1944.
Rice. 4.64. Altitude and speed characteristics of the Spitfire XIV and Me-262 aircraft
The plane had an upper wing. This arrangement provided the necessary clearance between the ground and the engines installed under the wing during takeoff and landing, but, at the same time, created a problem with retracting the landing gear. At first they wanted to use a jettisonable wheeled trolley, like on the Me-163. But this deprived the pilot of the opportunity to take off again in case of landing outside the airfield. Therefore, in 1944, the aircraft was equipped with a conventional wheeled landing gear that retracted into the fuselage. To achieve this, it was necessary to increase the size of the fuselage and rearrange the fuel tanks (Ar-232B version).
Compared to the Me-262, the Ar-234 was larger in size and weight, and therefore its maximum speed with the same engines was lower - about 750 km/h. But the plane could carry three 500-kg bombs on external slings. Therefore, when in September 1944, the first combat unit of Arado jets was formed. they were used not only for reconnaissance, but also for bombing and ground support for troops. In particular, Ar-234B aircraft carried out bombing attacks on Anglo-American troops during the German counter-offensive in the Ardennes in the winter of 1944–1945.
In 1944, the four-engine version of the Ar-234С was tested (Fig. 4.70), a two-seat multi-purpose aircraft with reinforced cannon armament and increased flight speed. Due to a shortage of jet engines for German jet aircraft, it was not built in series.
In total, about 200 Ar-234 were manufactured until May 1945. As in the case of the Me-262, due to an acute shortage of aviation fuel, by the end of the war about half of these aircraft did not participate in combat.
The oldest German aircraft manufacturing company Juncker also contributed to the development of jet aviation in Germany. In accordance with the traditional specialization of designing multi-engine aircraft, it was decided to create a heavy jet bomber, the Ju-287. Work began in 1943 on the initiative of engineer G. Vokks. By this time it was already known that to increase Mkrieg in flight, a swept wing should be used. Vox suggested unusual solution- install a forward-swept wing on the aircraft. The advantage of this arrangement was that stall at high angles of attack occurred first in the root parts of the wing, without loss of aileron functionality. True, scientists warned about the danger of severe aeroelastic deformations of the wing during forward sweep, but Vokks and his like-minded people hoped that during the tests they would be able to solve strength problems.
Fig 4.70. Arado Ar-234С I
Rice. 4.71. Ju-287 bomber prototype
To speed up the construction of the first sample, they used the fuselage from the He-177 aircraft, and the tail unit from the Ju-288. Four Jumo-004 turbojet engines were installed on the aircraft: 2 in nacelles under the wing and 2 on the sides of the forward fuselage (Fig. 4.71). To make takeoff easier, launch rocket boosters were added to the engines. Tests of the world's first jet bomber began on August 16, 1944. In general, they gave positive results. However, the maximum speed did not exceed 550 km/h, so they decided to install 6 BMW-003 engines with a thrust of 800 kg on the production bomber. According to calculations in this case, the aircraft was supposed to carry up to 4000 kg of bombs and have a flight speed of 865 km/h at an altitude of 5000 m. In the summer of 1945, the partially built bomber fell into the hands of the Soviet troops, was brought to flight condition by the hands of German engineers and sent to the USSR for testing.
In an effort to turn the tide of hostilities through the mass production of jet aircraft, the German military leadership in the fall of 1944 announced a competition to create a cheap fighter with a turbojet engine, unlike the Me-262, suitable for production from the simplest materials and without the use of skilled labor. Almost all the leading aviation design organizations took part in the competition - Arado, Blom and Voss, Heinkel, Fizlsr, Focke-Wulf, Juncker. The Heinkel-He-162 project was recognized as the best.
The He-162 aircraft (Fig. 4.72) was a single-seat, single-engine monoplane with a metal fuselage and a wooden wing. To simplify the assembly process, the BMW-003 engine was installed on the fuselage. The plane had to have the simplest flight equipment and a very limited resource. The armament consisted of two 20 mm cannons. According to the plans of the Ministry of Aviation, it was planned to produce 50 aircraft in January 1945, 100 in February, and then increase production to 1000 aircraft per month. The Non-162 was to become the main aircraft for the Volksturm militia created by order of the Fuhrer. The leadership of the youth organization Hitler Youth was instructed to as soon as possible train several thousand pilots for this aircraft.
The Ne-162 was designed, built and tested in just three months. The first flight took place on December 6, 1944, and already in January at precision enterprises in mountainous areas Austria began serial production of the car. But it was already a verse too late. Before the end of the war, only 50 aircraft were put into service, another 100 were prepared for testing, and about 800 Non-162s were at various stages of assembly. The plane did not participate in hostilities. This made it possible to save the lives of not only soldiers of the anti-Hitler coalition, but also hundreds of German youths: as tests of the He-162 in the USSR showed, the aircraft had poor stability, and the use of 15-16-year-old teenagers as pilots with virtually no flight training ( all the “training” consisted of several glider flights) would be tantamount to killing them.
