In modern aviation, the concept of "bomber" is extremely vague. The main striking force in local conflicts is increasingly becoming fighter-bombers, for example, in Afghanistan, mainly Su-17 and MiG-23 worked. The main attack aircraft of the US Air Force is not the B-1 and B-2, but the F-15E "Strike Eagle" fighter-bomber (in the first illustration). The crew of two, perfect sighting and navigation systems and 11 tons of bomb load allow him to perform any mission to destroy ground targets. At the same time, 340 Strike Eagles are in service with fighter squadrons.
A completely similar situation is developing in Russia: the promising front-line bomber Su-34 was created on the basis of the Su-27 air superiority fighter, and, despite the titanium armor and bomb armament, it still retains most of the features of its great relative.
But even 50 years ago, bomb carriers were large and clumsy machines. Discovery TV channel, focusing on its specific data, has compiled a rating of the top ten bombers. I bring to your attention the final part of this story, I hope you will learn a lot of interesting facts.
5th place - Lancaster
At night, in the fog, a policeman stopped an overly fast car:
“Sir, if you drive that fast, you’ll kill someone.”
“Young man,” the military man sitting at the wheel replied wearily, “I kill tens of thousands of people every night.
In the car sat the commander of the bomber aircraft of the Royal Air Force, Arthur Harris, and the British four-engine bomber Avro Lancaster helped the marshal in his sorrowful work.
“We will bomb Germany - city after city: Lubeck, Rostock, Cologne, Emden, Bremen, Wilhelmshaven, Duisburg, Hamburg. We will bomb you until you stop waging war. This is our goal. We will persecute her mercilessly.”Read millions of leaflets with an appeal by Arthur Harris to the people of Germany. The Marshal was not an idle talker; reports regularly appeared in German newspapers that another city had been destroyed: Dessau was 80% destroyed. Bingen - ceased to exist. Chemnitz - 75% destroyed …
Every night, German cities turned into grandiose dance floors: with strobe spotlights rushing under the sky, sirens ringing, deafening roar of anti-aircraft guns and bomb explosions, colorful fire shows with smoke and confetti visible from dozens of kilometers away. They say that the pages of books from the libraries of Hamburg were found 70 km from the destroyed city - so strong was the hurricane that arose at the site of a gigantic fire. For the destroyed Stalingrad! For Khatyn! For Coventry! For Smolensk! The British took revenge on the Germans in absentia for everything.
It was the principle of torture: the victim is tortured until she fulfills the request. The Germans were demanded to stage a revolt against their own leadership and end the war. However, the civilian population chose the bombing: it was easier to die under the bombs than to be strangled in the basements of the Gestapo.
From a military point of view, the consequences of strategic bombing could not but go unnoticed. In 1944, the volume of war production increased in all countries, but in Germany this growth was the slowest of all. It is fair to say that Lancaster bombers were used not only as a weapon of total destruction. The Lancasters of the 617th Squadron of the Royal Air Force became especially famous. The guys performed incredible stunts in their heavy cars:
In May 1943, the pilots of the 617th Squadron destroyed the dams, depriving the Ruhr industrial area of electricity. Special "jumping" bombs were required to be dropped at a distance of 350 m from the target, from a height of exactly 18 meters. All this took place in pitch darkness and under the hurricane fire of anti-aircraft guns. Half of the crews did not return.
In June 1944, Squadron 617 destroyed the Saumur railway tunnel using a 5-ton Tallboy superbomb. It was required to get exactly from a height of 8 kilometers to a certain place on the mountainside. One of the "Tallboys" broke through 18 meters of rocks and exploded right in the tunnel.
In September 1944, the Lancasters of the 617th Squadron arrived in the USSR. Taking off from the airbase near Arkhangelsk, they scored the German battleship Tirpitz with Tollboys.
A comical situation occurred during the landing in Normandy: 617 Squadron imitated amphibious assault in the wrong direction. Flying over the water, "Lancaster" slowly spiraling closer to the shore, performing synchronized maneuvers. On the screen of German radars, they were displayed as barges moving at 20 knots.
