In any business there are pioneers: what is completely familiar today was once a novelty. Probably, few people can remember flying on an airplane, from the windows of which one could see air propeller(however, in Europe, regional airlines often use turboprop aircraft). Turbojet engines rule the world today - nothing better, apparently, on this moment have not been invented, and hydrogen and nuclear aircraft do not yet fly. Almost 80 years have passed since the appearance of the first efficient motor of this type.

The German engineer Ernst Heinkel is behind the embodiment of the idea, but to whom it belongs is another question. As often happens, the idea was thought out by another person (who eventually remained in the shadows), then, thanks to the money and resources of big business, it was possible to bring it to life.

Ernst Heinkel engineer

Heinkel was born in Germany in January 1888. In his youth, he had nothing to do with aviation, which then took only the first serious steps. The German enthusiastically studied mechanical engineering in Stuttgart, worked as an apprentice turner in a foundry and followed the development of zeppelins. The accident with one of these aircraft in 1908 had a special impact on Ernst's professional future. Then the experimental LZ 4, already participating in a series of test flights, was destroyed by fire during a landing to repair a broken engine. "The future is in airplanes"- Heinkel decided for himself.

By 1911, Ernst, then 23 years old, had built his first airplane. As the test flight showed, engineering skills required further improvement - the young man was injured and moved away from them for a long time. Someone would have given up, but that era was remembered by enthusiastic people. Rather, history remembers only such. Beginning in 1914, the German worked in large aircraft manufacturing companies, engaged in the design of aircraft. He is sometimes credited with developing the popular Albatros B.II biplane, but many historians deny this information.

Shortly after the end of the First World War, in 1921, Heinkel took the post of chief designer of the Caspar-Werke company, reorganized after a long pause. However, very soon the engineer leaves her due to disputes with the founder of the company, Karl Kaspar, regarding the rights to the design of manufactured aircraft. Surely Ernst highly valued his own experience and professionalism, so in 1922 the Heinkel-Flugzeugwerke company appeared.

The company was looking for ways to circumvent the Treaty of Versailles, which imposed serious restrictions on Germany in terms of the production of equipment. At a certain point, Heinkel received serious support from the Japanese government. The fact is that Japan was at the same time a major customer of Heinkel-Flugzeugwerke and was a member of a special commission that checked whether the company complied with the agreements enshrined in the Treaty of Versailles. It is alleged that this allowed Ernst to prepare in advance for the upcoming inspections, and then continue to work as if nothing had happened (the Japanese warned ahead of time about the events).

In the 30s, Heinkel's company was no longer "one of", but was ranked among the industry leaders. The firm naturally attracted the attention of the Chancellor, who soon usurped power. "In 1933 I joined the party, but I was never a Nazi"- so Ernst wrote much later. By the way, in 1948 he was arrested for collaborating with the Nazi regime, but then acquitted due to his connections with the conspirators who planned to overthrow Hitler.

Heinkel He 178

Heinkel-Flugzeugwerke has been actively investing in the development and research of new types of engines. Therefore, when a young engineer Hans von Ohain came to Heinkel, the head of the enterprise gladly took advantage of the technology patented by this man (von Ohain registered a jet engine in 1935). It is worth noting that shortly before this, regardless of Hans, Sir Frank Whittle received a patent for a turbojet engine, but the British aircraft took off later - he received government support after it became known about the successful tests of the He 178.

Von Ohain visited Heinkel with a proposal to build a workable aircraft using his engine. The implementation of the project took several years, as it was decided to improve the design, making the system more powerful and efficient.

Heinrich Hertel, Karl Schwerzler and Siegfried Günther had a hand in the creation of the world's first operating turbojet aircraft. The latter, after the Second World War, took part in the development of the Soviet MiG-15 fighter. Work on the He 178 was carried out without government support; the company's own funds were used to create the concept and prototypes.

First flight

The He 178 made its first takeoff attempt on 24 August 1939. Rather, it was a trial "jump" over the strip. And a few days later, on August 27, Captain Erich Warzitz made a full-fledged flight (a couple of months before that, he had lifted a jet He 176 into the air).

According to available data, the maximum speed of an aircraft with a metal fuselage and wooden wings, on board of which there was a single pilot, was slightly less than 500 km / h (according to other information - about 600 km / h), flight range reached 200 km.

The first solo flight ended without too much pathos and sharp turns. Everything was spoiled by a bird that got into the engine: a flameout occurred, but Varzits was able to land the car safely. The plane was also demonstrated to representatives of the Ministry of Aviation. The flight lasted only 10 minutes, and it was pointless to take the He 178 into service in that condition. So considered in a special commission.

The decision not to support the Heinkel project was probably influenced by the development of the BMW 003 and Junkers Jumo 004 engines with state support. The additional cargo was seen as superfluous, and the outbreak of the war was to end soon (there was such an opinion). The engineer nevertheless decided to continue the work, which led to the appearance of the world's first fighter with a turbojet engine - the He 280.

Heinkel-Flugzeugwerke continued to develop engines, which, in general, was the promise of aircraft of this type. On March 30, 1941, the He 280 made its debut flight, but again failed to meet the commission's requests. It didn't help that he used kerosene instead of burning high-octane fuel like "classic" aircraft. Over and over again, Heinkel made attempts to prove the superiority of his designs over competitors' aircraft. In speed racing, the He 280 outperformed the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, but in vain. Only in 1942, after a demonstration battle between these two aircraft, did the Ministry of Aviation recognize the prospects of the He 280 - it turned out to be more maneuverable and faster.

As a result, Heinkel-Flugzeugwerke received an order for 20 test copies and 300 production samples of He 280. However, Ernst had to solve problems with the HeS 8 engines, which were replaced by more advanced but complex HeS 011. This negatively affected the execution of the order, and the engineer was forced to use the Junkers Jumo 004 imposed on him. Heavy and huge motors nullified everything positive sides He 280. As a result, the jet Messerschmitt Me 262 came out the winner in this competitive struggle, while only nine copies of the Heinkel aircraft were produced. He lose. And around the same time, his property was nationalized. In fact, this means that the engineer was detained and demanded to transfer control of the enterprise to Hermann Goering, who was later recognized as a war criminal. After that, Ernst went to Vienna, where he founded a new company.

Some time later, while participating in the competition of Nazi Germany Jägernotprogramm, Heinkel presented his "dream fighter" - He 162 Salamander. Today, such a program would be called a "prototype competition" - few of the participants could go beyond the design stage. The presented planes are solid retro-futurism by today's standards. Ernst's brainchild looked a match for him, but one of the prototypes was able to accelerate to an incredible 900 km / h. That could make him the most fast plane Second World War...

In the early 50s of the last century, Ernst Heinkel founded a new company that produced bicycles, mopeds and sidecars - aircraft construction in Germany was banned for some time. In 1955, restrictions were eased, and the company began assembling aircraft on orders from abroad (including one of the modifications of the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter for the United States). The creator of the world's first turbojet aircraft died in 1958.

Short list of sources: World War II Database, Aerospaceweb.org, EDN, Scientists and Friends.

jet planes

During the first four years of the war, the maximum speed of production aircraft increased, on average, by 100 km/h: from 500–550 km/h to 600–650 km/h. .With. (numbers are given for fighters). At the same time, the weight of not only the power plant has greatly increased. but also the entire aircraft.

A further increase in speed was almost impossible. As you know, the power expended to overcome aerodynamic resistance is proportional to the square of the speed, and the propeller thrust is inversely proportional to the speed. Thus. the required power of the propeller power plant increases in proportion to the cube of the speed, and the higher the aircraft flies at high speeds, the more power must be added for the same increase in speed (Fig. 4.62).

This is theory. In practice, even more power would be required, since: 1) with an increase in the working volume of the engine, its dimensions and aerodynamic resistance would increase; 2) the specific fuel consumption is approximately proportional to the power, therefore, in order to maintain the required flight range, it would be necessary to increase the fuel supply; 3) due to the increased weight of the power plant and more fuel, in order to maintain the same load on the wing, it is necessary to increase its dimensions, which, in turn, would lead to an increase in the weight and aerodynamic drag of the aircraft.

Rice. 4.62. Dependence N-f(V)

In the 1930s, an increase in the speed of aircraft was carried out not only by increasing power, but also by reducing the specific weight of the engine, switching to high wing loads, improving the external shape of the aircraft and propeller efficiency, and increasing the flight altitude. However, by the mid-40s, these possibilities were practically exhausted. Moreover, as the aircraft speed increased, the influence of air compressibility began to affect, which led to the deterioration of some aerodynamic parameters. So, a decrease in the efficiency of the propeller was noticed; with an increase in the speed and altitude of the flight and an increase in the size and number of revolutions of the propeller, shock waves began to appear at the ends of the blades. Attempts to avoid this by increasing the number of blades while reducing their length, changing the shape of the twist and the profile of the blade gave only a limited effect (Fig. 4.63).

