Indeed, ANT-42, aka TB-7, aka Pe-8, the most powerful bomber of the Red Army Air Force, how was it in terms of comparison with analogues? And was it even possible to compare it?
But in order to compare, you first need to really go through the history of the aircraft.
The story began around the middle of the 30s of the last century, when the image of the heavy bomber aviation of a future war was formed in the heads of both commanders and designers.
In general, three countries have achieved success: the United States, Great Britain and the USSR. For the United States, this resulted in the creation of the B-17 Flying Fortress, the British got the Halifax, and we got the TB-7.
Then there were sequels with regards to the Americans and the British. Unfortunately, our TB-7 / Pe-8 was produced in such a modest series that there is no need to even start talking about any comparison with the British and Americans. 97 aircraft, including two prototypes, are very few. 12,731 "Flying Fortress" is, you know, the number. 1 in 131.
Nevertheless, the ANT-42 was, it was turned into a TB-7, and then it was renamed Pe-8. This is our story, by the way, the part that we can and should be proud of.
What's the point? The bottom line is that the country, which from the beginning of its existence could build only the simplest aircraft with imported engines, suddenly swung at such a thing as the construction of a heavy bomber.
Yes, some preconditions and developments from Sikorsky and Lebedev, perhaps, remained, but this is so … "Ilya Muromets" and "Svyatogor" remained in the unimaginably distant past, in the Russian Empire, and other people began the path of creating the aviation of a new country and in other circumstances.
The only thing in common with RI was the absence of aircraft engines. This problem ceased to be such only by the end of the Great Patriotic War.
Under these conditions, swinging at the "strategist" of that time … It was rather risky. Moreover, before work began on the ANT-42 prototype at all, our heavy bombers looked like … like TB-1 and TB-3.
If you look at these aircraft, placing them next to the TB-7, progress … no, progress is evident. These are definitely aircraft of different generations. There could well have stood nearby the RD, aka ANT-25, from which, after successful flights to America, the crews of Chkalov and Gromov also wanted to make a very long-range bomber. But it didn't happen, so our TB-7 is the only one of its kind.
Naturally, the TB-7 was needed yesterday, because the work was carried out as always, at a brisk pace, under the fatherly urging of the Air Force leadership. Tests were still underway in 1937, and the generals from the Air Force demanded the production of five vehicles by May 1, 1938. As usual, for the "next anniversary" …
Thank God it didn't work out. And work with a bunch of improvements and improvements were completed only in 1939.
The TB-7 was planned to be produced at the Kazan plant No. 124. This was natural, since the plant was under the patronage of Tupolev and was equipped with the latest technology. American. A large number of machine tools and equipment were purchased from the United States according to the choice of Tupolev himself during his visit.
There were also problems. The main problem I would call not the lack of machines and equipment, there was order with this, they did not spare the currency. The main problem was personnel shortage. You can, of course, nod at the repression, but, in my opinion, the purges of the late 1920s and early 1930s took many specialists to nowhere.
The fact that Tupolev, Petlyakov and others have developed the plane is really half the battle. The plane had to be built, and for such a machine it was not easy.
A striking example: the TB-7 was, as you know, a four-engined aircraft. But there was a fifth engine, which drove the ACN-2 centrifugal compressor, supplying air to all 4 motors at high altitude. It was a real highlight of the aircraft, the ACN-2 allowed the aircraft to climb to such a height where it was not afraid of anti-aircraft artillery at all. And a fighter of that time to climb to an altitude of 10,000 meters was not an easy task.
When the assembly of the first series of aircraft had already begun, it suddenly became clear that there was no one to build the ATSN-2. A rather strange situation turned out: the People's Commissariat of the Aviation Industry simply did not appoint a manufacturer for the ATSN-2. As a result, 6 copies of the ACN-2 were built at the facilities of CIAM (Central Institute of Aviation Motors named after Baranov), after which the institute categorically refused to build the supercharger further.
