Back in the First World War, the British tried to create an extraordinary, composite, aircraft to fight German airships in the North Sea. The fighter did not have enough fuel for the round trip. And then the British designers decided to reinforce the fighter on top of a flying boat in order to deliver it to the battlefield in this way. The idea was correct, but it turned out to be very difficult to put it into practice.
At about the same time in Germany, they tried to install fighter planes on large airships, but even then it all ended in experiments. There were other unsuccessful attempts to create a composite aircraft.
The designer of the "aircraft-link" V. S. Vakhmistrov.
Did the military engineer Vakhmistrov know about these foreign experiments? Of course he did. Vladimir Sergeevich graduated from the Air Force Academy and worked at the Aviation Research and Testing Institute. He had the idea to combine the TB-1 twin-engine bomber, just created by the famous aircraft designer Tupolev, with two fighters.
They were supposed to stand on the wings of the bomber, attached with special locks. Delivered to the rear of the enemy, the fighters would unhook and become the defenders of the bomber, and return to their base on their own.
In June 1931, Vakhmistrov's bold plan was approved by the command, and work on the creation of a wing-plane, as the winged aircraft carrier began to be called, began to boil. "The youth design group," recalled Vakhmistrov's daughter, "worked without unbending backs, and in December 1931 the flying aircraft carrier took off from the ground." It happened at one of the airfields near Moscow. For the first flight, the most experienced pilots were selected: Adam Zalevsky - the crew commander, Andrey Sharapov - the second bomber pilot, Valery Chkalov and Alexander Anisimov - the pilots of the attached fighters.
And then came this significant day, December 31, 1931. “Not only the flight crew of the flight, the entire flight and engineering staff of the Institute did not hide their excitement,” recalled the famous test pilot Pyotr Stefanovsky. - It was decided whether Vakhmistrov's idea would get a ticket to heaven or would it be destined to become just one interesting experiment.
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They rose into the air normally. And then there was an emergency, an emergency. At an altitude of 1000 meters, the fighters unhooked from the carrier, but not entirely successfully. The right I-4 hit the wing of the TB-1 with a wheel, breaking through the skin. It was required that at a given altitude, the fighter pilot was the first to open the rear, tail, fighter lock, and only after that the front locks should be opened from the cockpit of the carrier aircraft. But Sharapov, the bomber pilot, was in a hurry and got ahead of Chkalov! Seconds remained before the disaster. But Chkalov was not taken aback, instantly freed his car, took off the wing and flew away. The other fighter unhooked normally.
From a memo to the People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs:
“On December 3, 1931, the first and quite successful flight test of the Airplane-Link, built for the 14th anniversary of the October Revolution, was carried out at the Monino airfield.
Until now, neither we, nor abroad had such planes. "Airplane-Link" is the implementation of an original and bold idea …"
The future Marshal M. N. Tukhachevsky assessed the event as follows: “This is a major invention. It is necessary to calculate for the TB-3 aircraft with a radius of 800-1200 kilometers in order to take into account the overall effectiveness of the "Link".
And the effect appeared, but not after a year or two, but ten years later, at the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War. But more on that later.
After the design was finalized in April 1932, the tests were repeated and after their completion they even wanted to build a small series of air "aircraft carriers".
In the Zveno-1a variant, a pair of I-5s was placed on the TB-1 wing instead of the I-4. The tests were carried out in September 1933. TB-1 was piloted by P. M. Stefanovsky, and fighters - K. K. Kokkinaki and Lagutin.
The capabilities of the "Airplane-Link" were confirmed when, during military tests, an air raid on Kiev was simulated. On the way to the city, escort fighters started from it, covering the aircraft up to the range, where training bombing was carried out. But things did not go beyond experiments. TB-1 is morally outdated, and experiments continued on the four-engine TB-3.
