"Tu-144" was called the main "miracle of the Soviet aircraft industry" and "Russian Concorde". It was intended to become the main world flagship of passenger aviation, but a series of accidents nullified all hopes.
Nikita Khrushchev's project
In the early 1960s, Great Britain and France decided to jointly create a supersonic passenger aircraft, which was given the name "Concorde". The liner was supposed to develop a flight speed of 2200-2300 km / h. The projectors expected that the flight of the Concorde from Europe to America should have taken three hours instead of the usual seven or eight. The British-French project was reported to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev, and he emotionally set the task: “We must make our Soviet ultrasound, while it must fly faster than the Concorde.
All work was entrusted to Andrey Nikolaevich Tupolev. The aircraft was given the Tu-144 brand, it was supposed to be built at the Voronezh aircraft plant, and its appearance before the Concorde became the most important political task of the USSR.
The first supersonic
Soviet aircraft designers coped with the task: "Tu-144" became the world's first supersonic aircraft, which was used to transport passengers. This Soviet liner made its first test flight on December 31, 1968, two months earlier than the Concorde, its famous competitor. On June 5, 1969, the Tu-144 for the first time in the history of aviation broke the sound barrier. The aircraft could carry up to 15 tons of cargo or from 120 to 150 passengers over a distance of 3500 km with a maximum speed of 2500 km / h.
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Plagiarism charge
"Concorde" and "Tu-144" were almost like two drops of water. The creators of "Concorde" accused the Tupolev Design Bureau of stealing many technical solutions. However, it was not possible to prove this. I must say that despite the external similarity, the planes were still quite different. Thus, the Tu-144 was much larger in size than its western twin: the Soviet liner could take on board up to 150 passengers, and the Concorde - no more than 128. Moreover, despite its size, the Tu-144 was required for take-off, a much smaller runway than the smaller Concorde.
First disaster
June 3, 1973 at the prestigious Le Bourget air show in the presence of 300 thousand spectators. "Tu-144" made a demonstration flight. According to one of the versions of the incident, at this time a French reconnaissance aircraft "Mirage-3" flew up to him at the minimum distance, which was filming the "Russian air chud". To avoid a collision, the Soviet crew made a too risky maneuver, the plane went into a dive and after a few moments collapsed in the air in front of the audience. Fragments of the plane fell on residential areas. Five houses were destroyed and another 20 damaged. The crash killed all six people on board the Tu-144, as well as eight people on the ground, including three children. Another 25 people on the ground were injured.
The beginning of regular air transportationDespite the incident at Le Bourget, on November 1, 1977, the Tu-144 made its first regular flight, Moscow - Alma-Ata. A ticket for this route cost 68 rubles (almost half of the average salary in the USSR). For comparison, the cost of a ticket for the Moscow-Alma-Ata flight on another passenger plane was 48 rubles.
Second crash On May 23, 1978, the modernized Tu-144 was making a test flight. On board, due to a malfunction of the fuel system, a fire broke out, and the crew decided to make an emergency landing - in an open field, not far from Egoryevsk near Moscow. Six of the eight crew members escaped. After a hard landing, the airliner almost completely burned down. On June 1, 1978, Aeroflot stopped passenger air transportation of Tu-144.
