Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
Well… if an F-18 is a Hornet, then this has to be a Wasp.
Duh, I think I saw a movie with Clint Eastwood flying it.
B2
Its Russian and its a Tuploev. TU-144?
That is the Sukhoi S-100, a supersonic medium bomber intended to fire cruise missiles at CVBGs. Never made it to production, though; they built the Backfire instead.
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/russia/bomber/s-100.html
That was quick work, Theodore. Quick work indeed. Hat’s off to you – although my sources – whom I won’t vouch for, but who are smarter on these things than your humble scribe – aver that it is in fact a “T-4,” often incorrectly described as an Su-100.
Still, I give you full credit
OK. Does this mean I don’t have to guess?
Anybody who can make sense of the Soviet designation system is a smarter man than I!
So how’s about a sea story involving Mr. Bear or maybe a real live bomber? I don’t think we’ve ever heard you speak of jousting with the Sovs…?
Anybody who can make sense of the Soviet designation system is a smarter man than I!
So how’s about a sea story involving Mr. Bear or maybe a real live bomber? I don’t think we’ve ever heard you speak of jousting with the Sovs…ˇ
The T-4 designation was internal to the Sukhoi bureau, their prototypes usually didn’t get an “Su-xx” tag until they went into production. IIRC, the other design bureaux followed the same procedure.
These days, though, now that they have to try to compete for market dollars, they’ve been using Su- designators.
My highschool chemistry/physics classes got to visit the test flight center at Edwards AFB (back around 1967), and among the nifty things we got to walk around was the XB-70A1 (the slightly faster A2 having crashed a year earlier). Absolutely fantastic!
The Sukhoi T-4 looks like the XB-70′s smaller cousin, canards, intake ramps and all.
That trip to Edwards impressed the lot of us; we had been a bit shaken shortly after entering the main gate, as we passed what turned out to be all that was left of a recently crashed F-111. The only recognizable part of the burned wreckage being the vertical stab and rudder.
Looks like the picture was in a Russian “boneyard”. I’ll bet that would be a cool place to visit……..
A documentary I saw stated the aircraft was made almost completely out of Titanium, something like 70-80% of the airframe which was unusual for the Soviets.
At first glance, before enlarging the picture it looked like the XB-70 Valkarie prototype. But I guess they are related after all.
http://aviationforum.org/forums/showthread.php?s=ec7c7b073eaf4ab9966514fed8081279&postid=57423
Any ideas on why the vertical cockpit face? I can see how it might help visibility, but I would think the aerodynamics would be atrocious!
While T-4 would probably be better than Tu-22M, and T-4M would be better than Tu-160, the loss of this contract was good for Sukhoi’s KB and Soviet aviation in general. They’ve got much experience that later was used in such diverse projects as Su-24, Su-25 and their masterpiece Su-27. Had they won T-4/T-4M bids, they would have been bogged in these.
nallen, I wondered the exact same thing. Reading the fas.org page on it, though, I stumbled across this:
“It was fitted with a ‘droop snoot’ that offered good visibility in the landing configuration, but when the nose of the aircraft was up and locked, the pilots had no forward visibility and all flying was on instruments.”
So it looks like the nose dropped for taxi/takepff/landing, and then once airborne, the entire nose section was raised to be flush with the curved upper section of the windshield.
Fark – late to this one.
Well, having super-scrolled past all the answers, I’ll put up mine.
T-4. http://www.aeronautics.ru/sukhoi/t412.jpg
Now to go see if I’m right and how many other people’s footprints I trod in.
Brad, that I know of, the Soviets also had the only production combat submarine whose hull was made of titanium in the Alpha class attack submarine.
That is at the Monino Aviation Museum outside Moscow that is prominently featured in the “Wings of the Red Star” documentaries narrated by Peter Ustinov.
Hope to go there next spring. It is pretty wild that US airliners now fly the same track daily that the U-2s took 45 years ago across Mother Russia…
http://www.moninoaviation.com/
its a XB-70 U.s. Made supuersonic high alltitude bomber pretty darn cool jet But the soviet Anti aircraft missle technology made it a easy target So they cancelled the project. Like a B-52 is harder to bring down than that