F-117 and U-2. You probably know them: the first is an invisible superbomber, the second is …
If you, dear reader, hope to find here the story of the legendary high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft U-2 "Dragon Lady", then I have to disappoint you: that U-2, which will be discussed below, is just a percale biplane designed by N. N. Polikarpov.
Stealth and Kukuruznik are two legendary aircraft that have become popular favorites. Rolls of films have been shot about them and libraries of books have been written.
The ambitious American program to create an invisible aircraft is a loud debut and simply a deafening ending, with footage of the shot down "Invisible" running on TV screens. A sinister black plane, the quintessence of modern nanotechnology and innovative solutions, turned into a worldwide laughing stock at the end of its career. It's amazing how much noise 64 Nighthawk aircraft (including prototypes) were able to make.
The second hero of today is the anecdotal "rus-plywood" that first took off in 1928. Simple as a splinter, a biplane with a 100-horsepower engine is reliable and easy to fly, capable of landing on any “patch” and produced in a circulation of 30 thousand copies.
However, upon close inspection, both cars, despite the half-century difference in age, have much more similarities than one might think. Nighthawk and Cornflower are just twin brothers. Do not rush to twirl your finger at your temple …
Stealth technology is a set of measures to reduce the visibility of combat vehicles in radar, infrared and other areas of the detection spectrum, allowing to radically reduce the likelihood of detecting a combat vehicle and, thereby, increase its survivability. The creators of the F-117 sought to reduce all unmasking factors of the aircraft without exception: the ability to reflect radar radiation, emit electromagnetic waves itself, emit sound, and leave smoky and contrails.
Pulse lights on the wings of the stealth went out, retracted into the radio antenna housing, turned off the radio altimeter and the friend or foe responder - the pitch-black F-117 was dissolving in the black anthracite sky over the enemy's territory.
The enemy will detect "Nighthawk" only when the opened doors of the bomb bay violate the EPR of the super-bomber - F-117 will shine in the night sky, like a star of the first magnitude. Too late! - the bombs have already been dropped on the target. A flash of fire splits the night, snatching from the darkness for a moment the faceted profile of the stealth racing over the lower edge of the clouds. The F-117 quickly "covers up its tracks", the laser target illumination system is turned off and the black plane disappears into the night sky again.
The whole operation takes twenty seconds. The duration of the preparation mode for the S-200 anti-aircraft complex missiles (switching on the electronics, spinning up the gyroscopes) is 1 minute. In the early 1980s, the F-117 had a good chance of eluding retaliation.
As a result - 1 combat loss for 3000 sorties. The main targets of "Nighthawk" are objects with the most powerful air defense. In this case, we are talking about a clumsy subsonic aircraft, without defensive weapons and with minimal survivability! There was not even a redundant mechanical control system on the Nighthawk. in the event of a failure of the electronics, the man was still unable to control the Lame Dwarf.
F-117 "Nighthawk" disappeared somewhere among the stars, and in the night sky suddenly heard a quiet, almost weightless rustle …
- Hans, did you hear anything?
- Heinz, relax, it's just Russian moonshine.
- No, there is something there. I distinctly heard the sound - like the flapping of a large bird's wing.
Heinz jumped to his feet and began to peer attentively into the velvet sky strewn with stars, as if he felt the eyes of death gazing at him from the night heights. About a year ago, Heinz heard a chilling story - a gray-haired sergeant-major told how one night, lying in a trench near Vladikavkaz, one of his colleagues struck a match - and a second later a Russian aerial bomb fell into the trench, crushing the hapless smoker. Fortunately, it did not explode - and then they heard screams from the sky. Women's screams!
And then Heinz saw his invisible enemy - one after another the stars of the Big Dipper's "bucket" blinked, a moment later the bright orange Arcturus went out and flashed again. "Scheise …" - Heinz turned pale and sank to the ground. A fiery flash split the night, snatching from the darkness for a moment the profile of the "whatnot" rushing over the treetops. The fallen Hans and Heinz no longer heard how the engine started to rumble, carrying the Russian night bomber to the East. And from somewhere above, ringing girlish voices rushed: “Fritz! Get Tanya Makarova and Vera Belik!"
