http://www.airlinerworld.com 23Super sonic
oversimplification. The Soviet Union
had a well-developed aviation industry
that was in many ways the equal of its
Western counterpart. Sophisticated
technical information obtained through
espionage would have been useless if
the industrial foundation hadn’t existed.
Limitations on metallurgy due to the
different mineral mix of the Soviet
resource base meant, however, somedata could only be ‘interpreted’ rather
than copied directly. Another reason it
was impractical to make a direct copy
was the Soviet Union had a very
different operating environment from
the US or Western Europe, so the hard-
ware had differing operational require-
ments. And in any case, the Soviets
knew they needed a degree of inde-
pendence because, among the wealthof information they had received
through espionage, the French were
leaking deliberately doctored data.Development
Soviet aviation pioneer Andrei
Tupolev’s son Alexei was by now the
chief designer at the Tupolev
DesignBureau, and
after discarding over
100 configurations for their proposed
supersonic transport, settled on a delta-
wing layout. This was the first aircraft
designed in the Soviet Union without a
separate horizontal tail surface.
A model of the delta-winged Tu-144
was revealed at the 1965 Paris Air Show.
Technical data described a 120-seater
weighing 130 tonnes, able to fly 4,000
miles (6,437km) at Mach 2.3. British
intelligence was sceptical about the
low weight, and correctly guessed that
the engines would need to produce
40,000lbs of thrust. Tupolev promised
a first flight in 1968 – a promise that
was kept.
Another model appeared at Expo ’67
in Montréal in the flashy, $15m Soviet
exhibition. The engines were still
grouped together at the rear but the
intakes split into two pairs.
Three months later, Britain’sTupolev conducted the
maiden flight of the
Tu-144 on December 31,
1968, breaking
the sound barrier for
the first time six
months later.
FYODOR BORISOV/
TRANSPORT-PHOTO IMAGESThe Tu-144 used a
delta-wing design, like
its rival Concorde.
BORIS KORZIN/
TRANSPORT-PHOTO IMAGES