On occasion, the effect of compressibility has also manifested itself on the aircraft itself, usually when diving at high altitudes, where the wave crisis occurs about 150 km / h earlier than when flying near the ground. Due to the occurrence of shock waves on the wing, vibration began, the aircraft was pulled into a dive. Most often this happened on the American P-38 and P-47. having Mcrit = 0.7 (they even had to install special flaps for withdrawal from a dive), less often - on the P-51 with a laminar profile (Mcrit = 0.8), even more rarely - on the Spitfire, which was distinguished by a thin wing profile (Mcrit=0.9) . On Soviet fighters operating at low altitudes, there were no cases of compressibility effect.

So, it became clear that, despite all the tricks (the introduction of forced engine operation modes, the use of superchargers, the use of exhaust energy using special jet nozzles), the possibilities of an internal combustion engine with a propeller have been exhausted. To master new ranges of speed and flight altitude, a transition to another type of power plant was required - a jet engine.

A palliative measure was the creation of combined-type engines, using jet thrust as an additional accelerator in flight. To do this, small jet engines of the ramjet or liquid propellant type were installed under the fuselage or on the wings. These works had the greatest scope in the USSR, where by the end of the war, due to the lower power of piston engines, military aircraft lagged behind the best examples of foreign aviation technology in height and speed. For the first time, the possibility of using a ramjet on a fighter was tested in 1940 on I-15bis and I-153 aircraft, placing two such engines under the wings. Later, as an experiment, ramjet engines were installed on the LaGG-3 and Yak-7B fighters.

Rice. 4.63. Change in propeller efficiency at transonic speeds

The inclusion of a ramjet gave an increase in speed by 30–50 km / h, however, due to the high aerodynamic resistance of these engines, the maximum speed of a fighter with idle ramjet engines was noticeably lower than that of the same aircraft without auxiliary power plants. In addition, "straight lines" consumed a lot of fuel (60-70 kg / min). Therefore, this method was soon abandoned.

The installation of a liquid-propellant rocket engine in the rear fuselage did not lead to an increase in CO. In addition, during testing in 1943–1945. on the Pe-2 bomber and the Yak-3, Jla-7 and Su-7 fighters, it was found that the use of an LRE booster (RD-1 with a thrust of 300 kg) gives a more noticeable increase in speed: from 70 to 180 km / h. But the insufficient reliability of the liquid rocket booster and the need to have on board a supply of caustic nitric acid used as an oxidizer made operation very difficult. In addition, the RD-1 turned out to be more “gluttonous” than ramjet boosters: in one minute it burned 90 kg of fuel. Therefore, this method of increasing the maximum flight speed was not widely used in the Air Force.

Another type of combined air-jet engine was a motor-compressor power point. The first aircraft of this type was built in Italy by Caproni in August 1940 (Fig. 4.64). The power plant consisted of a 900 hp Isotta-Fraschini piston engine, which drove a three-stage compressor located at the rear of the jet engine. This design made it possible to do without a turbine, which was a stumbling block in the way of creating a turbojet engine due to the fact that the material of the blades could not withstand ultra-high temperatures behind the combustion chamber. However, flight tests showed the futility of this power plant - due to its low efficiency, the maximum aircraft speed was only 330 km / h.

Rice. 4.64. Experimental aircraft Caproni Campii

In an experimental propeller-driven propulsion system designed in 1943-1945. in the USSR under the leadership of K. V. Kholshchevnikov, thrust was created by the joint action of an air propeller and a WFD with an axial compressor driven by a VK-107 piston motor using an extension shaft. Fighters with such an engine I-107 (Su-5) and I-250 (MiG-13) were tested in March-April 1945, and the latter was even built in a small series.

Due to the large weight of the piston engine and unresolved problems caused by the drop in propeller efficiency at high speeds, the creation of combined-type power plants did not justify itself. A real leap in the development of aircraft performance was achieved only when the internal combustion engine was finally replaced by a jet engine.

The first country to establish serial production of jet aircraft was Germany. As noted, German designers began experiments with jet aircraft even before the war. The work was carried out in two directions: the creation of rocket aircraft with rocket engines and the creation of turbojet aircraft (Table 4.15).

Table 4.15. Characteristics of jet aircraft during the Second World War.

* - calculated values

Tests of the world's first non-176 rocket aircraft in the summer of 1939 showed the fundamental possibility of flying with the help of a rocket engine, but the maximum speed that this aircraft reached after 50 seconds of engine operation was only 345 km / h. Believing that one of the reasons for this is the conservative "classic" design of the Heinkel aircraft, the leaders of the Research Department of the Ministry of Aviation proposed the use of a "tailless" rocket engine. By their order, the German aircraft designer A. Lippisch, who had previously been engaged in the design of flying wing devices, in 1940 built an experimental tailless aircraft DFS-I94 with the same Walter R1-203 rocket engine. Due to the low thrust of the engine (400 kg) and the short duration of its operation (I min.), The speed of the aircraft turned out to be no more than that of propeller-driven aircraft. However, the Walter R2-203 rocket engine was soon created, capable of developing a thrust of 750 kg. With the support of Messerschmitt, Lippisch launched a new Me-163L rocket plane, with an R2-203 engine. October 1941 X. Dittmar, after lifting the aircraft in tow to a height of 4000 m, starting the engine, after a few minutes of full-power flight reached an unprecedented speed - 1003 km / h. It would seem that after this, an order for the mass production of the aircraft as a combat vehicle will immediately follow. But the German military command was in no hurry. At that time, the situation in the war was developing in favor of Germany, and the Nazi leaders were confident of an early victory with the weapons they had.

However, by 1943 the situation was different. German aviation was rapidly losing its leading position, and the situation on the fronts worsened. Enemy aircraft appeared more and more often over the territory of Germany, bombing attacks on German military and industrial facilities became more and more powerful. This prompted serious thinking about strengthening fighter aircraft, and the idea of ​​creating a high-speed missile interceptor fighter became extremely tempting. In addition, progress was made in the development of a liquid-propellant rocket engine - the new Walter HWK 109-509A engine with an increased fuel combustion temperature could develop thrust up to 1700 kg. The aircraft with this engine received the designation Me-163B. Unlike the experimental Me-163A, it had cannon armament (2x30 mm) and pilot armor protection, that is, it was a combat aircraft.

Due to the fact that the refinement of the HWK 109-509А was delayed, the first serial Me-163В took off only on February 21, 1944, and a total of 279 such aircraft were built before the end of the war. From May 1944 they took part in the fighting as a fighter-interceptor on the Western Front. Since the range of the Me-163 was small - only about 100 km, it was supposed to create a whole network of special interception groups located at a distance of about 150 km from each other and protecting Germany from the north and west.

Me-163 was a "tailless" with a swept wing (Fig. 4.65). The fuselage had a metal structure, the wing was wooden. The sweep of the wing, combined with aerodynamic twist, was used to balance the aircraft longitudinally without horizontal tail. At the same time, as it turned out later, the use of a swept wing made it possible to reduce wave resistance at transonic flight speeds.

Due to the high thrust of the engine, the Me-163 outperformed others in speed jet aircraft period of the Second World War and had an unprecedented rate of climb - 80 m / s. However, its combat effectiveness was greatly reduced by a very short flight duration. Due to the high specific consumption of fuel and oxidizer by a liquid-propellant rocket engine (5 kg / s), their supply was only enough for 6 minutes of LRE operation at full thrust. After climbing 9-10 km, the pilot had time for only one short attack. Takeoff and landing were also very difficult due to the unusual landing gear in the form of a distant cart (landing was carried out on a ski that was pulled out of the fuselage). Frequent cases of engine shutdown, high landing speed, instability during takeoff and run, a high probability of rocket fuel explosion on impact - all this, according to an eyewitness of the events, was the cause of many disasters.

The technical shortcomings were exacerbated by the lack of rocket fuel and the lack of pilots at the end of the war. As a result, only a quarter of the built Me-163В took part in the hostilities. The aircraft did not have any noticeable effect on the course of the war. According to the foreign press, only one unit was really combat-ready, which accounted for 9 downed bombers with its own losses of 14 aircraft.

At the end of 1944, the Germans made an attempt to improve the aircraft. To increase the duration of the flight, the engine was equipped with an auxiliary combustion chamber for cruising with reduced thrust, the fuel supply was increased, and a conventional wheeled chassis was installed instead of a detachable trolley. Until the end of the war, it was possible to build and test only one sample, which received the designation Me-263.

In 1944–1945 Japan tried to organize the production of Me-163 type aircraft to combat the B-29 high-altitude bombers. A license was bought, but one of the two German submarines sent from Germany to Japan to deliver documents and technical samples was sunk, and the Japanese got only an incomplete set of drawings. Nevertheless, Mitsubishi managed to build both the aircraft and the engine. The aircraft was given the name J8M1. On its first flight on 7 July 1945, it crashed due to engine failure while climbing.