TB-3 with two I-16 fighters under the wings of "Zveno-SPB" on tests at the Air Force Research Institute, 1938
Airfield wits jokingly called the trials of the built aircraft "Vakhmistrov's circus". Indeed, the experiments resembled a risky circus ride. Once in flight, Vladimir Kokkinaki's fighter could not separate from the wing: it seized the tail lock. The bomber was operated by Stefanovsky. He made the decision to land with two fighters on the wings. Nobody has done this before. The risk was enormous. But they sat down safely.
ANT-6 (TB-Z) by the beginning of the war was hopelessly outdated, therefore it was forced to be used only at its very initial stage. Slow and non-maneuverable - it was easy prey for German fighters. "Mass grave" - this is how the pilots bitterly christened this once legendary plane.
Vakhmistrov stubbornly improved his aircraft carrier. The TB-1 was replaced by the powerful four-engine bomber TB-3, and instead of the I-4 fighters - the more advanced I-5 designs by N. N. Polikarpov. The bomber carried three such fighters - two were on the wings, another on the fuselage. “The huge thing turned out to be unprecedented, - said Pyotr Stefanovsky, - but it flew great.”
Bomber and five fighters.
And the indefatigable Vakhmistrov kept improving and improving his aircraft carrier. A "link" was created, with two fighters hanging under the wings. This made it easier to connect them to the carrier aircraft. Unfortunately, the test of this very aircraft carrier ended in disaster. It so happened that in the air one of the fighters could not be unhooked. The bomber was operated by Stefanovsky. We went for a landing, and already close to the ground, that ill-fated fighter took off and crashed onto the runway. In this case, his pilot was killed.
The TB-3RN studied the effect of dropping the "object 301" on the piloting of the vehicle. The aircraft carried one size-weight model and one ballast weight under another wing. The model was fired with a powder charge 3-5 m ahead, after which it landed by parachute. It turned out that the rocket did not create significant difficulties for the pilot. But the object 301 was not brought to the stage of real launches from the aircraft.
There was a project of a kind of "Russian" Mistel "- on the" back "of the TB-3 was the KR-6 - a control plane. The KR-6 is not a small vehicle, weighing about six tons and with a crew of three. But the radio control equipment was then so bulky that a smaller plane simply could not take it. The TB-3 itself was an unmanned "flying bomb" loaded with 3.5 tons of explosives or toxic substances. He simply saved the KR-6 fuel, which still had a way back. But more careful calculations showed that the placement "on top" of gain in range practically does not give, the range still turned out to be about 1200 km. So then they began to work out the option with a separate flight: in front - TB-3, and behind it - the control plane.
Draft versions of aircraft carriers.
In 1935, Vakhmistrov carried out a new development, attaching five fighters to the TB-3: two I-5s, two I-16s and one I-Z, and the I-Z was connecting with the carrier aircraft in the air! Vakhmistrov called this complex structure "Aviamatka" and proposed in the future to hang up to eight I-16s under the TB-3. At the same time, two fighters were supposed to be installed from above, on the wings of the Aviamatka, six I-16s were to be hooked up in shifts of three planes from below and fed with fuel from the TB-3. All this "flying whatnot" was intended for air defense, the duration of the air patrol was supposed to be 6.5 hours. However, in life, there were never more than two suspended I-16s under the TB-3, and as for picking up fighters in the air, the work did not progress beyond several successful experiments.
For this purpose, a special drop-down farm was equipped under the right wing of the TB-3. The I-16 had a corresponding hitch, which externally resembles a grip with a lock. The pickup took place at a speed of 155-160 km / h, after which the bomber crew pulled the fighter close to the special stops on the lower surface of the wings. In the summer of 1938, several successful air pickups were made. The best test pilots of the Air Force Research Institute, Stepan Suprun and Pyotr Stefanovsky, flew. It was recognized that the system is quite viable and worthy of further development. There were also opponents, whose opinion obviously influenced the fact that funding for this amazing work was not continued.