Rice. 4.72. Heinkel He-162
Most early jet aircraft had straight wings. Among production vehicles, the exception was the Me-163, but the sweep in this case was due to the need to ensure longitudinal balancing of the tailless aircraft and was too small to significantly influence the Mkrit.
The occurrence of shock waves at high speeds caused a number of disasters, and, unlike propeller-driven aircraft, the wave crisis did not occur during a dive, but in horizontal flight. The first of these tragic incidents was the death of G. Ya. Bakhchivandzhi. With the start of mass production of jet aircraft, these cases have become more frequent. This is how Messerschmitt test pilot L. Hoffmann describes them: “These disasters (according to credible witnesses) occurred as follows. The Me 262 aircraft, after reaching high speed in horizontal flight, spontaneously went into a dive, from which the pilot was no longer able to recover the aircraft. It was almost impossible to establish the causes of these disasters through investigation, since the pilots did not survive, and the planes completely crashed. As a result of these disasters, one Messerschmitt test pilot and a number of military pilots were killed.”
Mysterious accidents limited the capabilities of jet aircraft. Thus, according to the instructions of the military leadership, the maximum permissible speeds of the Me-163 and Me-262 should not exceed 900 km/h.
When, towards the end of the war, scientists began to guess about the reasons for aircraft being pulled into a dive, the Germans remembered the recommendations of A. Busemann and A. Betz about the advantages of a swept wing at high speeds. The first aircraft in which the sweep of the lifting surface was chosen specifically to reduce wave drag was the Juncker Ju-287 described above. Shortly before the end of the war, on the initiative of the company's chief aerodynamicist Arado R. Kozin, work began on creating a version of the Ar-234 aircraft with a so-called sickle-shaped wing. The sweep at the root was 37°, towards the ends of the wing it decreased to 25°. At the same time, thanks to the variable wing sweep and special selection of profiles, it was intended to ensure the same Mcrit values along the span. By April 1945, when the company's workshops were occupied by British troops, the modified Arado was almost ready. Later, the British used a similar wing on the Victor jet bomber.
The use of sweep made it possible to reduce aerodynamic drag, but at low speeds such a wing was more susceptible to stall and gave a lower Sumax compared to a straight one. As a result, the idea of a wing with variable sweep in flight arose. Using the mechanism for turning the wing consoles, the minimum sweep had to be set during takeoff and landing, and the maximum at high speeds. The author of this idea was A. Lippisch
Rice. 4.74. DM-1 at Langley Aerodynamic Laboratory, USA
Fig 4.75 Horten No-9
After preliminary aerodynamic studies, which showed the possibility of a noticeable “mitigation” of the wave crisis when using a low aspect ratio wing (Fig. 4.73), in 1944 Lippisch began creating a non-motorized analogue of the aircraft. The glider, named DM-1, in addition to the delta wing of low aspect ratio, was distinguished by an unusually large vertical fin (42% of the S wing). This was done to preserve directional stability and controllability at high angles of attack. Inside the keel was the pilot's cabin. To compensate for the redistribution of aerodynamic forces on the wing at transonic speed, which was to be achieved during a steep dive from a high altitude, a system was provided for pumping water ballast into the tail tank. By the time Germany surrendered, construction of the glider was almost completed. After the war, the DM-1 was transported to the USA for study in a wind tunnel (Fig. 4.74)).
Another interesting technical development that appeared in Germany at the end of the war was the Horten Ho-9 flying wing jet. As already noted, the “tailless” design was very convenient for the layout of jet engines in the fuselage, and the swept wing and the absence of a fuselage and empennage provided low aerodynamic drag at transonic speeds. According to calculations, this aircraft with two Jumo-004B turbojet engines with a thrust of 900 kg should have had a V? n*c? 945 km/h |39, p. 92 |. In January 1945, after the first successful flight of the Ho-9V-2 prototype (Fig. 4.75), the Gotha company was given an order for a trial series of 20 vehicles, the production of which was included in the German emergency defense program. But this order remained on paper - the German aviation industry was already inoperative by that time.
The political situation stimulated the development of jet aviation not only in Germany, but also in other countries, primarily in England, the main rival of the German Air Force in the early years of the war. This country already had the technical prerequisites for creating jet aircraft: in the 1930s, engineer F. Whittle worked there on the design of turbojet engines. The first operational samples of Whittle engines appeared at the turn of the 30s and 40s.
Unlike German engines, which had a multi-stage axial compressor, English turbojet engines used a single-stage centrifugal compressor, developed based on the design of centrifugal superchargers for piston engines. This type of compressor was lighter and simpler than an axial one, but had a noticeably larger diameter (Table 4.16).
Table 4.16. Characteristics of German and English turbojet engines
Soon after the start of the war, the British Air Ministry commissioned the Gloucester company to build an experimental aircraft E.28/39 for testing the F. Whittle W.I turbojet engine. To keep the work as secret as possible, the aircraft was assembled not at an aircraft factory, but in an inconspicuous car garage. It was a small single-seat monoplane with a non-swept wing (Fig. 4.76). The first flight took place on May 15, 1941, it was performed by test pilot Gloster P. Saysr. Since the engine thrust was only 390 kg, the speed of the E.28/39 was less than that of propeller-driven aircraft - only 480 km/h. However, when in 1943 a more advanced Power Jet W.2/500 turbojet engine with a thrust of 775 kg was installed on the aircraft, the flight speed increased to 745 km/h.