The impetus for the creation of rocket aircraft was the desire to find a means of counteraction under the dominance of enemy aircraft. Therefore, in the USSR, work on a fighter with a rocket engine, in contrast to Germany and Japan, was carried out at the initial stage of the war, when German aviation was in charge in the sky of our country. In the summer of 1941, V.F. Bolkhovitinov turned to the government with a project for a BI fighter-interceptor with a rocket engine, developed by engineers A. Ya. Bereznyak and A. M. Isaev.

Rice. 4.65. Messerschmitt Me-163B

Rice. 4.66. Fighter BI

Unlike the Me-163, the BI aircraft had the usual scheme with a non-swept wing, tail unit and retractable wheel landing gear (Fig. 4.66). The structure was made of wood and was small in size; the wing area was only 7 m². The LRE D-1A-1100, located in the rear fuselage, developed a maximum thrust of 1100 kg. The martial law was difficult, therefore, already on the first prototype, weapons were installed (2 cannons with a caliber of 20 mm) and the pilot's armor protection.

Flight tests of the aircraft were delayed by a forced evacuation to the Urals. The first flight took place on May 15, 1942, pilot G. Ya. Bakhchivandzhi). It lasted just over three minutes, but, nevertheless, went down in history as the first flight combat aircraft with a rocket engine. After the replacement of the airframe of the aircraft, caused by damage to its structure by fumes of nitric acid used as an oxidant, test flights continued in 1943. On March 27, 1943, a catastrophe occurred: due to a violation of stability and controllability due to the occurrence of shocks at high speed (they did not suspect this danger then), the plane spontaneously went into a dive and crashed, Bakhchivandzhi died.

Even during the tests, a series of BI fighters was laid down. After the disaster, several dozen unfinished aircraft were destroyed, recognizing them as dangerous for flights. In addition, as tests have shown, the stock of 705 kg of fuel and oxidizer is enough for less than two minutes of engine operation, which cast doubt on the very possibility of the practical use of the aircraft.

There was another, external, reason: by 1943, it was possible to establish a large-scale production of propeller-driven combat aircraft that were not inferior in performance to German machines, and there was no longer an urgent need to introduce new, little-studied and therefore dangerous equipment into production.

The most unusual rocket aircraft built during the war was the German Ba-349A "Nutter" vertical take-off interceptor. It was designed as an alternative to the Me-163, designed for mass production. The Ba-349A was an extremely cheap and high-tech aircraft, constructed from the most affordable types of wood and metal. The wing did not have ailerons, lateral control was carried out by differential deviation of the elevators. The launch took place in the distance with a vertical guide about 9 m long. The aircraft accelerated with the help of four powder boosters installed on the sides of the rear fuselage (Fig. 4.67). At an altitude of 150 m, the spent missiles were dropped and the flight continued due to the operation of the main engine - the Walter 109-509A LRE. At first, the interceptor was aimed at enemy bombers automatically, by radio signals, and when the pilot saw the target, he took control. Approaching the target, the pilot fired a salvo of twenty-four 73-mm rockets mounted under the fairing in the nose of the aircraft. Then he had to separate the front of the fuselage and parachute down to the ground. The engine also had to be parachute-dropped so that it could be reused. Obviously, this project was ahead of the technical capabilities of the German industry, and it is not surprising that flight tests at the beginning of 1945 ended in disaster - in the vertical take-off mode, the aircraft lost stability and crashed, the pilot died.

Rice. 4.67. Launch of the aircraft Ba-349A

Not only rocket engines were used as a power plant for "disposable" aircraft. In 1944, German designers conducted experiments with a projectile aircraft equipped with a pulsed air-jet engine (PUVRD) and intended for operations against sea targets. This aircraft was a manned version of the Fieseler Fi-103 (V-1) winged projectile, which was used to bombard England. Due to the fact that when working on the ground, the thrust of the PUVRD is negligible, the aircraft could not take off on its own and was delivered to the target area on a carrier aircraft. There was no chassis on the Fi-103. After separation from the carrier, the pilot had to take aim and dive at the target. Despite the fact that there was a parachute in the cockpit, the Fi-103, in essence, was a weapon for suicide pilots: there was extremely little chance of safely leaving the aircraft with a parachute when diving at a speed of about 800 km / h. Until the end of the war, 175 missiles were converted into manned projectiles, but due to numerous disasters, they were not used during combat tests.

Unclaimed aircraft firm Junckers tried to convert into Ju-126 attack aircraft, installing chassis and cannon armament on them. The takeoff was to be carried out from a catapult or with the help of rocket boosters. The construction and testing of this machine took place after the war, on instructions issued by the USSR to German aircraft designers.

The Me-328 was supposed to be another manned projectile with a PuVRD. Its tests took place in the middle of 1944. Excessive vibration associated with the operation of pulsating jet engines led to the destruction of the aircraft and interrupted further work in this direction.

Truly workable jet aircraft were created on the basis of turbojet engines, which appeared after it was possible to solve the problem of heat resistance of structural materials for turbine blades and combustion chambers. This type of engine, compared with a ramjet or pu-jet engine, provided autonomy of take-off and caused less vibration, and it favorably differed from a liquid-propellant rocket engine by 10–15 times lower specific fuel consumption, no need for an oxidizer, and greater safety in operation.

The first turbojet fighter was the Heinkel He-280. The design of the machine began in 1939, shortly after testing the He-178 experimental jet aircraft. Under the wings were 2 HeS-8A turbojet engines with a thrust of 600 kg. The designer explained the choice of a twin-engine scheme as follows: “The experience of working on a single-engine jet aircraft showed that the fuselage of such an aircraft is limited by the length of the air intake and the nozzle part of the power plant. With such an engine installation scheme, it was very difficult to install weapons, without which a turbojet aircraft was of no military interest. I saw only one way out of this situation: the creation of a fighter with two engines under the wing.

The rest of the aircraft was a conventional design: a metal monoplane with a non-swept wing, a wheeled landing gear with a nose support and a twin tail. At the beginning of the tests, there were no weapons on the plane, guns (3x20mm) were installed only in the summer of 1942.

The first flight of the Non-178 took place on April 2, 1941. A month later, a speed of 780 km / h was reached.

The Non-178 was the world's first twin-engine jet aircraft. Another innovation was the use of the pilot's ejection system. This was done to ensure rescue at high speeds, when a strong velocity pressure would no longer give the pilot the opportunity to independently jump out of the cockpit with a parachute. The ejection seat was fired from the cockpit using compressed air, then the pilot himself had to disconnect the seat belts and open the parachute.

The ejection system came in handy just a few months after the start of testing the Non-280. On January 13, 1942, during a flight in bad weather conditions, the aircraft iced up, and he stopped obeying the rudders. The catapult mechanism worked properly, and the pilot landed safely. This was the first practical use of a human ejection system in the history of aviation.

Starting in 1944, by order of the Technical Department of the German Ministry of Aviation, experimental versions of all military aircraft were ordered to have only ejection seats. The ejection system was also used on most production German jet aircraft. Until the end of the Second World War in Germany, there were about 60 cases of successful ejection of pilots.

At the initial stage of the war, the Nazi military leadership did not show much interest in the new Heinkel aircraft and did not raise the question of its mass production. Therefore, until 1943, the Non-280 remained an experimental machine, and then the Me-262 appeared with better flight characteristics, and the Heinkel jet aircraft program was closed.

The first production aircraft with a turbojet engine was the Messerschmitt Me-262 fighter (Fig. 4.68). He was in service with the German Air Force and took part in the fighting.

The construction of the first prototype Me-262 began in 1940, and since 1941 it has been undergoing flight tests. At first, the aircraft flew around with a combined installation of a propeller engine in the nose of the fuselage and 2 turbojet engines under the wing. The first flight with only jet engines took place on July 18, 1942. It lasted 12 minutes and was quite successful. Test pilot F. Wendell writes: “The turbojet engines worked like clockwork, and the handling of the car was extremely pleasant. Indeed, I have rarely felt such enthusiasm during the first flight in any aircraft, as in the Me 262.

Like the Non-280, the Me-262 was a single-seat all-metal cantilever monoplane with 2 turbojet engines in gondolas under the wing. The chassis with a tail support was soon replaced by a tricycle, with a nose wheel, following the model of the Non-280; such a scheme was better suited to the high takeoff and landing speeds of a jet aircraft. The fuselage had a characteristic cross-sectional shape in the form of a triangle expanding downwards with rounded corners. This made it possible to remove the wheels of the main landing gear in niches in the lower surface of the fuselage and ensured minimal interference resistance in the area of ​​​​the articulation of the wing and fuselage. The wing is trapezoidal with a leading edge sweep of 18°. Ailerons and landing flaps were located on the rear straight edge. The launch of Jumo-004 turbojet engines with a thrust of 900 kg was carried out using a gasoline two-stroke starter engine. Due to the greater engine power than the Non-280, the aircraft could continue flying when one of them stopped. The maximum flight speed at an altitude of 6 km was 865 km / h.

