RE: Tupolev 144
Damn, a Tu-144 thread I missed.
The Tu-144 was faster and, in the D model, longer ranged than Concorde by a few hundred miles. Interestingly enough a group of NASA and industry personnel who visited the Voronezh plant in the late 60’s or early 70’s claim that it was more environmentally friendly than Concorde as well.
The Tu-144 crashed at Paris due to the French snooping and the fact that Elyan and company in the cockpit were dealing with the last-minute French decision to cut the display time in half-Concorde flew directly before it.
The Tu-144 was put into passenger service between Moscow and Alma Ata, but only flew 100 flights or so. Passenger service was cancelled after a crash of an improved D model on a proving flight (fuel leak in the wing tanks, indicator light didn’t come on, pilot tried to relight the engines that had flamed out as a result, cause massive amounts of flame).
There was espionage involved but not in the way you think. The airframe design was essentially original, the Russians were busy trying to get data on the Olympus engines and the construction techniques mostly. Interesting story-they wanted to get a few tire shavings from a runway to duplicate the rubber in Concorde’s tires for the Tu-144. The French came up with the brilliant idea to plant some odd substance on the runway (they had ID’ed the spy) and had a good laugh imagining idiot scientists trying to make tires out of something that was essentially modified, burnt to a crisp chewing gum.
Good places to go for more Tu-144 info:
Supersonic Spies video by Nova. Great stuff there on the espionage aspect.
Soviet SST-great book by Howard Moon, although not too up to date nowadays with regard to some of the later details.
Concorde-book by Gunter Endres, has a whole mess of info in a chapter devoted to the Tu-144.
Definitely my favorite airliner of all time. Got quite a few souvenirs! You can see one below.
SOC
“Peace through kinetic solutions”
Attachments:
2 SSTs
Top one is a Tu-144S in Lufthansa Cargo markings, bottom one is a Tu-144D in Russian Cargo markings.
SOC
“Peace through kinetic solutions”
Attachments:
RE: Concorde fest.!
Sorry, but I just couldn’t resist }>
SOC
“Peace through kinetic solutions”
Attachments:
Sign In