And the absence of a supercharger turned the high-altitude monster TB-7 into a rather ordinary bomber with a practical ceiling of the standard 7-8 thousand meters. That is, very mediocre indicators.
Meanwhile, the high altitude and high flight speed at this altitude were the "chips" of the TB-7, from which the use of the aircraft was based.
To top it off, this is already a classic of the genre, problems began with the supply of the main engines AM-34FRN from the engine-building plant №24.
And in the second half of 1939, as expected, personnel leapfrog began, caused by various reasons. But the fact is that the directors at the factory # 124 changed systematically and regularly, so that in the interval from 1936 to 1941 there were 4 (four) generals.
How, under such conditions, the plant was able to produce the first two cars at all - well, it was a common labor feat for that time. These were machines of a complete set, with an ACN-2. There were vehicle kits for two more aircraft, and then … And then there weren't even AM-34FRN engines.
The most interesting thing is that the Air Force wanted TB-7 very much. And in decent quantities, in 1940, the Air Force wanted to receive 250 aircraft. The plant called the real figure of 150, with the well-known "if" clauses with regards to engines and ACN.
But the Air Force wanted to be armed with the TB-7, it is absolutely impossible to say that the bomber was "scored", everything that happens, rather, is due to the unprofessionalism of the planners in the People's Commissariat. It was possible to demand anything, but if there were no motors and a supercharger for the aircraft, even the figure named by the plant director Joseph Nezval in 150 aircraft turned out to be … too optimistic.
What happened today is called "fail". At the beginning of 1940, the situation was just awful: in two years, plant No. 124 produced 6 (SIX !!!) cars and the same number were in varying degrees of assembly. No engines, because engines … You get the idea.
Yes, and of the six aircraft produced, two were not with a pair of AM-34FRN + ACN-2, but with AM-35 engines, that is, what was said above.
To say that everything suited everyone - no. The Air Force insistently demanded aircraft, the plant demanded engines, and history preserved a letter written by test pilots Markov and Stefanovsky to Voroshilov himself in December 1939.
The result … The result was more than strange. At the beginning of 1940, an order came from the NKAP to plant No. 124 to disassemble all the equipment for the manufacture of airframe units, including the removal of assembly slipways. It's like the final point.
Moreover, in order to somehow load a huge plant that is idle, the NKAP gives instructions to start construction of PS-84, the Soviet version of the Douglas DS-3. On the one hand, the experience later came in handy when copying the Tu-4, which was a B-29, on the other hand, the heavy bomber was gone.
However, the letters and appeals did their job, and it somehow reached Stalin himself.
And it began …
Strange, but for some reason there were no shootings or landings. Much to the chagrin of a certain caste of writing.
The culprit was Mikhail Kaganovich, the head of the NKAP, the elder brother of Lazar Kaganovich. In the spring of 1940, Alexei Shakhurin was appointed to the post of People's Commissar of the aviation industry, and Kaganovich was sent to atone for his sins to the post of … director of plant number 124!
Not only was Kaganovich charged with returning the TB-7 assembly back, he was also obliged to consider the possibility of producing the TB-7 with other types of engines, since there was no AM-34FRN, specifically with the M-30 aviation diesel engine.
The M-30 engine was the largest aircraft diesel engine in the world in its class at that time. At the beginning of 1940, the M-30 passed state tests and was launched into a small series at factory # 82, but soon after a number of problems it was removed from the series.
However, after a change in the leadership of the NKAP, work on it was resumed under the leadership of Deputy People's Commissar Alexander Yakovlev and production began again under the new designation M-40.
However, the operation of the M-40 just on the TB-7 showed that at high altitudes (over 5,000 meters), with insufficient manual adjustment of the quality of the fuel mixture, the M-40 sometimes stalled. And restarting the diesel engine in flight by the crew was not always possible. So, despite the unequivocal successes, aviation diesel engines have not become widespread in the world aircraft industry. The USSR did not become an exception.