Rice. 4.68. Messerschmitt Me-262

In November 1943, the jet Messerschmitt was demonstrated to Hitler. This was followed by the decision to mass-produce the aircraft, however, contrary to common sense, Hitler ordered that it be built not as a fighter, but as a high-speed bomber. Since the Me-262 did not have room for an internal bomb bay, the bombs had to be hung under the wing, while due to the increased weight and aerodynamic drag, the aircraft lost its speed advantage over conventional propeller-driven fighter aircraft. It wasn't until nearly a year later that the leader of the Third Reich reversed his misguided decision.

Another circumstance that delayed the serial production of jet aircraft was the difficulty with the production of turbojet engines. These include design problems associated with Jumo-004's frequently knocking spontaneous shutdowns in flight, and technological difficulties due to the lack of nickel and chromium for the manufacture of heat-resistant turbine blades for land and sea blockaded Germany, and production disruptions due to increasing bombardment. Anglo-American aviation and the resulting transfer of a significant part of the aircraft industry to special underground factories.

As a result, the first serial Me-262 appeared only in the summer of 1944. In an effort to revive the Luftwaffe, the Germans rapidly increased the production of jet aircraft. Until the end of 1444, 452 Me-262s were manufactured. for the first 2 months of 1945 - another 380 vehicles |52, p. 126 |. The aircraft were produced as a fighter with powerful armament (four 30-mm cannons in the forward fuselage), a fighter-bomber with two bombs on pylons under the wing, and a photo reconnaissance aircraft. At the end of the war, the main aircraft factories were destroyed by bombing, and the manufacture of aircraft and parts for them was carried out in small factories built in haste in the wilderness to make them invisible to aviation. There were no airfields; the assembled Me-262s were supposed to take off from a regular highway.

Due to the acute shortage of aviation fuel and pilots, most of the Me-262s built never took off. However, several combat jet units took part in the battles. The first Me-262 air battle with an enemy aircraft took place on July 26, 1944, when a German pilot attacked the Mosquito high-altitude British reconnaissance aircraft. Thanks to better maneuverability, the Mosquito managed to evade pursuit. Later Me-262s were used by groups to intercept bombers. There were occasional skirmishes with escort fighters, and there were even cases where a conventional propeller-driven aircraft managed to shoot down a faster but less maneuverable jet fighter. But this rarely happened. In general, the Me-262 demonstrated superiority over conventional aircraft, primarily as interceptors (Fig. 4.69).

In 1945, in Japan, which received from Krupp the technology for the production of heat-resistant steels for turbines, they designed the Nakajima J8N1 "Kikka" jet aircraft with 2 Ne20 turbojet engines based on the Me-262 model. The only aircraft tested in flight took off on August 7, the day after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. By the time of Japan's surrender, there were 19 Kikka jet fighters on the assembly line.

The second German aircraft with turbojet engines used in combat operations was the Arado Ar-234 multipurpose twin-engine aircraft. It began to be designed in 1941 as a high-speed reconnaissance aircraft. Due to difficulties with fine-tuning the Jumo-004 engines, the first flight took place only in the middle of 1943, and mass production began in July 1944.

Rice. 4.64. Altitude and speed characteristics of the Spitfire XIV and Me-262 aircraft

The aircraft had an upper wing. Such an arrangement provided the necessary clearance between the ground and the engines mounted under the wing during takeoff and landing, but at the same time created a problem with retracting the landing gear. Initially, they wanted to use a drop wheeled cart, as on the Me-163. But this made it impossible for the pilot to take off again in the event of landing outside the airfield. Therefore, in 1944, the aircraft was equipped with a conventional wheeled undercarriage retractable into the fuselage. For this, it was necessary to increase the size of the fuselage and reconfigure the fuel tanks (option Ar-232B).

Compared to the Me-262 Ar-234 had a large size and weight, in connection with this, its maximum speed with the same engines was less - about 750 km / h. But on the other hand, the aircraft could carry three 500-kg bombs on external slings .. Therefore, when in September 1944, the first combat unit of the Arado jet was formed. they were used not only for reconnaissance, but also for bombing and for ground support of troops. In particular, Ar-234В aircraft carried out bombing attacks on the Anglo-American troops during the German counteroffensive in the Ardennes in the winter of 1944–1945.

In 1944, a four-engine version of the Ar-234С (Fig. 4.70) was tested - a two-seat multi-purpose aircraft with reinforced cannon armament and increased flight speed. Due to the lack of jet engines for the German jet aircraft, it was not built in series.

In total, about 200 Ar-234s were manufactured up to May 1945. As in the case of the Me-262, due to the acute shortage of aviation fuel, by the end of the war, about half of these aircraft did not participate in the battles.

Junkers, the oldest German aircraft manufacturer, also contributed to the development of jet aviation in Germany. In accordance with the traditional specialization of the design of multi-engine aircraft, it was decided to create a heavy jet bomber Ju-287 there. Work began in 1943 on the initiative of engineer G. Vokks. By this time, it was already known that a swept wing should be used to increase Mkrig in flight. Vokks proposed an unusual solution - to install a reverse-swept wing on the aircraft. The advantage of this layout was that the flow stall at high angles of attack occurred first in the root parts of the wing, without loss of aileron performance. True, scientists warned about the danger of strong aeroelastic deformations of the wing during reverse sweep, but Vokks and his associates hoped that during the tests they would be able to solve strength problems.

Figure 4.70. Arado Ar-234C I

Rice. 4.71. Prototype bomber Ju-287

To speed up the construction of the first sample, the fuselage from the He-177 aircraft was used, and the tail unit from the Ju-288. Four Jumo-004 turbojet engines were installed on the aircraft: 2 in nacelles under the wing and 2 on the sides of the forward fuselage (Fig. 4.71). To facilitate takeoff, launch rocket boosters were added to the engines. Tests of the world's first jet bomber began on August 16, 1944. In general, they gave positive results. However, the maximum speed did not exceed 550 km / h, so it was decided to install 6 BMW-003 engines with a thrust of 800 kg each on a serial bomber. According to calculations in this case, the aircraft had to take up to 4000 kg of bombs and have a flight speed of 865 km/h at an altitude of 5000 m. In the summer of 1945, a partially built bomber came to the Soviet troops, it was brought to the flying state by the hands of German engineers and sent to the USSR for testing.

In an effort to turn the tide of hostilities through the mass production of jet aircraft, the German military leadership in the fall of 1944 announced a competition for the creation of a cheap fighter with a turbojet engine, unlike the Me-262, suitable for production from the simplest materials and without the use of skilled labor. Almost all leading aviation design organizations took part in the competition - Arado, Blom and Voss, Heinkel, Fizlsr, Focke-Wulf, Junkere. The Heinkel-Ne-162 project was recognized as the best.

The He-162 aircraft (Fig. 4.72) was a single-seat, single-engine monoplane with a metal fuselage and a wooden wing. To simplify the assembly process, the BMW-003 engine was installed on the fuselage. The aircraft had to have the simplest flight equipment and a very limited resource. The armament consisted of two 20 mm cannons. According to the plans of the Ministry of Aviation, it was planned to produce 50 aircraft in January 1945, 100 in February, and further increase production to 1000 aircraft per month. The Non-162 was to become the main aircraft for the Volksturm militia, which was created on the orders of the Fuhrer. The leadership of the youth organization Hitler Youth was instructed to prepare several thousand pilots for this aircraft as soon as possible.

The Non-162 was designed, built and tested in just three months. The first flight took place on December 6, 1944, and already in January at well-aimed enterprises in mountainous areas Austria began serial production of the machine. But it was already too late. Until the end of the war, only 50 aircraft were put into service, another 100 were prepared for testing, about 800 He-162s were at various stages of assembly. The aircraft did not participate in combat operations. This made it possible to save the lives of not only soldiers of the anti-Hitler coalition, but also hundreds of German youths: as the tests of the Non-162 in the USSR showed, the aircraft had poor stability, and the use of 15-16-year-old teenagers on it as pilots, who had practically no flight training ( all "training" consisted of several flights in a glider) would be tantamount to killing them.

Rice. 4.72. Heinkel He-162

Most early jet aircraft had straight wings. Among the production machines, the Me-163 was an exception, but the sweep in this case was due to the need to ensure the longitudinal balancing of the tailless aircraft and was too small to noticeably affect the Mcrit.

The occurrence of shock waves at high speeds caused a number of disasters, and, unlike propeller-driven aircraft, the wave crisis did not occur during a dive, but in level flight. The first of these tragic incidents was the death of G. Ya. Bakhchivandzhi. With the start of mass production of jet aircraft, these cases have become more frequent. Here is how the test pilot of the Messerschmitt L. Hoffman company describes them: “These disasters (according to witnesses who inspire confidence) occurred as follows. The Me 262 aircraft, after reaching a high speed in level flight, spontaneously went into a dive, from which the pilot was no longer able to withdraw the aircraft. It was practically impossible to establish the causes of these disasters through an investigation, since the pilots did not survive, and the planes completely crashed. As a result of these disasters, one Messerschmitt test pilot and a number of military pilots died.