The potential advantages of the turbojet engine turned out to be so convincing that already in 1941 the government sent the Gloucester company an order for a jet fighter-interceptor. The first such aircraft, the G.41, was built in 1943. It has two De Havilland “Goblin” engines with a thrust of 680 kg. They were located in gondolas on the wing. Due to the low thrust of the engines and their large midsection, the aircraft speed did not exceed 650 km/h. However, the government decided to give an order for serial production of jet aircraft. Initially they had the name “Tandsr-bolt”, but due to the assignment of this name to the American P-47 fighter, the aircraft received a new designation - “Meteor”.
The possibility of increasing the speed characteristics of the fighter was limited by the occurrence of shock waves at the junction of the large-diameter engine nacelles with the wing. Progress was made in early 1945, when new option, “Meteor” F.3 (Fig. 4.77) with Ruggles-Royce “Derwent” engines with a thrust of 900 kg, differing by 200 mm in the smaller overall transverse dimension of the compressor.
G.41 "Meteor" was the only jet aircraft of the anti-Hitler coalition countries that took part in the war. The first 20 Meteors entered service with the British Air Force in July 1944. Initially, they were used in the air defense system to combat German V-1 cruise missiles. In January 1945, a Meteor F.3 unit was sent to Belgium to support the offensive of Anglo-American forces. The Meteor did not have the chance to take part in battles with German jet aircraft.
The United States did not have its own aircraft jet engine. Therefore, when creating the first American jet aircraft, the Bell P-59 Ercomet, it was equipped with copies of the English turbojet engines designed by F. Whittle, made by General Electric. Design of the aircraft began in September 1941 at the initiative of the US Air Force Technical Department, and on October 1, 1942, its first flight took place under the control of pilot R. Stanley.
The R-59 was designed as a combat fighter; mass production of the vehicle began in August 1944. However, due to significant interference between the wing and the engine nacelles located on the sides of the fuselage flight characteristics aircraft turned out to be no better than fighters with piston engines (U m ax=660 km/h). Therefore, the P59 was used only as a training aircraft; 50 copies were built.
The first truly combat jet fighter, the Lockheed F-80 Shooting Star, appeared in the United States in 1944. By this time, the Americans had managed to create a turbojet engine with twice the thrust of F. Whittle's first engines. Therefore, unlike the P-59, the F-80 was a single-engine aircraft. The placement of the turbojet engine in the fuselage significantly improved the aircraft's streamlining, and the F-80's maximum speed was about 900 km/h. Serial production of the aircraft began after the end of the war.
Rice. 4.76. Experimental aircraft Gloucester E28/39
In general, jet aviation in England and the USA during the Second World War was noticeably inferior in level of development to German work in this area. If in the countries of the anti-Hitler bloc by the end of the war there was only one full-fledged combat jet aircraft, then in Germany three types of jet aircraft took part in the fighting - Me-163, Me-262 and Ar-234. In addition, as follows from Table 4.15, the English Meteor, due to its lower thrust and large “forehead” of engines, was much inferior in speed and a number of other parameters to the main German jet fighter Me-262.
In the field of aerodynamics of high-speed flight, German designers and scientists take the lead in proposing such methods for reducing wave drag as a swept wing, a wing of variable sweep in flight, and a delta wing of low aspect ratio. As is known, these technical solutions subsequently found wide application in aviation.
One of the reasons for the lag in the development of jet aviation in the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition was that practical work in this area in the USA, England and other countries began later than in Germany. But the main thing seems to me to be the lack of incentives to create jet aircraft in countries that at the end of the war had significantly more powerful aviation compared to Germany, which ensured air supremacy with the help of conventional propeller-driven aircraft.
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This is what the West cannot forgive either Stalin, the Russian people, or itself.
The era of the 1930s, war and post-war times, attracts us with the grandeur of its achievements, the heroism of millions of people, and the greatness of a power called the Soviet Union.
In the post-war period, the lives of the peoples of the USSR were preserved thanks to enormous achievements in the field of weapons. Throughout its previous existence, Russia has never had such a powerful, victorious Armed Forces, which since the end of 1942 have surpassed the armed forces of any country in the world and remained the strongest in the world until last day existence of the Soviet Union.
Our army and our military industry, destroyed since 1985 by the traitor M.S. Gorbachev, had such a margin of safety that in 1991, before the destruction of the USSR, it remained the strongest. And today we are alive thanks to the fact that under Gorbachev and Yeltsin we did not manage to destroy all nuclear weapons, all missiles, planes, guns and tanks, all weapons factories.
Unfortunately, few people understand that the security of the peoples of Russia fully corresponds to the state of its Armed Forces. But the leaders of the Soviet Union understood this well.
The USSR did not doubt for a minute that only thanks to a well-armed, strong army, our country is free, independent and calm for the life and future of its children.
