Soviet aircraft and rockets

How are modern aircraft, helicopters, multi-stage rockets constructed? What keeps them in the air? What kind of engines are used in flight vehicles, how are they built? What instruments are installed in aircraft to control apparatus, systems and flight? In this book the reader will find answers to all these questions along with many others.

This book is based on material from Soviet and foreign publications. It is meant for a variety of readers who have an interest in aviation and cosmonautics.

Young man! Ours is the age of intent study of the sky, as was said by the great scientist and thinker K.E. Tsiolkovskii. If you carry deep in your heart the ardent, cherished dreams of aviation, of cosmonautics, if the sky insistently calls you, then fling open the doors of the aviation school.

Our motherland needs thousands of young enthusiasts of the sky striving to master the very complex techniques of modern aviation which require not only determined will and physical hardiness but also profound, many-sided knowledge.

The sky always liked courageous young men.

Don't you want to follow in the footsteps of Chkalov, Gromov, Pokrishkin, Kozhedub?

Don't you want to become a member of the great, heroic family of flyers who leave the trails of their supersonic machines in the blue of the sky? Don't you want to bring about mankind's daring dream of conquering the cosmos and its interstellar spaces?

There are peaks in the deeds of human genius and one peak was the first triumphant space flight of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.

He was the first in the world to dare to enter the uncertainty of barren space and to accomplish the deed.

Deed... What a beautiful, exalted, meaningful word! The deeds of Soviet patriots are countless. They are like a mosaic of thousands of pieces forming a grand picture of heroism in war, which is the great symbol of the deeds of our people.

At the time of the Great Patriotic War our motherland crowned more than 1 1,000 of her best sons with the high title of Hero of the Soviet Union. In everyone of their deeds the gallant features and moral qualities of a citizen of the Soviet Union shine forth. The man of the deed lives in the heart of the motherland, his deed - the fire in the human heart - is immortal.

In the field of unflagging peaceful creativity that changes the face of a country our motherland has come to occupy the front rank in the world's achievements in science and led the world to a new social plane.

Our great power is in mighty flight. Its days are filled with the inspiration of a nation building communism.

The achievements of our country's millions are inseparably linked with the name of one whom the whole proletarian world carries in its heart, one with whose name is linked our stormy and momentous era, one who "with his intellect pierced through the limits of centuries." This great name is Lenin.

For many centuries past man, awed and puzzled, has fixed his gaze on the mysterious abyss of the sky. Many poetic legends survive in different countries concerning man's striving for flight. One of them is the legend of Icarus and Daedalus.

The ancient Greek artist and sculptor who was a prisoner on the island of Crete together with his son Icarus constructed wings for flight and fastened them with wax. They wanted to fly away from their prison.
Before the flight Daedalus warned his son not to fly very high because the hot sun might melt the wax on the wings.

But when he rose into the sky Icarus felt so delighted and happy that he rushed up to the chariot of the sun god Helios. The wax on the wings melted and Icarus fell to the rocky shore below.

In Tsarist Russia the genius M.V. Lomonosov was one of the first scientists to prove the possibility of flight by a heavier-than-air machine. In the summer of 1754 at a meeting of Russian scientists in the conference hall of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Petersburg, he demonstrated his heavier-than-air flying model.

A.F. Mozhaiskii, who for many years studied the flight of birds, is rightly considered to be the originator of the first aircraft in the world. Many a time he rose into the sky in a glider, driving it at high speed against the wind with the help of a troika.

Eighteen hundred and seventy-seven. On the premises of a manoge in Petersburg, before a large audience, A.F. Mozhaiskii tested his flying apparatus - a model airplane propelled by three propellers turned by clockwork. A committee one of whose members was the famous scientist D.I. Mendeleev thereupon approved a project to build a full-scale airplane. Having suffered great material difficulties the stubborn inventor got down to constructing his first aircraft. In the summer of 1882 the aircraft was constructed and tested. During the tests the aircraft climbed into the air. It was the first flight in the world of a heavier-than-air machine.

In 1884 Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovskii, a humble teacher from Kaluga, began to study the problem of "flight by means of wings." He was an original thinker and great scientist who devoted his long creative life to serving mankind. For the first time (in 1903) he scientifically substantiated the possibility not only of interplanetary but also of interstellar flights.

In donating his numerous books and manuscripts to the Communist Party, K.E. Tsiolkovskii left behind a huge scientific heritage. He was responsible for the project of an original streamlined monoplane that has a fair resemblance to modern machines. His free-wing monoplane was 30 years ahead of its time. In 1894 the project and all the calculations of the machine were published by K.E.

Tsiolkovskii in his book Airplane or Bird-simulated {aviation) Flying Machine. The Russian Academy of Sciences pronounced favorably on the large flying model of the aircraft but the Tsar's bureaucrats refused help to the inventor. His numerous original works in the field of cosmonautics and the rich mine of his ideas were later widely used to great effect by Soviet scientists.