Mysterious disasters limited the possibilities of jet aircraft. So, at the direction of the military leadership, the maximum allowable speeds of Me-163 and Me-262 should not exceed 900 km / h.

When, by the end of the war, scientists began to guess about the reasons for dragging planes into a dive, the Germans remembered the recommendations of A. Busemann and A. Betz about the advantages of a swept wing at high speeds. The first aircraft in which the sweep of the bearing surface was chosen specifically to reduce wave drag was the Junker Ju-287 described above. Shortly before the end of the war, on the initiative of the chief aerodynamicist of Arado R. Kozin, work began on the creation of a variant of the Ar-234 aircraft with a so-called sickle-shaped wing. The sweep at the root was 37°, to the ends of the wing it decreased to 25°. At the same time, due to the variable sweep of the wing and a special selection of airfoils, it was supposed to ensure the same values ​​of Mcrit along the span. By April 1945, when the company's workshops were occupied by British troops, the modified Arado was almost ready. The British later used a similar wing on the Victor jet bomber.

The use of a sweep made it possible to reduce aerodynamic drag, but at low speeds such a wing was more prone to stall and gave less Su max compared to a straight one. As a result, the idea of ​​a wing with variable sweep in flight arose. With the help of the mechanism for turning the wing consoles during takeoff and landing, the minimum sweep was to be set, and at high speeds - the maximum. The author of this idea was A. Lippisch

Rice. 4.74. DM-1 at Langley Aerodynamics Laboratory, USA

Figure 4.75 Horten No-9

After preliminary aerodynamic studies, which showed the possibility of a noticeable "mitigation" of the wave crisis when using a low aspect ratio wing (Fig. 4.73), in 1944 Lippisch began to create a non-motorized analog of the aircraft. The glider, named DM-1, in addition to the small aspect ratio delta wing, was distinguished by an unusually large vertical keel (42% of the S wing). This was done in order to maintain directional stability and controllability at high angles of attack. Inside the keel was the cockpit. To compensate for the redistribution of aerodynamic forces on the wing at transonic speed, which was to be achieved with a steep dive from a great height, a system was provided for pumping ballast water into the tail tank. By the time of the surrender of Germany, the construction of the airframe was almost completed. After the war, DM-1 was transported to the United States for study in a wind tunnel (Fig. 4.74)).

Another interesting technical development that appeared in Germany at the end of the war was the "flying wing" jet aircraft Horten No-9. As already noted, the tailless scheme was a very convenient layout of jet engines in the fuselage, and the swept wing and the absence of the fuselage and tail provided low aerodynamic drag at transonic speeds. According to the calculation, this aircraft with two Jumo-004B turbojet engines with a thrust of 900 kg each should have V? n*c? 945 km/h |39, p. 92 |. In January 1945, after the first successful flight of the Ho-9V-2 prototype (Fig. 4.75), Gotha was given an order for a trial series of 20 machines, the production of which was included in the German emergency defense program. According to this order, it remained on paper - the German aviation industry by that time was already inoperable.

The political situation stimulated the development of jet aviation not only in Germany, but also in other countries, primarily in England, the main rival of the German Air Force in the early years of the war. In this country, there were already technical prerequisites for creating jet aircraft: in the 1930s, engineer F. Whittle worked on the design of a turbojet engine there. The first working models of Whittle engines appeared at the turn of the 30-40s.

Unlike German engines, which had a multi-stage axial compressor, British turbojet engines used a single-stage centrifugal compressor, developed on the basis of the design of centrifugal compressors of reciprocating engines. This type of compressor was lighter and simpler than an axial compressor, but had a noticeably larger diameter (Table 4.16).

Table 4.16. Characteristics of German and English turbojet engines

Shortly after the start of the war, the British Air Ministry commissioned Gloucester to build an experimental E.28 / 39 aircraft for testing the F. Whittle W.I. In order to keep the work as secret as possible, the aircraft was assembled not at an aircraft factory, but in an inconspicuous car garage. It was a small single-seat non-swept-wing monoplane (Fig. 4.76). The first flight took place on May 15, 1941, it was carried out by Gloucester test pilot P. Saysr. Since the engine thrust was only 390 kg, the speed of the E.28 / 39 was less than that of propeller-driven aircraft - only 480 km / h. However, when in 1943 a more advanced Power Jet W.2 / 500 turbojet engine with a thrust of 775 kg was installed on the aircraft, the flight speed increased to 745 km / h.

The potential advantages of turbojet engines turned out to be so convincing that already in 1941 the government sent Gloucester an order for a jet fighter-interceptor. The first such aircraft, the G.41, was built in 1943. It has two De Havilland "Goblin" engines with a thrust of 680 kg each. They were located in gondolas on the wing. Due to the low thrust of the engines and their large midsection, the speed of the aircraft did not exceed 650 km / h. However, the government decided to give an order for the serial production of jet aircraft. Initially, they had the name "Tandsr-bolt", however, due to the assignment of this name to the American P-47 fighter, the aircraft received a new designation - "Meteor".

The possibility of increasing the speed qualities of the fighter was limited by the occurrence of shock waves at the junction of the large-diameter engine nacelles with the wing. Progress was made in early 1945 with a new variant, the Meteor F.3 (Fig. 4.77) with 900 kg thrust Ragles-Royce Derwent engines, differing by 200 mm in a smaller compressor transverse dimension.

G.41 "Meteor" was the only jet aircraft of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition that took part in the war. The first 20 Meteors entered service with British aviation in July 1944. Initially, they were used in the air defense system to combat German V-1 cruise missiles. In January 1945, the Meteor F.3 unit was sent to Belgium to support the offensive of the Anglo-American forces. In battles with German jet aircraft, Meteor did not have a chance to participate.

The United States did not have its own aircraft jet engine. Therefore, when creating the first American jet aircraft Bell R-59 "Ercomet", it was equipped with copies of British turbojet engines designed by F. Whittle, made by General Electric. The design of the aircraft began in September 1941 at the initiative of the US Air Force Technical Department, and on October 1, 1942, its first flight took place under the control of pilot R. Stanley.

The R-59 was designed as a combat fighter; in August 1944, mass production of the machine began. However, due to the significant interference of the wing and the engine nacelles located on the sides of the fuselage, the flight characteristics of the aircraft turned out to be no better than those of fighters with piston engines (U m ax=660 km/h). Therefore, the P59 was used only as a training aircraft, 50 of them were built.

The first truly combat jet fighter, the Lockheed F-80 Shooting Star, appeared in the United States in 1944. By this time, the Americans had managed to create a turbojet engine with twice the thrust of the first F. Whittle engines. Therefore, unlike the P-59, the F-80 was a single-engine aircraft. The location of the turbojet engine in the fuselage made it possible to significantly improve the streamlining of the apparatus, and the maximum speed of the F-80 was about 900 km / h. Serial production of the aircraft began after the end of the war.

Rice. 4.76. Experimental aircraft Gloucester E28 / 39

In general, jet aviation in England and the USA during the years of World War II was noticeably inferior to German work in this area in terms of development. If in the countries of the anti-Hitler bloc by the end of the war there was only one full-fledged combat jet aircraft, then in Germany three types of jet aircraft participated in hostilities - Me-163, Me-262 and Ar-234. In addition, as follows from Table 4.15, the English Meteor, due to its lower thrust and large “forehead” of engines, was much inferior in speed and a number of other parameters to the main German Me-262 jet fighter.

In the field of aerodynamics of high-speed flight, German designers and scientists hold the lead in proposing such methods for reducing wave drag as a swept wing, a swept wing that can be swept in flight, and a small aspect ratio delta wing. As is known, these technical solutions subsequently found the widest application in aviation.

One of the reasons for the lag in the development of jet aviation in the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition was that practical work in this area in the USA, England and other countries began later than in Germany. But the main thing seems to me the lack of incentives for the creation of jet aircraft in countries that had at the end of the war a much more powerful aircraft compared to Germany, which ensured air supremacy with the help of conventional propeller-driven aircraft.

From book Bermuda Triangle and other mysteries of the seas and oceans the author Konev Viktor

KS-135 aircraft On Wednesday, August 28, 1963, two KS-135 aircraft simultaneously took off from Homestead Air Force Base in Florida. The last message from them came around noon, when the planes were at a distance of 1200 kilometers northeast of Miami.

From the book God of War of the Third Reich author

author Pervushin Anton Ivanovich

Jet fighters Bartini Another project of the fighter of the future was developed by the most eccentric designer in the history of aviation, Roberto Ludovigovich Bartini (Roberto Oros di Bartini). Italian communist baron who made a brilliant career in country of the Soviets,

From the book Battle for the Stars-1. Rocket systems of the pre-space age author Pervushin Anton Ivanovich

Pe-2 jet bombers Of course, Korolev understood that the full implementation of the RP project was still very far away. Therefore, as a first stage, he considered the possibility of creating an experimental rocket plane based on a dive bomber.