Few people can imagine the power of our post-war army. It was a multimillion-strong army, working like a well-oiled machine, which was capable of defeating any enemy. But an army cannot successfully defend its country if it is not equipped with weapons whose combat qualities are equal or superior to those of the enemy.
The Soviet leadership understood this, thought about the future of the country and, despite the colossal costs associated with the introduction of hostilities with the enemy that attacked us, allocated funds to create a new generation of weapons. And not thanks to our intelligence, but thanks to the work of Soviet scientists and engineers before the war, during and after the war, new types of weapons were created in the USSR.
Our intelligence, in my opinion, was characterized by insufficient capabilities to provide reliable information. Before the war, she “catched German ducks” and named one after another incorrect dates for the attack on the USSR and became so bogged down in disinformation that she lost the trust of the Soviet government.
Intelligence did not indicate the direction of the main attacks of the German troops in 1941, but claimed that half of the German troops were intended to attack England, looked at the transfer of Manstein’s army from Sevastopol to Leningrad, tripled the number of German troops surrounded at Stalingrad, and could not determine to which front near Kursk in 1943 the enemy would deliver the main blow.
Even in 1945, when our troops, fighting for every house, were advancing towards the Reichstag, intelligence did not know that Hitler’s headquarters bunker was located nearby in the Imperial Chancellery and therefore our troops were not sent specifically to capture the Imperial Chancellery and Hitler was neither alive nor dead didn't take it.
And it is not at all by chance that the presence of secret representatives of the USSR in the highest echelons of power in Hitler’s Germany, for example, Stirlitz, was written by a person more drawn to the West than to Russia.
The myth about the omnipotence of Soviet intelligence was inflated by the West with the aim of accusing the Soviet Union of not having designed new military equipment, atomic weapons, but of stealing the developments of Western countries and especially the developments of Germany and the USA.
These myths were and are being invented to discredit Soviet science, our scientists, designers, engineers, workers, country leaders, research teams and production enterprises. Without these myths, the United States would have to admit that Russians in science and production are much more capable than rich Western countries, and the socialist system is more effective than the capitalist system.
In fact, Soviet designers and scientists already during the war were working on creating fundamentally new military equipment. One type of such equipment was aircraft with turbojet engines, or, as they were called, jet aircraft.
The Yakovlev Design Bureau took as a basis the design of the famous, lightest and most maneuverable fighter of the Second World War - the Yak-3. On April 24, 1946, the first flight of our country's first jet fighter, the Yak-15, designed by the A. S. Yakovlev Design Bureau, took place. On the same day, April 24, 1946, the Soviet jet fighter designed by the Design Bureau of A. I. Mikoyan and M. I. Gurevich MiG-9 made its first flight. Both flights were successful.
April 24 became the birthday of Soviet jet aviation. But almost no one in the country knows about this significant day, because our media hides the achievements of our ancestors from their descendants. On August 18, 1946, on USSR Air Fleet Day, both aircraft were demonstrated at a parade in Tushino.
By November 7, 1946, about 30 aircraft were prepared for the air parade over Red Square, but due to weather conditions, the air parade was canceled and only on May 1, 1947, the country's first jet aircraft flew over Red Square for the first time. The rustling whistle of the formation of flying aircraft was greeted with delight by thousands of Muscovites and guests of the capital.
The USSR did not lag behind in the creation of jet bomber aircraft. In February-April 1949, it passed state tests and the Il-28 front-line bomber, designed by the S.V. Ilyushin Design Bureau, was put into mass production.
The symbol of post-war Soviet aviation was the MiG-15 jet fighter, taken into the air at the end of 1947. Already in 1948, mass production of this remarkable machine began, superior to all types of US fighters.
On the threat of US use atomic bombs against the USSR, Stalin, who had excellent air defense systems and the Mig-15 fighter, had reason to say that American planes would not reach the cities of the Soviet Union. The ability of our Air Force to protect the peaceful labor of Soviet people was demonstrated by the war in Korea unleashed by the United States on June 25, 1950.
The Soviet Mig-17 fighter was publicly demonstrated at an air parade in Tushino on June 20, 1953, but it was also created under Stalin. It became the first aircraft in the USSR to reach the speed of sound in horizontal flight.
When creating the aircraft, testers again encountered the formidable phenomenon of flutter of an unprecedented variety and the reverse action of the ailerons at speeds close to sound. Only the highest flying skill of test pilot Sedov saved the plane, since within a second the plane was in flutter, no more than a third of the rudders remained. Our talented engineers identified the causes and fixed all the problems.
Thanks to its high performance characteristics, reliability and ease of operation, the MiG-17 was recognized as one of the best fighters of its time, especially after participating in battles in Egypt in 1956.
Testing of the remarkable MiG-19 fighter began in 1952 under Stalin. In flight, the plane reached almost one and a half speed of sound and a fantastic rate of climb - in 1.1 minutes it took off to 10 kilometers altitude. At that time, no aircraft in the world had such a rate of climb.