Today you can talk a lot about the reasons why this happened. Yes, we did not have the technology and production culture at the highest level, so we had to say goodbye to the implementation of the idea of using a diesel engine in aviation.
Kaganovich, in the role of director of the plant, began to produce AM-35 engines instead of AM-34FRN and at the same time work on the installation of diesel M-30 and M-40.
Georgy Baidukov himself was invited to test TB-7 with M-40 engines. This only underscores how interested the Air Force was in the TB-7.
State tests in full scope of all the problems of the new engines did not reveal, at least, this is not reflected in Baidukov's reports. There were many unpleasant surprises during military operation, but I am far from thinking that Georgy Filippovich Baidukov was hiding something. He was a bird of the wrong flight.
Perhaps the first M-40 diesel engines were assembled in such a way that they did not mow, but the subsequent ones were not very good. The fact that the "diesel" TB-7 aircraft, even in theory, met the requirements of the KO Resolution of 05.05.1940, in practice, it was necessary to refine the entire propeller-driven group of the aircraft.
Although it is quite possible that Kaganovich and the plant he headed were in a hurry to give the Soviet Air Force a good plane. Then they talked about the war at all levels, and someone who, and the brother of Lazar Kaganovich himself, was also aware.
But there is one unpleasant moment here. Yes, the practice of beautiful reports existed even then in all its glory and harmfulness. Tests and especially fine-tuning of aircraft with M-40 and M-40F engines dragged on. Factory # 124, in principle, had nothing to do with it, the issue was that the engines themselves were not fully understood, but the plant's management knew that the M-40s were not ideal. However, throughout 1941 the plant continued to assemble "diesel" TB-7s and hand them over to the Air Force.
When the time came to fight, a lot of sad moments came to light.
As a result, Mikhail Kaganovich shot himself in his office on July 1, 1941. Without waiting for the party and the people to ask him for his obvious shortcomings as People's Commissar and Director.
And in the Air Force there were TB-7s with M-30 and M-40 diesels and conventional AM-34FRN and AM-35 engines with ACN-2. All of them went to the 14th TBAP of the 18th HELL.
On June 22, 1941, the war began. At the time of the start, the crews of the heavy bombers had completed their training and were ready to begin the implementation of combat training plans.
At the airfield in Boryspil, which in the first days of the war was raided by German aircraft, two aircraft were destroyed and several were damaged. The remnants of 14 TBAPs were transferred to Kazan, where the formation of a new regiment on TB-7 aircraft began.
On June 29, 1941, the formation of a long-range aviation division began, consisting of 412 TBAPs on TB-7 and 420 TBAPs on Er-2.
To complete the 412 TBAP, its commander, Colonel Lebedev, rushed around all over Ukraine, collecting aircraft. In Poltava, 8 cars were found, 6 more were assembled at airfields near Kiev and Kharkov. In general, it could have been worse with that organization and the chaos of the first months of the war. In addition, Lebedev took the aircraft from the Air Force Research Institute and the Air Force Research Institute, several aircraft were in Kazan at the assembly stage.
In general, the regiment was staffed very motley. But the composition was selected from among the pilots of the polar aviation and the civilian fleet, with a huge raid in difficult conditions.
The numbering of the regiments soon changed. The regiment on TB-7 became 432 APDD.
By the beginning of August, the transportation and training of aircraft crews were completed, and, in fact, the combat work of the TB-7 began. The first combat target was, unfortunately, Berlin. The first raid on Berlin took place on August 10, 1941 and ended in complete failure.
Of the 10 vehicles that left for Berlin (7 - TB-7 and 3 - Er-2), only six hit the target and were bombed. Only two cars returned to Pushkin. 6 aircraft made forced landings due to failure of M-40 engines or damage from anti-aircraft artillery. One was shot down by his fighter; the fate of one plane is still unknown.