From the book Cars of the Soviet Army 1946-1991 author Kochnev Evgeny Dmitrievich

From the book Artillery in the Great Patriotic War author Shirokorad Alexander Borisovich

Annex 5 Rocket installations in the Great Patriotic War By order of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of August 8, 1941, the formation of the first eight regiments of rocket artillery began. It has become milestone in her history. New formations were assigned

From the book Flights of gods and people author Nikitin Yury Fyodorovich

Jet nozzles of antiquity

From the book The Third Reich author Bulavina Victoria Viktorovna

"A real quantum leap." The first jet aircraft No less significant than the development of rockets were developments in the field of aircraft construction. The German Luftwaffe had an advantage at the beginning of the war, and if it were not for the indecision and shortsightedness of the leadership of the Third

From the book Jet Aviation of the Second World War author Kozyrev Mikhail Egorovich

9. Jet helicopters and gyroplanes In jet helicopters, the propulsion system can rotate its main propeller in three ways. The first method, a mechanical drive, is that the rotation of the screw is transmitted through a gearbox from the turbine shaft

From the book Rockets and Space Flight by Leigh Willy

From the book Air Combat (Origin and Development) author Babich V. K.

author Nenakhov Yury Yuryevich

Chapter 13 modern species weapons: combat aircraft, tanks, chemical weapons, heavy artillery

From the book "Wonder Weapon" of the Third Reich author Nenakhov Yury Yuryevich

Chapter 17. Jet Fighters Ernst Heinkel, generally distinguished by a heightened taste for the new, in addition to developments in the field of rocket aircraft, established himself in the early 30s as a pioneer of jet aviation. The theoretical basis for this was

From the book The Front goes through KB: The life of an aircraft designer, told by his friends, colleagues, employees [with illustrations] author Arlazorov Mikhail Saulovich

Chapter five. The first jet ... Hurry - this is our law. To us, aircraft designers, this walking wisdom is in no way applicable: “Better late than never.” For us, late is worse than never. A plane that was late, that took off into the sky later than it was supposed to, is similar to

author Kozyrev Mikhail Egorovich

From the book Aviation of the Red Army author Kozyrev Mikhail Egorovich

In our era, it is hardly possible to surprise someone with technological innovations. Moreover, now, when the momentum of the development of technology has gained such speed, which in past eras was simply not dreamed of. The same applies to aircraft. Now with turbojet engines it's a common thing. And once people could not even dream of such a thing.

The world's first passenger jet aircraft appeared only in the middle of the last century, when the development of aviation continued actively. Of course, in connection with the Second World War, special attention was paid primarily to the military, so after it ended, engineers and inventors turned their attention to passenger liners.

First, let's define what kind of aircraft it is? This is an aircraft whose engine is jet.

The principle of its operation is to use a mixture of air taken from the atmosphere and products of fuel oxidation with oxygen that are in the air. Due to the oxidation reaction, the working fluid heats up and, expanding, is ejected from the engine very quickly, while producing jet thrust.

First models

Aircraft, which then became prototypes for passenger liners, were developed then in Germany, or rather in the Third Reich, and in Great Britain. The pioneers in this area are the Germans.

Heinkel He 178- is considered the first aircraft with a jet engine. It was first tested on August 27, 1939. The aircraft showed quite encouraging results, but the higher leadership in the face of the Reich Ministry of Aviation considered that this technology was not interesting. And the main direction then was precisely military aviation equipment.

The British were also not far behind the Germans. And in 1941 the world saw the Gloster E.28/39. The engine designer was Frank Whittle.

Gloster E.28/39.

It was these prototypes that showed everyone which way aviation would go in the future.

The first jet passenger aircraft

The first jet aircraft for passengers is considered to be created by the British, "Comet-1". He was tested July 27, 1949. He had 4 turbojet engines, and the salon was calculated for 32 passengers. In addition, it was installed 2 accelerators for hydrogen peroxide. It was used on routes to Europe and Africa. For example, Johannesburg with stops along the way. The total flight time was 23.5 hours.

Later, "Kometa-2" and "Kometa-3" were developed, but they did not live up to expectations and were discontinued due to metal fatigue and insufficient strength of the fuselage. And yet, some modifications are still used to design RAF fighters.

Six years later, the USSR introduced the TU-104. The first Soviet jet passenger aircraft. The first time he took to the air June 15, 1955 A.N. Tupolev took as the basis of his project bomber with jet engines TU-16. He simply increased the fuselage, lowered the wing under it, and placed 100 seats for passengers. Since 1956 it was put into mass production.

For the next two years, he was the only jet aircraft in the world., which was used to transport civilians. He had 2 turbojet engines. Its maximum speed reached 950 km / h, and he could fly up to 2700 km.

It also introduced such novelties for the USSR, like meals on board, beautifully dressed stewardesses and fit pilots.

Nevertheless, for 4 years of its operation, there were 37 accidents involving this aircraft. This is the largest number of accidents among all Russian aircraft. It is not surprising that N.S. Khrushchev refused to even approach him. Despite the fact that it was removed from production, it was still used until 1979 for flights.

In 1958 on passenger lines came out . He could take on board from 90 to 180 passengers. Engines of different power were installed on different models. The aircraft was intended for routes of medium and long distances. However, there were much more accidents with it than with TU-104.

SE.210 Caravelle 1.

A breakthrough in world aviation was the creation of the French SE.210 Caravelle 1. He started flying in 1959, mainly in the colonies of France, in Africa. He also had 2 turbojet engines, but Rolls-Royce, in the tail of the aircraft. This helped to achieve the fact that both aerodynamics improved, and noise in the cabin was minimized, and the reliability of the air intakes was increased.

And the ladder was also made in a different way than other aircraft of that time - in the form of a descending part of the fuselage. In the cabin, too, innovations were carried out: portholes have become larger, and the passageway has been widened. It was used on routes only of medium range.

A total of 12 aircraft of this type were produced, but still he could not stand the competition with Boeing, and further production was stopped.

In June 1955, an experimental aircraft "104" developed by Tupolev Design Bureau took off from the airfield near Moscow in Zhukovsky. Factory tests of the machine began, which by the autumn of the same year will turn into a Tu-104 jet airliner - the third in the world, the second put into operation and the first in the USSR.

The very theme of the "104th" moved forward only after the death of Stalin, although proposals for the creation of a jet passenger fleet were repeatedly put forward under him. But the leader, with his inherent frugality and penchant for repeated reinsurance, inexorably "cut down" such ideas. The country had just overcome the post-war devastation and could not afford significant "non-core" spending, and reactive passenger aviation in the early 50s, however, was not a problem of prime necessity for the Soviet national economy.

There is a common joke among railway students: "Soviet cars are not designed to carry passengers, they are adapted for it." When creating the first Soviet jet liner, the Tupolev Design Bureau used a similar principle, but seriously and competently. The successful Tu-16 bomber was taken as a basis (the 104 aircraft even at one time bore the Tu-16P index - “passenger”) in order to gain resources and time on the general development of the design.

Thus, the task of training flight personnel was also facilitated, savings were also made on ground maintenance and repair equipment.

As one of the arguments in favor of creating such an aircraft, A.N. Tupolev cited the possibility of flying at high altitude, “above the weather” - propeller-driven passenger aircraft, which had a small ceiling, suffered mercilessly from chatter. But it was there that the first jet liner was guarded by a new, as yet unknown danger.

When it comes to a passenger aircraft, the first thing that seriously starts to worry potential passengers is reliability. Who in the USSR has not heard the black song: "Tu-104 is the fastest plane: it will take you to the grave in two minutes"? For all its offensiveness, it somewhat reflected the harsh reality. The plane was made in a hurry. The accident rate of the new car exceeded reasonable - by today's standards - indicators. Over the entire history of operation, 37 cars suffered serious accidents - 18% of the total number of vehicles produced. At the same time, it should be noted that the 104th behaved much more decently in flight than its English competitor, De Havilland's Comet (23% of lost cars), which had an unhealthy habit of falling apart in the air due to fatigue loads in a carelessly designed fuselage.

The first Tu-104 aircraft flew in early November 1955. Thus, the development took quite a bit of time. During this flight, there were some problems: during the flight, the plane unexpectedly tossed up, after which the control of the machine was lost for a while. The pilots called this condition "pickup". The reason for this phenomenon could not be determined. Despite this, the operation of the aircraft was continued, and the tests did not stop.

Khrushchev liked the Tu-104 so much that he even decided to fly it to Great Britain in 1956. Since the problems with the aircraft could not be resolved, he was persuaded to abandon such a flight. But it was necessary to demonstrate to the world the successes of the Soviet aircraft industry. Therefore, on the orders of Khrushchev, the Tu-104 was driven to the British capital.