Having such a machine, equipped with guns, missiles and bombs, our children could sleep peacefully, since the plane was able to instantly intercept and destroy any enemy vehicle. The MiG-19 was noticeably superior to its foreign contemporaries: F-100, Super Saber, Starfighter.
I would especially like to note one more aircraft - the two-seat loitering interceptor of the Design Bureau of A. S. Yakovlev Yak-25, also tested during the life of I. V. Stalin on July 19, 1952 and demonstrated to the public in July 1955 at the aviation festival in Tushino and on May 1, 1956 over Red Square and in Tushino.
This aircraft, with two AM-5A engines of 2600 kgf each, designed by A. A. Mikulin, was intended for long-term patrols away from the base. It was equipped with excellent flight-navigation and radar systems, allowing it to intercept enemy targets in any weather conditions and over a wide range of altitudes.
This aircraft, together with ground-based air defense systems, closed the possibility of the United States attacking us from the north through North Pole. He was indispensable for workers Far North with a small number of airfields. A total of 480 Yak-25 aircraft were produced, mainly with the powerful Sokol radar. And despite the fact that there was no replacement for it, N.S. Khrushchev, having organized a pogrom of Soviet aviation, did not spare the irreplaceable Yak-25 and in 1963 he removed it from service.
It is impossible not to recall another unique machine - the attack aircraft of the Design Bureau of S.V. Ilyushin Il-40, which took to the air in 1953. But N.S. Khrushchev in 1956 decided to abolish attack aviation, and the country was left without a wonderful aircraft, especially needed by the infantry.
In the mid-1950s, the Sukhoi Design Bureau resumed its work. In September 1955, the first flight of the SU-7 aircraft took place, and in 1956, for the first time in the USSR, the SU-7 aircraft reached a speed twice the speed of sound. Sukhoi's aircraft were heavier than Yakovlev's and occupied a middle position between a front-line bomber and a fighter. And it was precisely this type of vehicle that the country’s Air Force needed.
In April 1959, the SU-7B aircraft (modified SU-7) took off, capable of carrying tactical nuclear weapons and bombing from low altitudes. At the end of the 1980s, SU-7B of all modifications were removed from service by M. S. Gorbachev.
Such a decision can be called sabotage, because airplanes can fly and have been flying all over the world for decades. Even airplanes from the 1950s have normal flight performance and with periodic repairs, updating of equipment and weapons, they can serve for a long time in protecting the country. Destroying planes, as Khrushchev destroyed out of his own stupidity and Gorbachev and Yeltsin did to please the United States, is a crime.
N. S. Khrushchev did not allow the production of bombers - flying boats designed in 1952 and subsequent years by R. L. Bartini.
Perhaps in this case Khrushchev is right, but it is necessary to talk about at least one project.
The unique seaplane A-57 designed by Bartini is flat, like a triangle cut out of a board, which has part of the fuselage under water, and on top it is flat and rises slightly above the water. Therefore, it is difficult to notice on the surface of the ocean. Its speed is 2500 km/h, flight range is 12-14 thousand kilometers, take-off weight is 320,000 kg, armament is one thermonuclear bomb “244 N” weighing 3000 kg.
It could reach the United States and return, especially with nuclear weapons proposed in 1961. power plant. It gives the impression of a project of the future.
And jet seaplanes designed by the G. M. Beriev Design Bureau are a reality embodied in metal. For the first time, the R-1 jet gyroplane weighing 20,000 kg took off from the water at the end of May 1952, that is, also during the life of I.V. Stalin.
Even the United States recognized the P-1 as the world's first jet flying boat. On its basis, the Beriev Design Bureau in 1953 began developing a more advanced seaplane, and on June 20, 1956, the BE-10 jet seaplane weighing 48,500 kg took off from the surface of the water. It set 12 world records, including speed - 912 km/h and heights of 14,962 meters without load and 11,997 meters with load. This is truly a flying ship.
But the most expensive and difficult to design and manufacture were, of course, bombers. Soviet aviation industry released very beautiful planes. In my opinion, the most beautiful planes in the world. But each type of aircraft produced in the 1950s has its own beauty. The beauty of bombers is special, memorable forever, because behind this beauty one can see the formidable power. And the most beautiful are the planes designed in the first half of the 1950s.
In my opinion, the most powerful aircraft of the 1950s was the 3M OKB strategic bomber designed by chief designer V. M. Myasishchev. This aircraft was shown very well at the beginning of the 1974 feature film “The Sky With Me.” On January 20, 1953, during Stalin’s lifetime, the M-4 aircraft (prototype of the 3M aircraft) was flown into the air. Subsequently, all M-4 aircraft were converted into tanker aircraft for refueling aircraft in the air.
On March 26, 1956, flight tests of the 3M bomber began. The maximum take-off weight of the 3M aircraft was 193 tons without external tanks and 202 tons with a drop tank. The flight range with one in-flight refueling was over 15,000 km with a flight duration of 20 hours. It was truly an intercontinental aircraft, capable of taking off from airfields on the territory of the USSR and attacking targets in the United States.
The 3M aircraft and its modifications set 19 world records for altitude and speed of flight with cargo. The 3Ms were in service with long-range aviation until 1985 and were then destroyed in accordance with the Soviet-American agreement on the reduction of strategic offensive weapons.