After this departure, the division commander, Hero of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Vodopyanov, was removed from the post of division commander, and Colonel Golovanov was appointed in his place. After being dismissed, brigade commander Vodopyanov continued his service as a simple crew commander of the TB-7.
The TB-7s that remained in service were eventually brought down in 746 BAP. After the loss of Tallinn and the bases on the Baltic Sea islands, the raids on Berlin ceased. ADD aircraft continued to fly on combat missions at long-range and short-range targets. And as the enemy approached Moscow and Leningrad, heavy bombers were taken to the airfield of the city of Kovrov, Vladimir region, from which TB-7 flew on combat missions in the fall-winter of 1941-1942.
An interesting nuance: diesel engines were no longer installed on the TB-7, for obvious reasons, but the aircraft with the M-40 were still in operation. But no one was in a hurry to write off the M-40 or change it to the AM-35, because the "diesel" aircraft had a longer flight range than the "gasoline" ones, and were reserved just for work on very distant targets.
In addition to working on long-range targets, TB-7s struck targets in the German-occupied Soviet territory. The tactics were as follows: the raids were carried out by single crews, using the altitude characteristics of the TB-7. This made it possible to approach the target at a high altitude unnoticed and deliver weighty strikes against targets.
TB-7 could take up to 30 FAB-100, that is, as 5 Pe-2 bombers. The only question was exactly.
Flights were mainly carried out at night, but in critical moments, such as the autumn attack on Moscow, TB-7s were sent on combat missions for tactical targets and in the daytime. Of course, the two TB-7s, led by Vodopyanov, striking at the mechanized units of the Wehrmacht, cannot be compared with 1047 British and American bombers over Cologne or 1520 over Hamburg.
In February 1942, V. M. Petlyakov died in a plane crash. After his death, the government decides to assign the designation Pe-8 to TB-7 aircraft in accordance with the new designation system.
The combat work of formations of long-range formations of bombers, including crews on TB-7, during the autumn-winter of 1941-1942, showed the effectiveness and (importantly) the need for long-range aviation.
On March 5, 1942, by a decision of the State Defense Committee, it was decided to create a separate branch of the military - Long-Range Aviation (ADD). From now on, long-range bombers were detached from the Red Army Air Force and were directly subordinate to the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief.
In the spring of 1942, at the time of the formation of the ADD, the role of the Pe-8 in this new branch of troops was extremely unnoticeable. All Pe-8s that were in service at that time were brought together in the 746th BAP as part of the 45th Aviation Division of the ADD. The regiment had 11 Pe-8s, of which only 8 were serviceable.
But even with this number, the Pe-8 pilots tried to make a contribution to the victory.
It is worth noting the creation specially for the Pe-8 of the largest Soviet bomb at that time, the FAB-5000.
FAB-5000 weighed 5080 kg, had a diameter of 1000 mm and a length corresponding to the length of the Pe-8 bomb bay. The explosion of such a bomb on the ground formed a funnel with a diameter of 18-24 m and a depth of 6-9 m. A large railway bridge could be destroyed by such a bomb, even if the bomb exploded 10-15 m away from it.
Before that, the largest bomb raised by the Pe-8 was the FAB-2000 bomb.
The bomb was placed in the Pe-8 compartment along its length, but its meter diameter led to the fact that it significantly protruded beyond the fuselage contours and did not allow the bomb bay doors to be completely closed.
By the way, 15 years later, it is the Tupolev Design Bureau under the leadership of IF Nezval, who "stuffed" the FAB-5000 into the Pe-8, will receive the assignment to place the "202" thermonuclear bomb with a capacity of 100 megatons in the Tu-95 bomb bay.
On April 29, 1943, a FAB-5000 bomb was dropped on Konigsberg from the Pe-8. Then there was a successful bombing on the concentration of German troops in the Mogilev area, on June 4, with the help of the FAB-5000, they plowed the railway tracks in the Orel area, making it difficult to transfer German troops to the Kursk salient area.