At the time of the conception of the Russian aviation, Nikolai Yegorovich Zhukovskii, "the father of Russian aviation,'* as he was called by V.I. Lenin, began his career. This highly talented scientist wrote more than 200 scientific treatises. The activities of N.Y. Zhukovskii were unusually wide and diverse.

A new method of investigating technical problems combining empirical and mathematical solutions to practical problems devised by Zhukovskii became the order of the day in the science of Russian aviation. N.Y. Zhukovskii trained up a brilliant galaxy of talented scientists and technicians like S.A. Chaplygin, A.N. Tupolyev, A.A. Arkhangelskii, V.P. Vetchinkin and others.

A co-worker of N.Y. Zhukovskii's and an outstanding scientist. S.A. Chaplygin, earned a worldwide reputation in aviation circles with his work On Gas Jets, launching a new branch of science - gas dynamics.

One of the pioneers of aviation, A. A. Porokhovschikov built his first aircraft, the P-1, while still young. It developed a speed of 90 kmph and was approved by N.Y. Zhukovskii. The second aircraft he built, the P-2, had a speed of 110 kmph. It had a machine-gun mounting and a device for dropping bombs.

Porokhovschikov also built the world's first prototype of an attack aircraft the BI-KOK-2. He then constructed the fighter aircraft P-3, the two-seater trainers P-4 and P-6-bis, and a two-seater fighter aircraft, the P-5. The pioneer pilot and founder of aerobatics, Pyolr Nikolayevich Nesterov, added a glorious chapter to aviation in our motherland. On August 27, 191 3, this courageous pilot, for the first time in the world, performed the "death loop." As is well known, the modern dogfight is unthinkable without the knowledge of flight maneuvers. Nesterov performed his final, immortal deed in the First World War on August 26, 1914. During a dogfight he rammed an Austrian three seater Albatross. The enemy aircraft plunged to earth...but our courageous pilot was also killed in the action.

In the stifling, moldy atmosphere of Tsarist Russia many aviation enthusiasts continued to work. They constructed interesting aircraft for the time. In Petersburg the talented technician-engineer Y.M. Gyekkyel built nine aircraft of his own design; in Kiev, D.P. Grigorovich and other constructors achieved indubitable success in building airplanes; in Kharkov, S.V. Grizodubov built two aircraft of his own design; in the Caucasus, the famous pilot A.V. Shiukov built his aircraft and gliders.

A highly gifted inventor, A.G. Ufimtsev, built a radial engine and a “spheroplane” in Kyrsk, In 1913 a group of designers under the guidance of V.A. Slyesaryeb constructed a huge aircraft, the Svyatogor, with two engines of 450 hp, a wing area of 180 m2 and payload of 6.5 tons. V. A. Slyesaryev took part in building another big aircraft, the Russkii Vityaz, Carrying seven passengers, this aircraft developed a speed of 90 kmph. It set a world record for long-distance flight. At the end of 1913 after putting the finishing touches to the Russkii Vityaz the Russian engineers built another giant aircraft, the Ilya Muromets, with an all-up weight of 4,800 kg and during the winter of 1914 conducted flight tests. The aircraft mounted one cannon and eight machine-guns. It was accepted as a weapon by the Russian army.


LENIN AND SOVIET AVIATION

A leader and thinker of genius, V.I. Lenin while in exile took a deep interest in the exploits of flying machines. In a draft speech prepared for an address by Bolshevik -deputy G.I. Petrovskii in Dum in 1914 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin indicated that the rise of aviation heralded the "age of airplanes." In another work, “The Break-up of the II International” (1915), V.I. Lenin emphasized that aviation was necessary in order to ensure the flexibility and mobility of the army and that aviation could increase the strike power of the army tens of kilometers deep inside enemy territory.

The Great October Revolution came. From the very first steps in the building of Soviet power V.I. Lenin began to pay more attention to Soviet science, specifically to the development of aviation. On the second day of the October uprising he decided to use aviation to drop leaflets behind enemy lines as well as for communications. On October 28, 1917, he gave instructions for the use of the detachment of the air force stationed near Petrograd against General Krasnov's troops.

In November, 1917, the first revolutionary aviation control headquarters was organized in Smolny. It was the bureau of commissars of aviation and flying attached to the revolutionary-military committee headed by A.V. Mozhayev. It proved indefatigable in forming air force detachments and preparing pilots devoted to the revolution.

In December, 1917, on Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's instructions the All- Russian Board of RepubUcan Air Force Control was established. The Board's task was to form air force detachments, to direct them, to collect and preserve aviation hardware and to select personnel.

V.I. Lenin kept a watchful eye on the optimum use of aviation in the difficult struggle with numerous enemies. Archives show that a considerable number of resolutions connected with aviation questions were passed by the Council of Labor and Defense in the years 1918-19. Many of them are signed by V.L Lenin.

By the end of 1917 the first six air force detachments had been formed in the Petrograd military command. Such organizing also began in other towns.