And this handsome man was killed by M. S. Gorbachev. The 3M aircraft was the great strategic bomber of a great continental power. It is huge, squat, with huge wings descending to the very ground, connected into a single monolith, aimed at flight, striking in its size and power. Today's cut-down Russia, unlike the USSR and the USA, does not produce any strategic bombers, and does not design new ones.
It should be noted that when, in connection with the creation of the Energia-Buran system, the question arose about transporting the system units by air to the assembly site at Baikonur, they remembered 3M. Vladimir Mikhailovich Myasishchev redesigned the plane and named it VM-T.
In just two years, the Myasishchev Design Bureau created an aircraft similar to the Boeing B-52, which was a US national program. VM-T Atlant aircraft, 3M converted into cargo aircraft in 1980, performed more than 150 flights to transport cargo of the Energia-Buran system.
The second great aircraft of the great Soviet power of the 1950s is the Tu-95 strategic bomber. The bomber, designated "95", was intended to destroy important stationary targets with cruise missiles and bomb weapons day and night, in any weather conditions and anywhere in the world.
The first copy of the Tu-95 strategic bomber, designed by the Tupolev Design Bureau, also flew under the leadership of the country by I.V. Stalin on November 12, 1952. The aircraft was equipped with turboprop engines, characterized by lower fuel consumption, but due to the propellers, lower speed.
This aircraft met all the requirements for strategic missile-carrying bombers. Its flight range was 15,400 km, maximum flight speed - 882 km/h, maximum take-off weight - 172 tons.
And in conclusion of the topic about bombers of the 1950s, we need to talk about one more famous long-range bomber TU-16. The Tu-16 aircraft, designed by the A. N. Tupolev Design Bureau, was lifted into the air on April 27, 1952, that is, under Stalin.
Already in 1953, mass production of this complex machine began, and the first bombers began to arrive in combat units of the country's Air Force. On May 1, 1953, nine TU-16s passed over Red Square.
The Tu-16 occupied a middle position between a strategic and front-line bomber and was used very widely as a carrier of bombs, nuclear weapons, anti-ship missiles, as well as as a reconnaissance aircraft, patrol aircraft, anti-submarine aircraft and for many other military purposes.
The USSR, due to the size of the state's territory, really needed such an aircraft with a flight range of 5,800 km and a maximum take-off weight of 79 tons. In 1993, under Yeltsin's rule, the TU-16 aircraft was removed from service with the Russian Air Force and Navy. We have become even more defenseless against threats from the West and the East. But in China, the TU-16 aircraft, called N-6, is still in service today. It must be said that over the past 25 years Russia has not produced a single aircraft of the 3M class, TU-95 and TU-16.
Pay attention to the timing of testing, fine-tuning and the start of serial production of the most complex jet aircraft in Stalin's time. The quality of design and production time of the machines are amazing. We achieved perfection in aircraft production under Stalin. Not a single country in the world has achieved our results in the design and manufacture of aircraft by any indicator.
We had exactly the number of types of aviation equipment needed to ensure the security of the country. And if you remove at least one type of the named aircraft, then a gap will appear in the country’s air defense, which means the safety of the citizens of the USSR will decrease.
In addition, by creating strategic jet aviation, we made US territory vulnerable and put an end to American permissiveness in the world, as well as the possibility of implementing the plan to destroy the Soviet Union, that is, we disrupted the possibility of carrying out Western countries conspiracy against Russia.
It is impossible not to notice the fact that the production of the vast majority of aircraft was started under I.V. Stalin (Stalin died on March 5, 1953) and N.S. Khrushchev enjoyed the fruits of his labors after the aircraft were designed, tested, completed, and launched into serial production and under the reign of Khrushchev began to arrive in large quantities to the Air Force, Navy, and air defense forces.
The flight technical personnel, soldiers, sailors and officers praised Khrushchev for the new excellent jet aircraft, with the help of which you can defeat any enemy, and the true organizer of the triumph of the Soviet military aviation The 1950s, J.V. Stalin, were not named.
The majority of the country's residents, of course, did not understand that it was not the mind and will of Khrushchev, but the mind and will of I.V. Stalin and L.P. Beria that these mighty defenders of the sky of the Motherland were born. Designers, engineers, workers, managers of sites, enterprises and many other Soviet people whose intelligence and labor the country ensured its security were not glorified. The people did not know their heroes.
It must be said that liberal revisionists not only hide information about Soviet military aviation, but also present it to our youth in a clearly distorted form. And only a few people in our country know about such an outstanding aircraft as the strategic bomber of the 3M OKB of V. M. Myasishchev.
After the war, pre-war aircraft still remained in civil aviation: LI-2, R-2, PO-2 and others. But gradually funds were allocated for the production of new passenger aircraft.
Were designed and put into mass production passenger aircraft An-2, Il-12, Il-14 with piston engines that meet the new requirements for civil aviation.