4th place - "Mosquito"
A common misconception about the flimsy of wooden planes seems to have its origins in everyday experience: any of us knows that a steel pole is stronger than a wooden fishing rod. A logical error arises from ignorance of the basic rule of aviation: you can only compare structures of equal weight! For example, a railroad rail should be compared not with a fence board, but with a log of such a cross-section, in which its mass becomes equal to the rail mass. So try to break this log with a blow of your fist and immediately after that you will understand that the specific strength of aircraft wood is superior to carbon steel, is approximately equal to the specific strength of duralumin and is second only to titanium alloy!
According to statistics, the British bomber De Havilland Mosquito had one combat loss per 130 sorties. The probability of a safe return for the Mosquito crew was 99.25%. The completely wooden plane without any defensive weapons simply did not pay attention to all the efforts of the Germans to intercept it - the speed of the Mosquito was higher than that of any Luftwaffe fighter. Catching up with the Mosquito in a dive, using the elevation, was impossible - the British plane itself flew at exorbitant heights. Anti-aircraft fire from the ground was useless - despite the technical possibility of firing at high-altitude targets, the probability of hitting the plane tended to zero.
Worse, the solid wood Mosquito was hard to see on radar. If, nevertheless, the Luftwaffe night fighter managed to find the Mosquito locator in the black sky, the Monica radar warning station took over - the bomber made a sharp turn and left the danger zone.
High-speed "stealth" bombers became so insolent that with their help a courier line was organized between the USSR and Great Britain - "Mosquitoes" flew without hindrance directly over the territory of Germany. Reich Aviation Minister Goering only gnashed his teeth in impotence.
3rd place - B-29 "Superfortress"
In 1947, at the air parade in Tushino, the attaches of foreign states took their breath away - the Superfortresses with red stars on their wings gradually sailed through the airfield. The Russians have somehow mysteriously stolen the American secret weapon. But the workers of the sixty people's commissariats and departments of Soviet industry breathed a sigh of relief - the important task of the party was completed.
During the war, three damaged B-29s landed in the Far East, they all had funny personal names:
- "Ding Hoa"
- "General Arnold"
- "Ramp Tramp" - translated into Russian "Bum-rowdy"
Another damaged B-29 did not reach the airfield and crashed near Khabarovsk - some of the parts were also removed from it."Ding Hoa" was dismantled to the screw, "Arnold" became the standard. The career of the "Bum" was the most interesting of all - it was used as a flying laboratory for many years.
Best the enemy of the good. According to Stalin's order "No changes should be made!", The promising Soviet bomber was supposed to be a complete copy of the B-29. In the design of the Tu-4, inches were used as the base unit, and the cockpit interior was copied to such an extent that the Soviet bomber received an ashtray and a holder for a Coca-Cola can. However, there were also differences, sometimes even more serious than Coca-Cola - the Tu-4 was equipped with more powerful Soviet engines (2400 hp instead of 2200 hp on the original B-29). In addition, the self-defense systems underwent a change - instead of the Tu-4 machine guns, it received ten 23 mm cannons.
As for the B-29 Superfortress itself, it was a truly unique bomber. Remotely controlled turrets with radar guidance, an AN / APQ "Eagle" sighting and navigation radar, a radio range finder, three cameras for taking bombing results, an RC-103 "blind landing" system, a "friend or foe" identification system, three pressurized cabins with bulletproof glass …
In a word, the Japanese pilots were unlucky enough to meet such a bird in the sky … although sometimes, according to the theory of probability, they managed to “knock out” and shoot a superbomber. By the way, it was the "Superfortress" that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Alas, this was more the merit of nuclear scientists than aircraft designers - the bombers flew along their usual route and, invulnerable to the Japanese air defense, dropped bombs as in an exercise.
During the years of the Korean War (1950-1953), the situation changed - despite the boastful statements of the B-29 airborne gunners under the name "Command Decision" (44-87657), who shot down five MiG-15s, the situation was clearly not in favor of the US Air Force. "Superfortresses" began to fly only at night: during the day, in open combat with jet fighters, they suffered heavy losses.
2nd place - B-2 Spirit
Argument one: B-2 Spirit is shit!
Counter-argument: Why? Even if we do not take into account its "stealth", this is a quite decent strategic bomber-missile carrier, with a huge combat load and the most modern electronics. The B-2 set a world record for the continuous presence of a combat aircraft in the air - during a round-the-world raid from the United States to Iraq, the bomber stayed in the air for 50 hours.
