Bombers are the largest, most complex, and expensive combat aircraft of their time. After all, delivering a deadly cargo to the enemy's territory is a task for which they do not spare forces and means. However, trying to implement even the most ambitious ideas often fails. Let's take a look at the monsters that the temporary sleep of the mind of some designers spawned.
Siemens-Schuckert R. VIII - a flightless bird
A rare list of crazy engineering creations is complete without the grim Teutonic genius. During the First World War, the Teutons came off with might and main (which is undeservedly forgotten against the background of the Second World War), including in aviation, in places achieving impressive successes. But with the bombers, the Germans lagged behind at first. They relied on von Zeppelin's airships, while we have created promising "Muromtsy". Finally, Gotha managed to make successful long-range bombers, which took part in massive raids on London.
The Germans were knocked down by the traditional weakness - the inability to stop in time. As a result, in the second half of the war, invaluable resources were spent on super-heavy bombers, the so-called R-plane. This name unites three dozen aircraft of various firms, produced in one or two copies (the most "large-scale" - as many as four).
The crowning glory of the series was the Siemens-Schuckert R. VIII, a six-engine monster with a wingspan of 48 meters, the largest aircraft of its time. Ilya Muromets had a span of about 30 meters (depending on the modification), and the four-engine Handley Page V / 1500 with a span of 38 meters became the largest Entente bomber. But what is the use of gigantomania: by the time of the armistice, the Germans only managed to make a run across the airfield and break the plane before takeoff due to problems with the power plant. In the future, the Treaty of Versailles banned Germany from developing combat aircraft and temporarily saved the world from the Teutonic genius. What a pity, because the genius, meanwhile, already had a giant triplane Mannesman-Poll in the construction, even bigger, even worse!
K-7 - flying disaster
In the interwar period, gigantomania did not escape the USSR either. Up to the fact that for a long time the Soviets were in the lead in heavy bomber aviation. And so, the designer Konstantin Kalinin creates a uniform monster: a multipurpose (if you want to carry passengers, if you want cargo, you want bombs) K-7.
The key idea of the project was to move towards the "flying wing" scheme - the theoretically ideal shape of the aircraft, in which a giant wing is the basis of the design, and thus the entire aircraft participates in creating lift. In the K-7, the thickness (that is, the "height") of the wing exceeded two meters, and it was possible to walk freely inside it. Even necessary, given that the passengers (up to 128 people) or paratroopers were located there.
The K-7 made its first flight on August 21, 1933 and became the largest aircraft in the USSR. There were more in the world, but mainly flying boats. Unfortunately, the tests revealed control problems, severe vibrations, and the disaster happened within three months. The failure strengthened the position of the king of Soviet aviation, Tupolev, who did not tolerate competitors, the program was curtailed, and Kalinin was executed five years later in the process of purges in the military-industrial complex. In 1934, Tupolev lifts a huge ANT-20, but he is much more conservative.
Northrop YB-35/49 - unlucky bird
The "flying wing" scheme had its own enthusiasts, of course, not only in the USSR. Perhaps the most prolific and successful was the American aircraft designer John Northrop. He began experimenting with flying wings back in the late 1920s.
During World War II, money rained on American aircraft designers, and Northrop, of course, got ahead of himself. During the war, however, he failed to bring a single idea to a serial state. Its finest hour came immediately after - in 1946, when a strategic bomber developed at the request of 1941, which reached the transatlantic range, was embodied in metal. The YB-35 was a four-engined piston bomber, vastly superior to the B-29. The bomb load is doubled!
The time for piston aircraft was running out, and the YB-35 was extremely quickly converted to jet engines, and a little over a year later, the YB-49 flew. Due to the gluttony of the new engines, the range and combat load have dropped, but the flight characteristics have improved.
The cars almost went into small production, but no luck. The end of the war diminished interest in "creative" developments and the more conservative B-36 was chosen for implementation. Politics and the lobby of competitors also intervened. In addition, a serious problem with handling persisted, which the "flying wings" could not overcome until it became possible to attract computers to help the pilots. Only then - and on the basis of rich testing experience - was the modern B-2A created.