The An-2 aircraft was not only a passenger aircraft for local airlines, but also the best agricultural aviation aircraft in the world. If it had been produced not by the USSR, but by the USA, then even today it would be cultivating agricultural land in most countries of the world. It is no longer produced in Russia, like other domestic civil aviation aircraft, but the remaining machines still continue to cultivate the country’s fields. Every year there are fewer and fewer of these cars left.
Passenger aircraft Il-12 and Il-14 differed from the Li-2 in their greater maximum take-off weight, comfort, nose wheel and the embodiment in their design of many achievements in the field of aircraft construction of piston aircraft.
The Soviet aviation industry also began producing piston helicopters Mi-1, Mi-4, Ka-15.
In 1955, Il-12, Li-2, An-2 aircraft and Mi-4 helicopters were even used in the Soviet Antarctic expedition. But, of course, for the development of civil aviation in the post-war period there is enough Money was not highlighted, since the most important issue of the post-war period was the question of preserving the state and people and protecting them from an external aggressor, and for this they needed military aviation that was not inferior to the enemy.
Leonid Petrovich Maslovsky
Jet planes, appearing in the sky for the first time, caused delight in everyone who had the opportunity to observe them. Airplanes with jet engines have replaced conventional propeller-driven aircraft. The first jet aircraft was designed back in 1910, but due to many imperfections in the design, it never took off, burning out on the ground in the first test.
In the years after World War II, jet aircraft occupied an increasingly large share of the aircraft used. When people saw a contrail of a certain width in the sky, they immediately knew which engine was installed on it. aircraft cutting through the sky this moment.
Jet engines have found application not only in military equipment, but also in civil aviation designed to transport passengers. At the moment, most of the available aircraft are equipped with jet engines.
There are several types of jet engines:
- Turbojet;
- Pulsating;
- Straight-through;
- Liquid;
- Rocket engines.
In this article we will look at the meaning of the concept of a jet engine and talk about the history of the development of aviation using this technology.
Judging by the root of this word, it can be assumed that the basis of the operation of the engine is some kind of reaction. This does not mean chemical oxidation - it also occurs in ordinary carburetor engines. In the case of a jet engine, the same principle applies as in a rocket. A high-pressure gas jet is ejected in one direction, pushing the body, which reacts with acceleration directed in the opposite direction.
It is quite difficult to separate rocket and aviation research in the matter of jet engines. Developments in the direction of installing a compression engine on an airplane were carried out long before the war - we are talking about the same plane that burned down in 1910.
The first jet aircraft
The first steps were taken by German scientists, but other countries succeeded in this direction - Italy, the USA, Great Britain and Japan, which at that time lagged behind other world countries in matters of technological development. The first aircraft with jet engines were surprising because they did not have propellers; many pilots initially did not trust such aircraft structures.
The USSR also carried out developments in this direction, but concentrated more on improving existing propeller-driven aircraft. The Bi-1 aircraft was developed and built, extremely imperfect and unreliable. Nitric acid ate through the fuel tanks, and there were other technical complications.
Germany was actively developing all types of military equipment, trying to apply new discoveries and technical solutions that could turn the tide of the war and gain a significant advantage over armed forces opponents. One of these areas was jet aircraft.
During these developments, the Germans built the first aircraft with jet engines that went into serial production. This plane was Messerschmitt-262 or Sturmvogel. This aircraft reached speeds of over 900 kilometers per hour, which was incredible for those times. It proved to be a successful weapon against B-17 heavy bombers.
At some point, a strange order was received from the German authorities - to convert this fighter into a bomber, which led to the fact that the aircraft was unable to reveal its potential.
Arado
This aircraft is also a German design. Its difference from the previous aircraft in question is that it was originally designed as a bomber. During military operations, he demonstrated excellent fighting qualities - a speed of 750 kilometers per hour and a flight altitude of 10,000 meters did not leave any chance for anti-aircraft guns to knock him out. American and British fighters did not catch up with him.
In addition to the fact that Arado dropped bombs, albeit not very accurately due to the high speed, he also carried out photography, performing reconnaissance functions. When using these aircraft for combat purposes, the Germans suffered virtually no losses. If they could build large quantity these aircraft units, it would be even more difficult to fight them.
Yu-287
Already in the last years of the not yet ended Second World War, the USA and the USSR were mutually preparing for confrontation with each other. On both sides, active development of jet engines for aircraft was carried out, since it was clear to everyone that in the event of another war it would not be possible to do without their use.
The USSR at that time did not have its own nuclear weapons. In turn, the United States captured the Junkers 287 aircraft, which, due to its technical characteristics, was suitable for use as a carrier for an atomic bomb.
Jet aviation after the war
During the war, the USSR did not actively develop jet engines, since they never played a decisive role in it. However, in its last years, the question arose about the need to have a carrier of atomic weapons in service, for which the Boeing B-29 was copied by the Soviet Union.
However, fast and maneuverable high-altitude fighters were needed to defend against potential aggression. The study of German military equipment obtained as war trophies was considered insufficient to resolve this issue. Aircraft designers began designing aircraft that would exceed world standards.
