{"id":1200531,"date":"2026-05-27T18:34:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T16:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/?p=1200531"},"modified":"2026-05-28T20:01:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T18:01:07","slug":"belyayev-db-lk-soviet-twin-fuselage-bomber-chicken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/belyayev-db-lk-soviet-twin-fuselage-bomber-chicken\/","title":{"rendered":"The Soviet Bomber Test Pilots Called &#8220;The Chicken&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\n\n<p>If you had asked a Soviet test pilot in 1940 to name the strangest aeroplane he had ever been ordered to fly, there is an excellent chance the answer would have come back as four syllables: \u0414\u044d-\u0411\u044d \u042d\u043b-\u041a\u0430. The Belyayev DB-LK. Two fuselages, no central cockpit, forward-swept outer wings, glazed bombardier stations grafted to the tail ends of each engine nacelle. It looked less like an aeroplane than like something a child had built from the spare parts of three other models.<\/p>\n\n<p>The test pilots had a less polite name for it. They called it \u041a\u0443\u0440\u0438\u0446\u0430. The Chicken. They did not mean it kindly.<\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"background:#f5f7fa;padding:18px 22px;margin:24px 0;border-radius:8px;border:1px solid #e0e6ed\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:700;color:#333;font-size:15px;letter-spacing:0.5px;text-transform:uppercase\">Quick Facts<\/p><table style=\"width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;font-size:15px;margin:0\"><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;font-weight:600;color:#5C91FF;white-space:nowrap\">Type<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0\">Twin-fuselage long-range bomber prototype<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;font-weight:600;color:#5C91FF;white-space:nowrap\">Designer<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0\">Viktor Nikolayevich Belyayev (TsKB)<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;font-weight:600;color:#5C91FF;white-space:nowrap\">First flight<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0\">Early 1940<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;font-weight:600;color:#5C91FF;white-space:nowrap\">Wingspan<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0\">21.6 m (70 ft 10 in)<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;font-weight:600;color:#5C91FF;white-space:nowrap\">Engines<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0\">Two M-87B 14-cylinder radials, 950 hp each<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;font-weight:600;color:#5C91FF;white-space:nowrap\">Max speed (achieved)<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0\">488 km\/h (303 mph) \u2014 well below the 547 km\/h projected<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;font-weight:600;color:#5C91FF;white-space:nowrap\">Nickname<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0\">\u041a\u0443\u0440\u0438\u0446\u0430 (&#8220;Kuritsa&#8221; \u2014 &#8220;the Chicken&#8221;)<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;font-weight:600;color:#5C91FF;white-space:nowrap\">Outcome<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0\">One prototype built. No production. Destroyed during WWII.<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/div>\n\n\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">A glider with ideas<\/h2>\n\n<p>Viktor Belyayev was not a fringe figure in Soviet aviation. He had worked under Andrei Tupolev throughout the 1930s on a series of large heavy bombers and had a deep engineering pedigree. What he also had was an obsession with the aerodynamic possibilities of the flying wing. His &#8220;batwing&#8221; glider, the BP-2, had been a successful test article in the mid-1930s, and Belyayev believed its short-fuselage, long-chord wing geometry could be scaled up to a combat bomber.<\/p>\n\n<p>The DB-LK \u2014 \u0414\u0430\u043b\u044c\u043d\u0438\u0439 \u0411\u043e\u043c\u0431\u0430\u0440\u0434\u0438\u0440\u043e\u0432\u0449\u0438\u043a-\u041b\u0435\u0442\u0430\u044e\u0449\u0435\u0435 \u041a\u0440\u044b\u043b\u043e, &#8220;Long-Range Bomber \u2014 Flying Wing&#8221; \u2014 was the result. The design did away with the conventional fuselage entirely. The two M-87B engines drove two enormous nacelles that extended back behind the wing and ended in glazed tail cones. Each tail cone housed a navigator\/bombardier in the front and a tail gunner in the rear. The two pilots sat in tiny side-by-side cockpits embedded in the leading edge of the wing root, one in each nacelle, with the bomb load slung between them inside the wing centre section.