By the way, not after the fall of the FAB-5000 in Helsinki in 1944 did the Finns seriously think about what might await them next?
In total, until the spring of 1944, 13 FAB-5000s were dropped on German troops.
It is worth noting the peaceful flights of the Pe-8, the benefits of which were no less than from the combat ones, and maybe even more.
It was the Pe-8 that was carried to England by the crews of ferry pilots who ferried aircraft to the USSR. And they drove them successfully.
We have already written about that crazy flight when Molotov flew to the USA on a Pe-8 plane in May 1942.
The commander of the ship was Pusep, the former co-pilot of Vodopyanova, co-pilot - Obukhov, navigator - Romanov, engineer - Zolotarev. The plane passed through the front line over occupied Europe and landed at one of the airfields in Northern Scotland From Scotland, the Pe-8 flew to Reykjavik in Iceland, then, passing Newfoundland, headed for Washington, where it landed safely.
Molotov flew back the same route.
For the successful completion of the special flight, both pilots and navigator were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and the rest of the crew were awarded military orders.
This flight greatly raised the spirits both at the Tupolev Design Bureau and at the factory # 124. It was a truly convincing demonstration of the capabilities of both the Pe-8 and the new AM-35A engines.
1944 was the last year of the Pe-8's combat use.
The main reason was not even the obsolescence of machines and the physical fatigue of equipment. The Red Army was approaching the borders of the Third Reich, naturally, the ADD relocated after the advancing troops, therefore, the planes could further penetrate into German space for bombing strikes.
But then the pilots would have to face the most powerful German air defense, equipped with ground-based radars and night fighters with radar. Plus anti-aircraft batteries with guidance on the same radars.
Considering the small number of Pe-8s remaining in the ranks, the command came to the conclusion that pilots with such experience should be protected, and the tasks that the Pe-8 crews were solving were quite capable of being performed by pilots of ordinary bomber regiments flying during the day. During the day, the superiority in the sky was already behind the Soviet aviation.
The military career of the Pe-8 ended in 1946, soon they began to be replaced by the Tu-4 in the regiments. And most of the Pe-8 was written off and disposed of.
After the war, several of the surviving machines were used in polar aviation and as flying laboratories for testing new engines and advanced aircraft and missile systems.
LTH Pe-8
Wingspan, m: 39, 10
Length, m: 23, 59
Height, m: 6, 20
Wing area, m2: 188, 68
Weight, kg
- empty aircraft: 19 986
- normal takeoff: 27 000
- maximum takeoff: 35 000
Engine: 4 x AM-35A x 1350 hp
Maximum speed, km / h
- near the ground: 347
- at height: 443
Practical range, km: 3600
Rate of climb, m / min: 352
Practical ceiling, m: 9 300
Crew, people: 11
Armament:
- two 20-mm ShVAK cannons, - two 12, 7-mm machine guns UBT, - two 7, 62-mm machine guns ShKAS, - bomb load: normally 2000 kg, maximum - 4000 kg of bombs.
Is it worth comparing the Pe-8 with its imported counterparts? We will compare. At the appropriate time in OBM. Of course, as I said, the construction of such an aircraft today would be equated with a nuclear cruiser or aircraft carrier.
The fact that we were able to develop such an aircraft, not lagging behind the Americans and the British, is already a feat in itself. The fact that these aircraft went through the entire war suggests that the feat was not in vain.
The fact that we were not able to build Pe-8 thousand, like the British and Americans … Well, unlike them, we had something to build. We needed tanks, cannons, trucks, fighters, rifles and machine guns.
Of course, building a bunch of heavy bombers thousands of kilometers from the frontline isn't that difficult. And we would have built, of that I am sure.
Yes, right after the war, the Tu-4 that entered service is nothing more than the B-29, which was simply copied. But we have gone further and are still proceeding exclusively with our developments. So, starting with the Ilya Muromets, through the Pe-8 and up to the Tu-160, this development of long-range aviation is quite normal.