Yak and MiG
Two design bureaus developed prototypes of jet aircraft that had refractory materials installed in the places where the nozzles came into contact with the fuselage, which protected the body from overheating. The main task was the transition to new types of power plants, but these developments were considered as temporary options until they were replaced by the MiG-15.
The MiG-15 has become a legendary aircraft unit. It featured many bold innovations, including the world's first reliable pilot rescue system (catapult), and the vehicle was also equipped with powerful cannon armament. Excellent flight performance and combat characteristics made it possible to instantly win victories over armadas of heavy bombers in Korea.
In response to domestic development, the Americans created the Saber, a kind of analogue of the MiG-15. One of the copies of the MiG aircraft was hijacked by the Koreans and sold to the United States for study, and the damaged Saber was pulled out of the water by Soviet soldiers. Thus, the two superpowers exchanged experience.
Civil jet aviation
Back in the late forties of the last century, the British launched the Comet airliner, equipped with jet engines, on their airlines. It gained great popularity, although it was not particularly reliable - many disasters occurred in the first years of its use.
Civil aircraft with jet engines were also developed in the Soviet Union - one of them was the Tu-104, developed on the basis of the Tu-16 bomber. Despite the occurrence of disasters, developments in this direction have not stopped. Gradually, the image of a reliable jet airliner emerged, pushing propeller engines further into the background.
In our era, it is hardly possible to surprise anyone with technological innovations. Moreover, now that the development of technology has gained momentum at a speed that was simply not dreamed of in past eras. The same goes for airplanes. Now with turbojet engines it’s a common thing. And once upon a time people could not even dream of such a thing.
The world's first passenger jet aircraft appeared only in the middle of the last century, when the development of aviation continued actively. Of course, in connection with the Second World War, special attention was paid primarily to the military, so after its end, engineers and inventors turned their attention to passenger airliners.
First, let's define what kind of aircraft this is? This is an airplane whose engine is a jet.
The principle of its operation is to use a mixture of air taken from the atmosphere and products of fuel oxidation with oxygen that are in the air.
Thanks to the oxidation reaction, the working fluid heats up and, expanding, is thrown out of the engine very quickly, producing jet thrust.
First models Aircraft that later became prototypes for passenger airliners , were developed then in Germany, or rather in the Third Reich, and in Great Britain.
The pioneers in this area are the Germans. Heinkel He 178 - Considered to be the first jet-powered aircraft. It was first tested on August 27, 1939.
The aircraft showed quite encouraging results, but the higher-ups, represented by the Reich Ministry of Aviation, considered that this technology was not interesting. And the main direction then was precisely military aviation equipment. The British also kept up with the Germans.
And in 1941 the world saw the Gloster E.28/39. The engine designer was Frank Whittle.
Gloster E.28/39.
It was these prototypes that showed everyone which way aviation would go in the future.
The first jet passenger aircraft The first jet aircraft for passengers was created by the British.“Comet-1” . He was tested July 27, 1949. It had 4 turbojet engines , and the interior was designed for 32 passengers . In addition, it was installed 2 hydrogen peroxide accelerators . It was used on routes to Europe and Africa. For example, Johannesburg with stops along the way. The entire flight time was
23.5 hours. Later “Kometa-2” and “Kometa-3” were developed
, but they did not live up to expectations and were discontinued due to metal fatigue and insufficient fuselage strength. Yet some modifications are still used to design RAF fighter aircraft. Six years later, the USSR introduced the TU-104. The first Soviet jet passenger aircraft. For the first time he took to the air June 15, 1955. A.N. Tupolev took as the basis for his project bomber with TU-16 jet engines. He simply enlarged the fuselage, lowered the wing under it, and placed it in the cabin. 100 seats for passengers Since 1956
it was put into mass production. For the next two years it was the world's only jet aircraft , which was used to transport civilians. He had 2 turbojet engines. Its maximum
the speed reached 950 km/h, and it could fly up to 2700 km. like on-board meals, beautifully dressed flight attendants and smart pilots.
Nevertheless, Over the 4 years of its operation, 37 accidents involving this aircraft occurred. Exactly this big number accidents among all Russian aircraft. It is not surprising that N.S. Khrushchev refused to even approach him. Despite the fact that it was discontinued, it was still used until 1979 for flights.
In 1958 on passenger lines came out . It could take on board from 90 to 180 passengers. On different models engines of various power were installed. The aircraft was intended for medium and long-distance routes. However, there were much more accidents with it than with the TU-104.
SE.210 Caravelle 1.
A breakthrough in world aviation was the creation of the French SE.210 Caravelle 1. He started flying in 1959, mainly in the colonies of France, in Africa. He also had 2 turbojet engines, but from Rolls-Royce, in the tail of the plane. This helped to achieve improved aerodynamics, minimized noise in the cabin, and increased the reliability of the air intakes.
And the ramp was also made in a different way than other aircraft of that time - in the form of a lowering part of the fuselage. There were also innovations in the salon: The portholes became larger and the passage was widened.
It was used on medium-range routes only.
A total of 12 aircraft of this type were produced, but still it could not withstand the competition with Boeing, and further production was stopped.
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