<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px\"><img data-opt-id=566360649  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/05\/belyayev-db-lk-three-view-1940.jpg\" alt=\"Belyayev DB-LK three-view diagram\" style=\"max-width:100%;height:auto;border-radius:6px\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">The DB-LK three-view drawing from a 1940 Soviet engineering journal \u2014 every standard convention of bomber design is ignored. The pilots sit in the wing roots; the bombardiers sit in the engine nacelles. <em>Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">&#8220;The chicken&#8221;<\/h2>\n\n<p>The first test pilot assigned to the DB-LK refused to fly it. He cited the unconventional layout, the lack of any flight envelope data for the configuration, and the strong likelihood that \u2014 if anything went wrong \u2014 neither pilot would be able to bail out cleanly through the obstructed wing-root canopies. The aircraft sat on the ramp for weeks while LII test pilot M.A. Nyukhtikov was talked into taking it up.<\/p>\n\n<p>When the DB-LK finally flew, the performance was genuinely impressive on paper. The forward-swept outer wings \u2014 swept just 5 degrees 42 minutes, but swept forward, anticipating the much more famous experiments of the German Junkers Ju-287 and the American Grumman X-29 \u2014 produced excellent low-speed handling. The crew positions had remarkable downward and rearward visibility from the glazed nacelle tails. The defensive armament had clear fields of fire that no conventional bomber could match.<\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #1565c0;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;border-radius:0 8px 8px 0;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;It flew. It flew acceptably in most regimes. But it never felt like an aeroplane. It felt like a debate between two aeroplanes that had been settled with welding equipment. We delivered it to the customer because they had asked for it. We did not recommend that it be built in numbers.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>M.A. Nyukhtikov<\/strong> &mdash; LII test pilot, first to fly the Belyayev DB-LK, 1940<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">What went wrong<\/h2>\n\n<p>The list of problems was not catastrophic individually \u2014 it was simply long. The take-off run was excessive because of high sensitivity to centre-of-gravity variations. The pilot cockpits had terrible visibility forward because they were tucked behind the propeller arcs and the wing leading edge. The navigators in the glazed tail nacelles complained that engine exhaust gases collected inside their compartments, requiring permanent oxygen mask use even at low altitude. The crew could not see each other; the intercom was the only contact between cockpit and tail.<\/p>\n\n<p>Most importantly, the design promised 547 km\/h but delivered only 488. That was no faster than the Tupolev SB it was meant to replace, and considerably slower than the next-generation Pe-2 dive bomber already entering service. The Soviet Air Force, the VVS, looked at the DB-LK, looked at its problems, looked at the production resources it would require, and said no.<\/p>\n\n<p>A redesign as a dive bomber was discussed but abandoned. The single prototype was last seen on the ramp at Zhukovsky in 1941. It is widely believed to have been destroyed during the German advance on Moscow that autumn, though no official record of its disposal survives.<\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"margin:24px 0\"><div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;border-radius:8px\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/NlZGK56F6jo\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div><p style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">The Belyayev DB-LK story \u2014 a deep dive into one of the strangest Soviet bombers ever built, with rare period photographs and engineering diagrams.<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n<p><em>Sources: Wikipedia; Plane-Encyclopedia; HandWiki; Military Matters \/ Forgotten Aircraft; Soviet engineering journals (1940 archives).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px;border-radius:0 8px 8px 0\">\n<p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Related Posts<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/the-soviet-jet-train-when-engineers-bolted-a-yak-40-engine-to-a-railcar\/\">The Soviet Jet Train: When Engineers Bolted a Yak-40 Engine to a Railcar<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/pzl-m-15-belphegor-jet-biplane-crop-duster-soviet-bloc\/\">The PZL M-15 Belphegor: A Jet-Powered Biplane Named After a Demon<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two fuselages, forward-swept outer wings, pilots tucked in the wing roots. The Belyayev DB-LK was so weird that Soviet test pilots refused to fly it. They called it &#8220;the Chicken.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":1200451,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[666,664],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1200531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history-and-legends","category-military-aviation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Belyayev DB-LK: Soviet &quot;Chicken&quot; Twin-Fuselage Bomber<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A 1939 Soviet bomber with twin fuselages, forward-swept wings, and pilots in the wing roots. Soviet test pilots refused to fly it. 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