The Wide World of Truly Horrible Soviet Aircraft

From "Concordskis" to "Man-Eaters," the worker's paradise put out some seriously terrible aircraft.

The Soviet Union was a juggernaut of a state given to grandiose statements of power, especially the military and industrial kind. It threw immense amounts of scientific and financial resources at projects aimed to prove the superiority of the socialist system over capitalism. Often, it failed. But state control over information and the press meant that the extent of many of its failures were hidden until after the collapse of the USSR in 1991. 

The excellent aviation blogHush-Kit has put together a list of the worst military and civilian aircraft produced by the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1991. Many of the aircraft are designs that were looked upon with fear and trepidation when first observed in the West were actually terrible airplanes. 

Take the Tupolev Tu-144, for example. The Soviet Union's answer to the Anglo-French Concorde supersonic transport, the Tu-144 actually flew two months before the Concorde did. As Hush-Kit notes, "in the rush to achieve this symbolic victory, Tupolev had made a dog. The first flight was misleading–the production machine was virtually a complete redesign, most notably in the critical relationship between the wing and the engine."

Another example, the Tu-22 "Blinder" medium bomber, was seen as a hotrod of a nuclear bomber that could penetrate enemy airspace at supersonic speeds. And yet, it was actually a dangerous airplane that had a string of lethal accidents. The Tu-22 needed constant maintenance, couldn't fly (or land) at less than 180 miles an hour, and had terrible visibility. For those reasons, the Tu-22 was known as "Blind John" (the Tu-22's NATO code name, "Blinder", may be a nod to this) and the "Man-Eater."

And that's just a taste of the whole horrible menagerie which also includes the Lavochkin LaGG-3—which couldn't pull out of a dive—and of course, the monstrous Kalinin K-7. Read about them all at Hush-Kit.

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