In 1938, Vakhmistrov reoriented the tasks for suspended fighters - now he proposed using them as dive bombers. Each I-16 could carry two FAB-250 bombs, and the range of the fighters increased by 80%, since in flight the fighters were fed with fuel from the carrier aircraft. For this purpose, the extreme wing tanks TB-3 with a capacity of 600 liters were filled with B-3 gasoline (the M-34 engines of the TB-3 bomber ran on B-2 aviation gasoline). The maximum range of the entire system could be up to 2500 km.
When approaching the target, the TB-3 commander gave a signal to disengage, for which a special light board was lit under the carrier's wing, and on fighters the reset signal was duplicated by a siren. The pilots of the I-16 released the tail locks of their vehicles, then gave the control stick to themselves, the angle of attack increased, and when the aircraft turned at an angle of 3 ° 30 ′, the wing locks were automatically opened. After detachment, the dive bombers rushed to the target. With two two hundred and five-ten-kilogram bombs, Type 5 cars had a maximum speed of 410 km / h, at an altitude of 2500 meters, the service ceiling was 6800 meters. The dive was carried out at a speed of 650 km / h. After dropping bombs, the I-16 remained a full-fledged fighter capable of conducting an air battle.
I-16 fighter with two FAB-250 bombs.
"Torpedo plan" with a container for small bombs under the wing of TB-3.
TB-3 was also a carrier of non-motorized "plan-torpedoes", also called "remotely controlled gliders". They were created in the design bureau of plant No. 23 under the leadership of A. F. Shorin. By design, the "plan torpedo" PSN-1 was a radio-controlled gliding bomb. It was dropped from a bomber at a distance of up to 15 km from the target. They were supposed to be cities, factories, ports and naval bases, as well as ship connections. The glider carried a ton of explosives or poisonous substances. "Plan torpedo" was built at first in a manned version, without remote control. She was tested by towing behind the P-6 and P-5. Then, in July-August 1936, the apparatus was dropped from TB-3 2nd TBB. By the end of 1937, 31 PSN-1 launches had been completed, including two with radio control. At the beginning of 1938, this work was suspended, but they began to design a more advanced model - PSN-2. Its carrier, according to the original plan, was also supposed to be TB-3, but later it was considered that the faster DB-3 was more profitable.
The indisputable advantage of the conceived method was the most effective use of obsolete TB-3 bombers, of which several hundred were in service with the Air Force. In the summer of 1938, the system, which received the designation "Zveno-SPB", successfully passed tests and was put into service.
Combat use
Vakhmistrov's aircraft carriers were very useful during the Great Patriotic War. In 1941, they raided Bucharest, the capital of Romania. Participated in the battle on the Dnieper. But the bombing of the Chernovodsk bridge across the Danube became especially famous.
This railway bridge, four kilometers long, was of great importance to the Nazis, since three pipelines passed through it for pumping gasoline, kerosene and oil. All attempts to disable it with conventional bombers ended in vain. The Germans fiercely defended the important bridge.
Then they decided to use "Link". TB-3, passing over the sea, imperceptibly delivered a pair of I-16s close to the target. The "donkeys" unhooked and calmly went out onto the bridge. The anti-aircraft gunners knew that no Soviet fighter would have enough fuel to reach their object, so they did not react to the appearance of single-engine aircraft. As at a training ground, the pilots attacked the bridge and completed the task - and they had enough fuel for the return trip. Alas, the use of "Link" was, though bright, but still an episode. Pilots who could take off from an "aircraft carrier" were used as conventional fighters, and soon most of them were killed. In addition, the success of the attacks on the bridge was based precisely on surprise, so that the massive use of "Links" would hardly be effective.
Many years have passed since then. But the idea of engineer Vakhmistrov has not been forgotten. United aircraft still exist today. Reusable space ships are transported on the backs of mighty transport planes. There are projects for passenger compound aircraft. Didn't the Energia booster rocket and the Buran spacecraft attached to it resemble the “link” created once by Vladimir Vakhmistrov?
And here is another use case considered here: