http://www.airlinerworld.com 25programme under way.
In the aftermath of the successful first
flight, Alexei Tupolev gave a long and
frank interview to Tekhnika Molodezhi
(Technology For The Youth) magazine,
in which he admitted that supersonic
passenger flight was easy. The difficul-
ty was to satisfy the three requirements
peculiar to civil aviation – efficiency,
reliability, and comfort.
Other publications were more
optimistic – Izvestia wrote a valentine
to the prospect of reaching Khabarovsk,
100 º of latitude east of Moscow, in
3hrs 20mins. A passenger departing
Moscow at midday heading west
would arrive in Montreal at 9am, thus
“outdistancing not only sound but also
the sun”.
The Tu-144’s public debut took
place on May 20, 1969 at Moscow/Sheremetyevo, and its first supersonic
flight was completed on June 1, 1970.
On July 15, CCCP-68001 hit its record
speed for the whole programme of
Mach 2.35 (1,517mph or 2,443km/h).
NATO aptly chose the codename
Charger.
The prototype left the Soviet Union for
the first time to visit the 1971 Paris Air
Salon from May 25 to June 8, and a
programme of demonstration and
route-proving flights to Budapest,
Hannover and Sofia followed. The
Moscow to Sofia legs happened at
supersonic speed. One flight involved
an emergency landing at Warsaw (its
intended destination) after two engines
failed at the top of descent, probably
due to a vibration-induced fatigue crack
in the wing, although the aircraft was
able to fly home the next day.A Redesign
The test flights had revealed some
serious shortcomings. The proximity
to the centrally located engine exhausts
produced extreme vibrations, which
even the titanium elements in the fuse-
lage could not withstand. By the time
the redesign was complete, not only
were upgraded NK-144F engines finally
out under the wings in pairs, but also
the fuselage had been lengthened (with
34 passenger windows instead of 25)
with a new, rounder cross-section. The
nose section and radar system were
also altered and the APU moved from
the tail to the starboard engine nacelle.
One of the most notable additions to
the production version was the pair
of retractable foreplanes, or ‘canards’.
These were placed just behind the
cockpit and were extended at low speed
to counter the pitch-down force created
by the drooping of the wing’s trailing
edge elevons, which acted as flaps on
take-off and landing.
The production aircraft was designat-
ed the Tu-144S and the maiden exam-
ple, CCCP-77102, first flew on March 20,
19 72 from Zhukovsky. A month later
this aircraft operated a supersonic flight
from Moscow to Tashkent in 110mins.
Meanwhile, the prototype CCCP-
68001’s last flight took place on April 27,
1973, at which point it had operated 120
flights, with 180hrs in the air (including
50hrs supersonic) and was later broken
up, despite its place in history.Disaster in Paris
CCCP-77102 arrived at Le Bourget,
Paris, for the 1973 Paris Air Salon after
a 1hr 57min mostly supersonic flight
from Moscow. On the last day of the
air show, on June 3, she took to the air
to perform a display flight under the
command of Captain Kozlov, who had
been the first officer on the prototype’s
maiden flight. Among the other five on
board (first officer, navigator, and three
engineers) was Benderov, another
veteran of the maiden flight, and
engineer-in-charge of the entire
test programme.
The French authorities changed the
timings for the Soviet machine’s dis-
play, reducing the slot to five minutes.
After a breathtaking flight by the rival
Concorde, the Tu-144S took to the airCaptain Boris Kuznetsov
and his crew share
a joke on the ramp
at Domodedovo
alongside two of
Aeroflot’s Tu-144s.
BORIS KORZIN/
TRANSPORT-PHOTO IMAGES
Aeroflot gave the
Tu-144S its passenger-
carrying debut on
November 1, 1977
between Moscow/
Domodedovo and
Alma-Ata.
BORIS KORZIN/
TRANSPORT-PHOTO IMAGES