Private aircraft plants and workshops were nationalized; measures were taken to prepare flight personnel from among communists in the Petrograd and the Moscow schools of aviation.

In May of 1918 the AU-Russian Board of Republican Air Force Control was abolished. All the air forces of the Republic were to come under the Main Board of the Workers' and Farmers' Red Air Force (Glavvozdukhflot).

In September an aviation and flight field control, "Aviadarm," headed by A.V. Sergyeyev, was set up.

In 1919, on the initiative of the Central Committee, the RKP (b) Heavy Aviation Commission was set up with N.Y. Zhukovskii as chairman.

Under his guidance a team of scientists, engineers and designers began to work on the project of the twin-engine triplane KOMTA.

V.I. Lenin followed every step in the development of aviation with great attention and encouraged the growth of aircraft production in all ways.

In spite of the difficult conditions in the country, the devastation and hunger, V.I. Lenin signed the protocol of the Conference of the Soviet of People's Commissars, releasing resources for the modernization of aircraft production plants. In 1921 gold worth three million roubles was allocated.

During the civil war the country's aviation plants repaired 1,574 aircraft and 1,740 engines and also manufactured 750 new aircraft and more than 200 engines.

In close collaboration with Main Air Force Control (Glavvozdukhflot) V.I. Lenin guided the use of aviation on all the war fronts. Specifically he proposed to use aircraft in the war against enemy cavalry. The Red pilots executed the most diverse battle tasks: they carried out air reconnaissance, located enemy reserves and conducted raids on the batteries. For courage and bravery in battle 219 pilots were honored with the high award of the Order of the Red Banner.

An important document, the decree "on air traffic in the airspace over territory of the RSFSR and its territorial waters" signed by V.I. Lenin on January 17, 1921, laid the foundations of Soviet air law, specified orders and conditions for the use of aviation and established clear-cut rules for flights of foreign aircraft over the territory of our motherland.

In May, 1921, the Moscow-Oryol-Kharkov air link was opened. It operated with the aircraft Ilya Muromyets, In 1921 the Soviet Government signed a treaty with Germany to set up the Soviet-German Society of Air Communications, "Dyeruluft." In May, 1922, the first international air route, Moscow-Koenigsberg (Kaliningrad), a distance of 1,300 km, was opened. V.I. Lenin gave instructions to allocate 10 aircraft to this airline. Five Soviet and five German pilots began to fly the Moscow-Orel-Kharkov route. Although there was neither weather bureau nor radio communications our pilots flew strictly according to schedule. Among them N.P. Shebanov, the first pilot in the country to clock 1 million kilometers, was distinguished for his skill.

Almost at the same time as the decree "on air traffic" was signed a decision by the Council of Labor and Defense to set up a committee to work out a program of aeronautics and aircraft construction was approved. These Lenin documents were of great significance for the foundation of Soviet aviation.

M.I. Kalinin was profoundly correct when he wrote, "All who are proud of our air fleet, all to whom it is dear, remember that our Ilyich watched over its cradle."


THE WINGS OF THE MOTHERLAND ARE STRENGTHENED

In the spring of 1923 the All-Russian Air Fleet Friends' Society (ODVF) was organized to help in the formation of an air fleet. The affiliated societies "Dobrolet," "Ukrvozdukhpum' " and "Zakavio" were formed to develop a civil air fleet.

In December, 1918, on the instructions of the central committee of the party and V.I. Lenin, the Central Aero-Hydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI) had been organized. It later became one of the world's outstanding scientific research centers in the field of aviation.

In 1922 a team of designers under the guidance of A.N. Tupolev built the ANT-1 aircraft. On the basis of this aircraft the first all-metal aircraft, the ANT-2 (made of duralamin smelted in the Kolchugin plant), was designed and constructed. The next all-metal aircraft, the ANT-3 (R-3), with a 400 hp engine, went into assembly line production and was adopted by the air force (VVS). In 1926 test pilot M.M. Gromov performed a magnificent high-speed flight over European capitals in an aircraft of this type named Proletarii,

In November, 1925, a heavy bomber, the ANT-4 (TB--1), one of the biggest aircraft in the world, was built. It set several world records for long distance flight with cargo. Building of the ANT-4 was a remarkable achievement on the part of Soviet aircraft construction. For many years it determined the direction of the development of heavy aircraft construction, not only in the Soviet Union but also abroad.

An all-metal nine-passenger aircraft, the PS-9 (ANT-9), was introduced in the airline around May, 1929. It successfully operated together with the eight-passenger aircraft K-5 de- signed by K. A. Kalinin.

The civil air fleet expanded at a rapid rate during the Soviet Five Year Plans. In 1928 its aircraft flew 36 times as many kilometers as in 1923. The network of air routes was enlarged. The indigenously built aircraft flying these air routes were in no way inferior in flight performance to their best foreign counterparts. For example, the production aircraft R-5 of N.N. Polikarpov's design (P-5 in the civil version) won first place in a competition at Tehran in 1930.


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Soviet aircraft and rockets