The 46th (Taman) Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment, better known as the Dunkin Regiment, flew 23,000 sorties during the Great Patriotic War! "Night witches" dropped three million kilograms of bombs on the heads of the Nazis !!!
Combat losses of the regiment - 32 people. Considering that the crew of the U-2 consists of two people, the Fritz managed to shoot down no more than two dozen Rus-Faners during the entire war! Throughout the war, the regiment never went to reorganize. And this despite the fact that:
Our training aircraft was not designed for military operations. A wooden biplane with two open cockpits located one behind the other and dual controls for the pilot and navigator, without radio communication and armored backs that could protect the crew from bullets, with a low-power motor that could reach a maximum speed of 120 km / h. The plane did not have a bomb bay, the bombs were hung in bomb racks directly under the plane of the plane. There were no scopes, we created them ourselves and called them PPR (simpler than a steamed turnip). The amount of bomb load varied from 100 to 300 kg. On average, we took 150-200 kg.
- Rakobolskaya I. V., Kravtsova N. F. - "We were called night witches"
So that's it! No armor, no radio, no scopes, and often no parachutes. The only defensive weapons are TT pistols. The intensity of the use of night bombers was so high that the girls sometimes performed 6-10 sorties per night. And nevertheless - the U-2 "Dunkin regiment" had only one loss per thousand sorties! - survivability is tens of times higher than that of the Il-2 armored front-line attack aircraft.
Realizing that their main weapon is stealth, the pilots tried their best to reduce the likelihood of detecting the aircraft - otherwise, the end! When bombarding German positions, special tactics were often used: the U-2 made a "detour" and, turning off the engine, silently glided at the target from the side of enemy territory. Having dropped the bombs, the plane turned on the engine and, without turning around, left with a descent towards its airfield. Rather, rather, until the Germans came to their senses and opened heavy fire in all directions.
But occasionally tragedies happened - the beam of a German searchlight accidentally snatched the "whatnot" out of the darkness of the night, and then the "heavenly slug" was doomed. With a trembling voice, the pilots recalled how, on the way to the target, they saw an airplane from their regiment floundering helplessly from the searchlight beams. And from below, predatory lines of tracer bullets stretched towards him …
Correctly chosen tactics mean a lot - "Stealth" and "Corn" worked great at night, but for both it was contraindicated to go up into the sky in broad daylight. However, the percale U-2 still had a definite advantage in air combat - too low speed. Too much!
On April 15, 1953, the American F-94 Starfire jet interceptor spotted the North Korean U-2, which was performing courier functions in the front line … Do you think the American pilot received an easy target and a generous reward from his command? Now!
"Starfire" unsuccessfully cut circles around the slowly floating "whatnot", until finally it dropped the speed below 180 km / h, which caused it to lose control and crash. The American side admitted the curious loss.
During the Korean War, the Americans noted the considerable difficulty of intercepting the "maize" - even the radars that appeared did not distinguish between such specific designs with a minimum metal content. And the excessively low speed made a successful interception a very dubious event.
There are no miracles. The successful combat career of the U-2 is explained by two factors: the skill of the pilots and the fact that little was required from combat aircraft at that time. The primitive U-2 fully corresponded to its status of a "night bomber", eventually becoming one of the most effective night bombers of the Second World War.
The creators of "stealth" had a much more difficult time - the coming era of radars and thermal imagers no longer allowed constructing an effective stealth aircraft from improvised means. Now, 30 years later, some details of the history of the creation of the F-117 "Nighthawk" have become known - numerous facets implemented in the architecture of the aircraft scatter radar radiation in opposite directions - no matter which side you irradiate the "Nighthawk", this "curved mirror" will reflect the rays away from the radar antenna. The sawtooth shape of the edges of all joints, the electrically conductive coating of the canopy, mesh grilles on the air intakes, ferromagnetic paint and radio-absorbing coatings, special shaped nozzles that form a "flat" jet stream for the speedy cooling of exhaust gases - as a result, when irradiated with radar, the reflected radiation of the F-117 difficult to distinguish from background noise, and the “dangerous sectors” are so narrow that the radar cannot extract enough information from them.