The arrival of the Soviet airliner, according to the British press, had an effect comparable to the landing of a UFO. The next day, a second copy of the Tu-104 flew to London, with a different number. A report appeared in the British newspapers that it was the same aircraft, and the "Russian priests" were "repainting the numbers on their experimental aircraft." "Russian priests" are Russian pilots dressed in all black. Chief designer A.N. Tupolev was offended and, firstly, ordered the pilots to allocate funds to dress in something fashionable and not black, and the next day - March 25, 1956 - to send three Tu-104s to London at once, which was done.

It was a triumph for the Soviet Union - after all, at that time no other country in the world had operating jet passenger airliners.

The Tu-104 made its first regular flight on September 15, 1956. And in 1958, a black streak began.

As the further development of events showed, the problems with the "pickup" were not resolved. In August 1958, the Tu-104 crashed out of control, killing 64 people. The designer Tupolev denied in every possible way that there were any problems, and the catastrophe, according to him, was the fault of the crew. There is a version that the plane simply did not have enough fuel. But after a while, the second Tu-104 also crashed, going into a tailspin and crashing into the ground.

And two months later, exactly the same situation developed near Kanash.

On October 7, 1958, the new Tu-104A with tail number CCCP-42362, operated by the crew of the most experienced pilot Harold Kuznetsov, was flying Beijing - Omsk - Moscow. The flight altitude was 12 kilometers. In the cabin were mostly foreign citizens - a delegation of Chinese and North Korean Komsomol activists.

The weather in Moscow was bad, at the Gorky alternate airfield, too, and after flying over Kazan, the controller ordered to turn around and proceed to Sverdlovsk, suitable for landing. During a turn at an altitude of 10,000 meters, the aircraft most likely got into a zone of strong turbulence and a "pickup" occurred - a spontaneous increase in the pitch angle uncontrolled by the crew. Suddenly, the plane was thrown up sharply, and with such force that such a huge colossus flew up two kilometers, left the echelon up, lost speed, fell on the wing and went into a tailspin.

In the situation that arose, the crew did everything possible to save the aircraft. But the lack of elevator travel did not allow the car to be taken out of lethal mode. Harold Kuznetsov, knowing that the Birobidzhan story might be repeating itself, ordered the radio operator to broadcast his words to the ground.

Crew commander Harold Kuznetsov and co-pilot Anton Artemiev tried to level the plane, taking the helm to the stop. But it did not help. Then the plane went down sharply, not obeying the controls. Thus, the aircraft went into a steep uncontrolled dive. On supersonic speed, almost vertically, the plane rushed to the ground.

Here the crew accomplished the almost impossible: the commander Harold Kuznetsov, in two minutes of falling from a height of 13 kilometers, managed to transmit over the radio the features of the behavior of the car. Communication worked almost until the very moment of impact with the ground. Last words commander were: “Goodbye. We're dying."

The plane crashed in the Vurnarsky district of Chuvashia, a few tens of meters from the canvas railway Moscow - Kazan - Sverdlovsk, near the village of Bulatovo. 65 passengers and 9 crew members died.

According to the results of the work of the state commission, the accident lasted no more than two minutes.

The information transmitted by Kuznetsov was of great value, since all previous incidents remained unsolved. None of the investigations conducted by specialists from the Main Directorate of the Civil Air Fleet, the Air Force, the State Research Institute, as well as the Tupolev Design Bureau itself, could shed light on what really happened. Many hypotheses have been put forward: technical malfunction, design defects, bad weather conditions, crew errors.

All the bumps, of course, fell on the heads of the pilots, since no one doubted the technical characteristics of the aircraft. But the information transmitted by Kuznetsov dotted the "i". From the information received, the commission concluded that the liner fell into a huge ascending air stream. None of the designers could even imagine that this was possible at an altitude of more than 9 kilometers, since simple piston machines could climb to a much lower height. Therefore, such a phenomenon as turbulence was considered a trifle. Until tragedy struck.

Kuznetsov's crew hit the very center of the vertical air flow. Later, in the process of reproducing the flight, the designers managed to determine its parameters: the width of the air flow was about 2 kilometers, the length was about 13, and the thickness was about 6 kilometers. At the same time, its speed was approaching 300 kilometers per hour.

It was urgent to find a way to deal with such a dangerous natural phenomenon. As a result, the maximum flight altitude was reduced, the structure itself was modernized, new methods of machine alignment were developed, but still the problem was not completely solved. The high accident rate remained at the same level, but what was the cause - whether design errors, or unpreparedness of the pilots - was difficult to determine.

The transferred information was enough to find and fix the problem. The rules for centering the aircraft were changed, the angle of installation of the stabilizer was changed and the elevator was finalized. The maximum flight altitude has also been reduced. The tendency of the aircraft to "pick up" has been greatly reduced.

After that, the Tu-104 carried passengers for another three decades, and although there were some catastrophes (after all, about 200 aircraft were built and flew), their reasons were already different. The Tu-104 became for a long time the main passenger aircraft of Aeroflot: for example, in 1960, a third of passenger air transportation in the USSR was carried out on the Tu-104. Over 23 years of operation, the Tu-104 aircraft fleet has carried about 100 million passengers, spent 2,000,000 flight hours in the air and completed more than 600,000 flights.

Much credit for this belongs to Harold Kuznetsov and his crew. Here are their names:

Kuznetsov Harold Dmitrievich - FAC instructor
Artemov Anton Filimonovich - FAC
Rogozin Igor Alexandrovich - co-pilot
Mumrienko Evgeny Andreevich - navigator
Veselov Ivan Vladimirovich - flight engineer
Fedorov Alexander Sergeevich - radio operator
Smolenskaya Maya Filippovna - flight attendant-translator
Goryushina Tatyana Borisovna - flight attendant
Maklakova Albina - flight attendant

It is not surprising that the aircraft acquired a bad reputation. In 1960, the Tu-104 liner was discontinued, and the Il-18 turboprop liners took its place for a while. And since the Tu-104 needed a long runway to accelerate, it was rarely used on domestic flights.

There was a need to create new passenger aircraft. Tupolev decided not to retreat from the intended path. As a result, the first modification of the Tu-104, the Tu-124, was created, which also had a high accident rate. Therefore, another version was created - the Tu-134. This aircraft was more successful, therefore, since the start of operation in 1967, it still makes flights on domestic airlines. And only in 1972 the first Tu-154 jet liner appeared, which was not converted from a military vehicle, but was originally designed as a passenger one. This is one of the favorite aircraft of domestic experienced pilots.

Aeroflot removed the last Tu-104s from regular airlines only in 1979. But the plane by that time had firmly taken root in military aviation- it was used for training pilots of naval missile carriers, as a flying laboratory, for meteorological research and as a staff aircraft. The flights of the 104s were finally stopped only at the beginning of 1981, after an overloaded car belonging to the USSR Navy crashed at a military airfield near Leningrad. It almost completely killed the command staff Pacific Fleet- 52 people, including 17 admirals and generals, including the commander of the fleet, Vice Admiral Emil Spiridonov, who had the ill-fated car at his disposal.

Such a bitter experience forced domestic designers to think of new aerodynamic forms that could withstand air currents.

Officially, the last flight of the Tu-104 took place in November 1986. But some people claim that at the very end of the 80s they saw "104s" on the platforms of regional airports and even in flight. The son of a warrior and the grandfather of Soviet jet airliners did not want to retire, remaining a sort of kind ghost in an impoverished, but comfortably inhabited castle of Russian civil aviation.

Near Moscow, on the Kiev highway, at the turn to Vnukovo airport, a Tu-104B was met, standing on a high pedestal. As it turned out, this aircraft was installed in 2006, before it there was another Tu-104B in Vnukovo, which, on someone's stupid order, was cut down in 2005. Board number the car is not real, the number USSR-L5412 was worn by the first Tu-104, which performed the first flight with passengers.

It is difficult for modern youth, and even mature citizens, to understand what delight these flying machines, which seemed fantastic at that time, caused. Silvery droplets, rapidly dissecting the blue sky behind them, excited the imagination of young people in the early fifties. The wide left no doubt about the type of engine. Today, only computer games like War Thunder, with their offer to purchase a promotional jet aircraft of the USSR, give some idea of ​​this stage in the development of domestic aviation. But it started even earlier.

What does "reactive" mean?

A reasonable question arises about the name of the type of aircraft. In English, it sounds short: Jet. The Russian definition hints at the presence of some kind of reaction. It is clear that this is not about fuel oxidation - it is also present in conventional carbureted aircraft, the same as in rockets. The reaction of a physical body to the force of the ejected gas jet is expressed in giving it an oppositely directed acceleration. Everything else is already subtleties, which include various technical parameters of the system, such as aerodynamic properties, layout, wing profile, engine type. Here are possible options that engineering bureaus came up with in the course of their work, often finding similar technical solutions, independently of each other.

