{"id":2233,"date":"2014-08-29T09:16:10","date_gmt":"2014-08-29T09:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.migflug.com\/jetflights\/?p=2233"},"modified":"2014-08-29T09:16:10","modified_gmt":"2014-08-29T09:16:10","slug":"russian-valkyrie-sukhoi-t-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/russian-valkyrie-sukhoi-t-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Sukhoi T-4 – The Russian Valkyrie"},"content":{"rendered":"
The American XB-70 Valkyrie<\/a> was a one of a kind aircraft when North American Aviation displayed it for the first time. On the other side of the pacific, the other super power was building an own supersonic strategic bomber. This Soviet aircraft – the Sukhoi T-4 – is what will be looked at in this article with some comparison to the XB-70 Valkyrie. They were both big supersonic bombers designed to fly at speeds as high as mach 3.0. But the Su T-4 unfortunately never got there – what happened on the way?<\/p>\n The Sukhoi T-4<\/p><\/div>\n As mentioned its name was Sukhoi T-4, however a lot of names for it has been used, such as Aircraft 100, Project 100 and Sotka. After Sukhoi had won the aircraft contest held by the Soviet leaders because of the high speed (3200 km\/h) of their design, they started building the first prototype. The engineering of the Sukhoi T-4 was extremely demanding, with an enormous amount of innovation and new-thinking compared to other military projects. It featured over 600 patents and new inventions to be built such as new technologies, machinery and materials to be able to build an aircraft that was to fly at sustained speed of mach 3+ – \u00a0the Speed the Valkyrie was capable of.<\/p>\n The materials of the T-100 were, just like on the XB-70, mainly stainless steel and titanium. It also featured a fly-by-wire control and a mechanical system if the FBW would fail. When landing, the nose could be lowered to provide better visibility to the pilot, and parachutes were used to slow the aircraft down once it had touched down. However when flying, the nose could not be lowered, and therefore the pilot’s view was in steep upward direction – into the sky. This was worsening and limiting \u00a0the visuality of the pilot and so a periscope was installed to make it possible for the pilot to look forward when flying, however this could only be used at speeds of up to 600 km\/h.<\/p>\n Similarities of the T-4 and the B-70<\/p><\/div>\n After the \u201c101\u201d (the first T-4) had been built, there were a lot of testing on it. The test pilot, son of the famous engineer Iluyshin who founded the Iluyshin aircraft design bureau, flew together with his navigator in the T-4 for a total of 10 hours and 20 minutes, dispersed over ten occasions. Even though the T-4 was built to fly at Mach 3, it only made it to 1.3 and 12,000m of altitude before the program was cancelled. Four\u00a0Kolesov RD36-41 engines got it to Mach 1.3 (compared to 6 on the XB-70). Each of them – with afterburners – produced 157 kN of thrust. And even though they were built to take the aircraft to mach 3.0 they – as mentioned previously – never got the chance to prove themself as the program was cancelled in 1975. As the T-4 was seen as the SSSR competitor to the XB-70 Valkyrie, here are the specifications for both of them (although the T-4 was designed to have these specifications, it has not actually been proven that it featured all of them):<\/p>\nThe complexity of the T-4<\/h1>\n
The specifications of the supersonic T-4<\/h1>\n