Argument two: Stealth technology is useless nonsense, even outdated radars can see the plane perfectly.
Counter-argument: Suppose stealth really doesn't work. Then why does the promising Russian T-50 fighter have all the features of an unobtrusive aircraft - a flattened fuselage, an internal suspension of weapons, toothed articulations of surfaces, radio-absorbing materials? The creators of the B-2 went even further - they generally abandoned the unmasking vertical tail. The bomber is built according to the "flying wing" scheme, extremely flat, without any protruding parts. Even without being a specialist, it's safe to say that the B-2's effective dispersion area is less than that of any other strategic bomber. The whole question is - how much? And are the costs of the result worth it?
Argument three: The handling of the B-2 is no better than that of a flying grand piano.
Counter-Argument: The B-2 can be difficult to operate and requires electronic assistive systems. However, facts such as mid-air refueling raise doubts about the poor performance of the stealth bomber. Such operations require delicate management.
Argument four: Many researchers are confident that the B-2 was shot down several times in the skies over Yugoslavia.
Counter-argument: The Serbian military was able to provide only the wreckage of the F-117 Nighthawk tactical bomber and are still proud of their remarkable victory, displaying the remains of the aircraft for all to see at the Belgrade Aviation Museum. If a huge 170-ton bomber fell on the territory of Serbia, the whole world would know about it on the same day.
Argument five: One of the superbombers took and crashed
Counter-argument: Like any regular plane. The B-2 crashed in 2008 while taking off from Guam airbase.
Argument six: the B-2 bomber did not participate in real combat
Counter-argument: Stealth bombers were used during the aggression against Yugoslavia, bombing Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. Of course, in terms of tension, this is far from Stalingrad, but it is quite enough to test the plane in combat conditions.
Argument 7: Terribly expensive bomb carrier
Counter-argument: You can't argue here. The B-2 superbomber in 2012 prices is worth $ 10 billion. For this money, the US Air Force could purchase 70 F-22 Raptor fighters! And the Navy could buy a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with a full complement of carrier-based aircraft. The B-2 Spirit's incredible price tag is the bomber's main drawback. This fact had an effect on the Americans - only two dozen cars were built.
The only thing that the Americans can object to is that the B-2 is not only a combat aircraft, but also a research program to create promising stealth aircraft. In addition, it is a powerful weapon in the information war: an unusual bomber leaves no one indifferent - they admire him, confess his love, criticize him and scold him with foam at the mouth. And Discovery put him in second place in the ranking of the best bombers.
1st place - B-52 "Stratospheric Fortress"
Favorite plane of the former Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov. One could boldly assert that the Russian army does not need new planes - look, the Americans fly on old ones.
It is true that the Stratofortress bombers are older than their pilots - the B-52 made its maiden flight in 1952, and the newest one left the assembly shop in 1963. Despite being half a century old, the B-52 will remain in service until 2040. Ninety years in combat service!
However, this paradox has a rational explanation. First, in modern conditions, the B-52 has become a multifunctional launch platform. Coupled with the annual modernization of the onboard electronics, this makes the flight characteristics of the aircraft itself of secondary importance. We can say that the B-52 is lucky - it occupies a specific niche in which the influence of time is not felt. All his peers (F-104, F-105, MiG-19) have long been in the landfill.
Secondly, the B-52 is most often used for carpet bombing in local conflicts. To drop 30 tons of high-explosive bombs on an area target does not require any specific skills - but preparation for departure, and an hour of flight, the B-52 costs less than many modern bombers.
In general, the choice of "Discovery" is quite justified: the B-52s went through Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, the Balkans and Afghanistan, using all types of their weapons. Thanks to its monstrous appearance, the bomber has become a symbol of world imperialism, for decades these aircraft patrolled along the borders of the USSR with thermonuclear charges on board. Several times the flights ended in disaster: in 1966, a B-52 collided with a tanker and scattered 4 atomic bombs along the coast of Spain. The aircraft participated in the X-15 experimental rocket planes program, and was used in the interests of the Navy and NASA. Records for the B-52 included a round-the-world flight in 1963 and a non-refueling flight on the Japan-Spain route.