It is difficult to separate rocket research from aviation research in this aspect. In the field of powder boosters, installed to reduce the length of the takeoff run and afterburner, work was carried out even before the war. Moreover, an attempt to install a compressor engine (unsuccessful) in a Coanda airplane in 1910 allowed the inventor Henri Coanda to claim Romanian priority. True, this design was initially inoperable, which was confirmed by the very first test, during which the aircraft burned down.

First steps

The first jet aircraft capable of spending a long time in the air appeared later. The Germans became the pioneers, although some successes were achieved by scientists from other countries - the USA, Italy, Britain and then technically backward Japan. These samples were, in fact, the gliders of conventional fighters and bombers, which were equipped with a new type of engine, devoid of propellers, which caused surprise and distrust. In the USSR, engineers also dealt with this problem, but not so actively, focusing on proven and reliable propeller technology. Nevertheless, the jet model of the Bi-1 aircraft, equipped with a turbojet engine designed by A. M. Lyulka, was tested immediately before the war. The apparatus was very unreliable, the nitric acid used as an oxidizing agent was eating through the fuel tanks, there were other problems, but the first steps are always difficult.

Hitler's "Sturmvogel"

Due to the peculiarities of the Fuhrer's psyche, who hoped to crush the "enemies of the Reich" (to which he ranked the countries of almost the rest of the world), in Germany, after the start of World War II, work began on the creation of various types of "wonder weapons", including jet aircraft. Not all areas of this activity were unsuccessful. Successful projects include the Messerschmit-262 (aka Sturmvogel) - the first mass-produced jet aircraft in the world. The device was equipped with two turbojet engines, had a radar in the bow, developed a speed close to sound (more than 900 km / h), and turned out to be quite an effective means of combating the high-altitude B-17 ("Flying Fortresses") of the Allies. Adolf Hitler's fanatical faith in the extraordinary capabilities of the new technology, however, paradoxically played a bad role in the combat biography of the Me-262. Designed as a fighter, he, at the direction of "above", was converted into a bomber, and in this modification he did not fully prove himself.

"Arado"

The principle of a jet aircraft was applied in mid-1944 to the design of the Arado-234 bomber (again by the Germans). He managed to demonstrate his extraordinary combat capabilities by attacking the positions of the allies who landed in the area of ​​the port of Cherbourg. A speed of 740 km / h and a ten-kilometer ceiling did not give anti-aircraft artillery a chance to hit this target, and American and British fighters simply could not catch up with it. In addition to bombing (very inaccurate for obvious reasons), "Arado" produced aerial photography. The second experience of using it as a strike tool took place over Liege. The Germans did not suffer losses, and if Nazi Germany had more resources, and the industry could produce more than 36 Ar-234s, then the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition would have had a hard time.

Yu-287

German developments fell into the hands of friendly states during the Second World War after the defeat of Nazism. Western countries already during the final stage of hostilities, they began to prepare for the coming confrontation with the USSR. The Stalinist leadership took countermeasures. It was clear to both sides that the next war, if it took place, would be fought by jets. The USSR at that time did not yet have a strike nuclear potential, only work was underway to create a technology for the production of an atomic bomb. But the Americans were very interested in the captured Junkers-287, which had unique flight data (combat load 4000 kg, range 1500 km, ceiling 5000 m, speed 860 km / h). Four engines, negative sweep (the prototype of the future "invisibles") made it possible to use the aircraft as a nuclear carrier.

The first post-war

Jet aircraft did not play a decisive role during World War II, so the bulk of Soviet production capacity focused on improving the design and increasing the production of conventional propeller-driven fighters, attack aircraft and bombers. The issue of a promising carrier of atomic charges was difficult, and it was resolved promptly by copying the American Boeing B-29 (Tu-4), but countering possible aggression remained the main goal. To do this, first of all, fighters were required - high-altitude, maneuverable and, of course, high-speed. How the new direction developed can be judged from the letter of the designer A.S. Yakovlev to the Central Committee (autumn 1945), which found a certain understanding. A simple study of captured German technology party leadership considered insufficient. The country needed modern Soviet jet aircraft, not inferior, but superior to the world level. At the parade of 1946 in honor of the anniversary of the October Revolution (Tushino), they had to be shown to the people and foreign guests.

Temporary Yaks and MiGs

There was something to show, but it did not work out: the weather failed, there was fog. The demonstration of the new aircraft was postponed to May Day. The first Soviet jet aircraft, produced in a series of 15 copies, were developed by the Design Bureau of Mikoyan and Gurevich (MiG-9) and Yakovlev (Yak-15). Both samples were distinguished by a redan scheme, in which the tail section is washed from below by jet streams produced by nozzles. Naturally, to protect against overheating, these sections of the skin were covered with a special layer made of refractory metal. Both aircraft differed in weight, number of engines and purpose, but on the whole they corresponded to the state of the Soviet aircraft building school of the late forties. Their main purpose was the transition to a new type of power plant, but other important tasks were also carried out: training of flight personnel and working out technological issues. These jet aircraft, despite the large volumes of their production (hundreds of pieces), were considered as temporary and subject to replacement in the very near future, immediately after the appearance of more advanced designs. And soon that moment arrived.

Fifteenth

This plane has become a legend. It was built in series unprecedented for peacetime, both in combat and in a paired training version. Many revolutionary technical solutions were used in the design of the MiG-15, for the first time an attempt was made to create a reliable pilot rescue system (catapult), it was equipped with powerful cannon armament. The speed of the jet aircraft, small but very effective, allowed it to win over armadas of heavy strategic bombers in the skies of Korea, where war broke out soon after the introduction of a new interceptor. The American Saber, built according to a similar scheme, became a kind of analogue of the MiG. During the fighting, equipment fell into the hands of the enemy. The Soviet plane was hijacked by a North Korean pilot tempted by a huge monetary reward. The downed "American" was pulled out of the water and delivered to the USSR. There was a mutual "exchange of experience" with the adoption of the most successful design solutions.

Passenger jets

The speed of a jet aircraft is its main advantage, and it is applicable not only to bombers and fighters. Already at the end of the forties, the Comet liner, built in Britain, entered international airlines. It was created specifically for the transportation of people, it was comfortable and fast, but, unfortunately, it was not very reliable: seven accidents happened within two years. But progress in the field of high-speed passenger transportation was already unstoppable. In the mid-fifties, the legendary Tu-104 appeared in the USSR, a conversion version of the Tu-16 bomber. Despite the numerous flight accidents that occurred with the new aircraft, jet aircraft increasingly took over the airlines. The appearance of a promising liner and ideas about how it should be gradually formed. propellers) were used by designers less and less.

Generations of fighters: first, second ...

Like almost any technique, jet interceptors are classified by generation. There are currently five of them in total, and they differ not only in the years of production of models, but also in design features. If the concept of the first prototypes was based on a well-established base of achievements in the field of classical aerodynamics (in other words, only the type of engine was their main difference), then the second generation had more significant features (a swept wing, a completely different shape of the fuselage, etc.) there was an opinion that air combat would never again be of a maneuverable nature, but time showed the fallacy of this opinion.

... and from the third to the fifth

The "dog dumps" of the sixties between Skyhawks, Phantoms and MiGs in the skies over Vietnam and the Middle East indicated the course further development, marking the arrival of the second generation of jet interceptors. Variable wing geometry, multiple sound capability and missile armament, combined with powerful avionics, have become hallmarks of the third generation. At present, the Air Force fleet of the most technologically advanced countries is based on fourth-generation aircraft, which have become a product of further development. Even more advanced models are already being put into service, combining high speed, super-maneuverability, low visibility and electronic warfare equipment. This is the fifth generation.

Dual circuit engines

Outwardly, even today, jet aircraft of the first samples do not look, for the most part, as anachronisms. The appearance of many of them is quite modern, and specifications(such as ceiling and speed) are not too different from modern ones, at least at first glance. However, with a closer look at the performance characteristics of these machines, it becomes clear that in recent decades a qualitative breakthrough has been made in two main directions. First, the concept of a variable thrust vector appeared, creating the possibility of a sharp and unexpected maneuver. Secondly, today they are able to stay in the air much longer and cover long distances. This factor is due to low fuel consumption, that is, efficiency. It is achieved by using, in technical language, a bypass scheme (low degree of bypass). It is known to those skilled in the art that said fuel combustion technology provides more complete combustion.

Other features of the modern jet aircraft

There are several. Modern civil jets are characterized by low engine noise, increased comfort and high flight stability. Usually they are wide-body (including multi-deck). Models of military aircraft are equipped with means (active and passive) to achieve low radar visibility and In a sense, the requirements for defense and commercial models today intersect. Aircraft of all types need efficiency, however, for different reasons: in one case, to increase profitability, in the other, to expand the combat radius. And today it is necessary to make as little noise as possible for both civilians and the military.