Finally, the creators of the "stealth" were faced with the task of creating a modern combat aircraft with a powerful sighting and navigation system, which is capable of delivering 2 tons of bombs at a transonic speed at a distance of 800 km.
Because The main problem in the creation of the F-117 was associated with ensuring the stealth of the aircraft, the implementation of such modest flight characteristics did not cause any particular difficulties: despite their fantastic appearance, the Nighthawk engines were borrowed from the usual F / A-18 multirole fighter, the control system elements - from the F-16 and the old training aircraft T-33 (created in the late 1940s), and the elements of the aircraft's electrical system - from the transport C-130 "Hercules". By the way, the stealth technologies themselves (ferromagnetic paints, canopy coatings, etc.) were borrowed from the well-known SR-71 and U-2 (which is a high-altitude reconnaissance).
"And I'm on corn, hic, I won't fly sober!"
- the pilot's laconic response to all the airport manager's indignations
Night piloting of the U-2 and F-117 is like driving with your eyes closed. The first, due to its innate primitiveness, was devoid of any complex instrumentation and navigation equipment. The U-2 pilot had only five main aviation instruments: a compass, an attitude indicator (determines the roll and pitch angles), a speedometer, an altimeter (a barometric altitude indicator) and a variometer (an aircraft vertical speed indicator). The readings of these simple instruments give a complete picture of the position of the aircraft in space. With the proper skill, the pilot, guided by these indications, can (and should!) Fly the plane blindly. Night combat flight: takeoff, flight along a given route, guided by the navigator's prompts and using meager landmarks, bombardment, return to their territory - I saw a searchlight directed upwards - it means there is a native airfield. Everything!
Naturally, in conditions of extreme tension, in complete darkness and in the absence of radio communication, sooner or later it could not end well - on the night of April 10, 1943, the landing plane of Lida Svistunova and Polina Makagon collided with another bomber standing on the airfield. Three pilots died in a terrible accident, the fourth - Khiuaz Dospanov was miraculously saved.
One can only marvel at the courage of the girls, who 10 times a night, over a thousand days of war, flew on their "whatnots" into the black haze behind the front line.
The situation with the F-117 "Nighthawk" is even more curious - during combat missions, pilots were strictly forbidden to use radio communications: all operations, including refueling in the air, were carried out in radio silence. It was impossible to turn on the radio altimeter. Until the last moment Incredibly, the super-plane was already absent from the very beginning … radar! - it was pointless to use the radar, otherwise the Nighthawk would lose its stealth.
Despite the powerful complex of passive information gathering devices, high-quality "night vision" devices and the RAARS inertial system for returning to the airfield in automatic mode, the night flights of the F-117 were associated with considerable risk: at least three "Night Hawks" crashed, colliding with natural obstacles. For example, on May 10, 1995, an F-117 aircraft, piloted by US Air Force Captain Kenneth Levens, lost orientation during a night flight and collided with a mountain in New Mexico. The pilot was killed.
Given the complexity of night sorties, the rapid change in the situation and the specific conditions of local wars, the F-117 had to make combat missions more than once during daylight hours. The main condition for such operations is complete NATO air domination. In this case, the F-117 had a considerable chance to deceive enemy radars and get unnoticed to the target, and the high flight altitude gave an additional guarantee of protection from visual detection and destruction by anti-aircraft artillery fire.
Every joke has some truth. The concepts for the creation of the F-117 inconspicuous attack aircraft and the simplified training (multipurpose) U-2 biplane were completely different, as well as their age and technological level. However, when viewed from the point of view of nighttime bombing strikes, we see almost 100% similarity in the use of these aircraft, separated by half a century.