Convair NB-36H (Tu-95LAL) - NPP overhead
In the first decade of peace, the military and without "flying wings" had something to entertain themselves. This is the century of mad passion for the atom! So why not make an atomic plane? Such prospects: at one gas station there is an infinite range, at the airfields at least the hangar itself is illuminated and heated with free electricity, which has nowhere to go.
Work on atomic aircraft was carried out both in the USA and in the USSR. American developments are better known not only for their greater openness, but also because their flying laboratory took to the skies five years earlier.
The NB-36H, based on the B-36H bomber damaged by the hurricane, provided biological protection to the crew (the new, lead-lined cockpit weighed as much as 11 tons) and, yes: it was equipped with a real ASTR nuclear reactor in a hull, producing three megawatts. It would be possible to modify the aircraft to use this energy - since it is a propeller driven one. But the Americans decided to simply check the operation of the reactor in flight and secure the crew. There was no b / n, but the program was curtailed and the real atomic plane - the X-6 project with nuclear jet engines - was not built.
In the USSR, the situation, in general, repeated itself. The problems with nuclear aircraft were that if you make a conservative design that is as safe as possible, then the result is something that is barely able to get off the ground; and if you burn it in full, with all sorts of nuclear ramjet engines, then it turns out, to put it mildly, not environmentally friendly. Well, we must not forget that planes fall from time to time, and who wants to see small, but real nuclear power plants falling on it? In addition, the issue with the range was almost completely closed by the development of refueling in the air.
North American XB-70 Valkyrie - a bird with ambition
Perhaps it was the "Valkyrie" that became the last truly insane bomber embodied in metal. Even the alien B-2A is, as we just discussed, in many ways just the implementation of old ideas.
The super-high-altitude bomber development program that gave birth to the B-70 began in the mid-1950s, when the development of jet aircraft was unimaginable. In just a quarter of a century, aircraft have transformed from wooden biplanes with speeds of 300-400 km / h (at best!) Literally into steel "bullets" that significantly exceeded the speed of sound, conquered intercontinental distances and climbed into the stratosphere. It was a time when they believed that flight characteristics had no boundaries, but it was worth reaching out - and here it is, hypersound, aerospace vehicles.
There were also ambitions to match the time when creating the B-70. Suffice it to say that this modification flew not on kerosene, and not on petroleum products at all. The fuel was Pentaboran, the most complex and expensive borohydrogen fuel. It was also, to put it mildly, not useful for nature and could self-ignite. A way to dispose of it cheaply will be invented only in 2000, and the United States will be able to get rid of the accumulated reserves.
Six powerful engines allowed the huge Valkyrie (take-off weight almost like the Tu-160) to accelerate to 3.300 km / h and have a practical ceiling of 23 kilometers - incomparable performance, given its size. However, the legions of snow-white bulletproof bombers were not destined to see the light of day. The cost of both production and operation was clearly inconceivable. At the same time, ballistic missiles, which were faster and invulnerable to anti-aircraft missile systems, came to the fore as a means of delivering a nuclear charge. Even before the first flight, the program was transferred to a purely scientific track (to study high-speed flight), but after five years of testing, from 1964 to 1969, it was still closed.
The past aviation age has presented us with many beautiful, crazy or beautiful planes in their madness. In military aviation, heavy bombers have always been an elite: nimble fighters can twist turns at airshows as much as they want, but when it comes down to it, they will turn into an entourage, whose task is to protect the real main characters from their own kind on the way to the goal.
The price paid for strength is complexity and cost. Therefore, when the designers were going to do something unusual (in their opinion, of course, also ingenious), they often turned out to be real monsters, like those that we remembered now.
After World War II, only two hegemons began to have enough money to produce and maintain fleets of strategic bombers. However, they soon also had to cut costs on new radical ideas. What to look far: in the United States, the basis of the air part of the nuclear triad is the B-52H, released (physically, not invented!) In 1961-62. They stand out for their alien B-2A, and for their size (the largest combat aircraft in history!) - Tu-160.
But the first one, in fact, implements the ideas of the 40s with the addition of fashionable stealth, it is just that the technique finally made it possible to make a flying wing. And the second one is a very conservative project in comparison with those worked out during the competition. In our age of pragmatism and credit debit, new "Valkyries" are not to be expected.
