Aha … Nice to get some More info on Soviet STOL experiments
http://www.vectorsite.net/avredvt.html
* The origins of Soviet jet VTOL remain obscure in the West. It is known
that in the mid-1950s the Soviets developed their first jet VTOL platform, a
test rig comparable to the British Rolls Royce “Flying Bedstead” rig and
apparently known as the “Turbolet”.
Like the British Flying Bedstead, the Turbolet was a four-legged frame with a
turbojet mounted vertically in the center — in the Soviet case, a Tumansky
RD-9BL engine, a modification of the standard engine for the MiG-19 fighter,
with 24.53 kN (2,500 kgp / 5,510 lbf) thrust — and four reaction thrusters
or “puffers” on arms around the frame. Unlike the British machine, the
Turbolet actually had an enclosed cockpit, which looked like the operator’s
cab of a crane. Other than the fact that the Turbolet performed its first
flight in 1956 with Yuri Garnayev at the controls, not much data is available
about this vehicle or its development and test program.
However, this work clearly had some relationship to Soviet interest in
“liftjets”, which were small jet engines intended to be mounted vertically in
aircraft to provide straight-up thrust. The Kolesov engine OKB (design
bureau) developed a liftjet designated the “RD-36”, which provided 23.05 kN
(2,350 kgp / 5,181 lbf) thrust. In 1967, the Soviets publicly displayed
variants of the MiG-21, MiG-23, and Su-15 fighters with various combinations
of Kolesov liftjets in the forward fuselage to provide short takeoff or
landing (STOL) performance, but never went beyond prototype tests.
These STOL fighters will be discussed in documents describing their aircraft
families. In a matter more relevant to this document, the Soviets also
demonstrated a true jet VTOL aircraft in 1967, designated the “Yak-36”.
During the 1960s, the British Hawker Siddeley company (later part of British
Aerospace) developed a VTOL demonstrator named the Kestrel, which would lead
to a production successor, the famous Harrier VTOL fighter. The Bristol
company (bought out by Rolls Royce during the decade) developed a VTOL engine
named the “Pegasus” for the Kestrel. The USSR followed the development of
the Kestrel and Pegasus with interest, and in 1961 the powers-that-be had
tasked the Yakovlev OKB to build a jet VTOL demonstrator, which would emerge
as the “Yak-36”. The Tumansky engine design bureau was tasked with taking
the R27-300 turbojet, then in development for what would become the MiG-23
fighter, and developing a non-afterburning vectored-thrust version, the
“R27V-300”, with two to be used to power the Yak-36.
:p That was awesome!!! I am just taken aback!! Apart from the few DO-31 lookalikes other seem to be different! 4th Last Green CDesign is just fabolous! Flanker_Man can u solve the riddle left by AerospaceTech!!??? :confused:
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