Tu-128 | Defender of the infinite sky

On July 9, 1961, the Moscow sky was noisy in the middle of the air parade in the ranks with dozens of eminent aircraft, unknown machines that shone like small bombers or large fighters, and the spectators tried for a long time to find out the details about the present. hero hello Aviator sky here and today we have the Tupolev Interceptor we meet the two 128. the foreign fifties were an extremely dangerous time for the USSR nuclear parity had not yet been formed missiles capable of attacking the other side of the planet were barely being born and the main carriers of nuclear weapons were strategic bombers, of which there were a large number mainly in the United States.

The question of how to defend against them was extremely relevant for the Soviet Union. The first answer to this question was a breakthrough in the creation of air defense missile systems. capable of attacking almost any aircraft, but the umbrella they created was small and covered only certain areas, it could turn out that while the bombers could not attack those areas in the rest of the country, they would do what they wanted, it was simply impossible to protect. the entire territory of the USSR in this way a specialist in distant and difficult to access regions this umbrella had to be expanded by interceptor fighters the new Yaks and Sukhois migs could protect large areas but as practice showed that even this was not enough the range of flight was short and the insufficient development of on-board equipment made them dependent on ground detection and guidance systems, which limited autonomy, something else was needed, larger, long-range and autonomous.

The first to create such an Interceptor was the luxurious Design Bureau, Law 250 was not a bad option, promising to solve the range problem, promising, unfortunately, the aircraft turned out to be very problematic and required significant improvements, which It prolonged its birth for many years. Seeing all this, the military decided to turn to a team that, although not dedicated to combat aircraft. It was the best in long-range vehicles. The Tupolev design bureau at that time. The Tupoleaf team was busy creating a new supersonic bomber that was supposed to replace the 216. The 98 aircraft was a breakthrough for its time and this was also a problem that Advanced Solutions came with.

There were many problems and when work on the aircraft was completed, the military ordered its brother, the 222, the 98 project was already forgotten, but with the advent of the idea of ​​​​a Heavy Interceptor, its development turned out to be very useful, the project 128. within the walls of the design bureau and in 1958 it was officially opened as part of the creation of a new air defense complex, at the same time the bill of law 250 was closed the demands of the military were serious Projects that were initially called the 228 involved the creation of a long-range supersonic interceptor, an updated engine, new onboard equipment and missiles, the plane had to be able to fly up to three and a half hours with subsonic acceleration to Mach 1.7 in supersonic and also attack targets at higher altitudes. at 21 kilometers all this beauty was expected in 1960.

The designer's idea was to take an existing 98 aircraft and modify it into an Interceptor range and the autonomy was in fact already there, it was only necessary to play with the design and filling in the meantime the mass and slowness of the bomber was not initially a problem yes, you cannot turn it into a fighter with it, it will not dominate air combat, especially dogfights, but this was not necessary, its targets were heavy strategic bombers and aircraft reconnaissance, the task was high-speed interception. The aircraft was more of a launch platform and guidance complex, while the missiles had to be in contact with the enemy.

Despite its apparent simplicity, there was a lot of work, many organizations and research centers worked on every aspect. The first 228 was assembled. In the summer of 1960, after a series of ground tests, on March 18, 1961, the prototype made its first flight. Interestingly, assembly of the first production batch of four machines was already underway before full testing began. It's risky, but it can take a long time. The public demonstration was not spared either and the plane appeared in the parade in Tucson in Moscow in the summer of 1961. People were impressed, newspapers published articles and NATO gave the plane the name Fiddler, few people knew that at that time At the time there were two of these new interceptors, but this deficit did not last long as in 1962 the first series was ready and the aviators had five aircraft.

Soon the 228th began to flex its muscles by testing firing its latest missiles against remotely controlled Target aircraft in At this stage, not only the weapons were actively tested, but also the guidance and communication systems with the ground Air Defense Forces. The aircraft showed itself perfectly both as a whole and autonomously. In 1963, the military finally gave official indexes to all elements of the complex and the aircraft was named 2-128. As far as everyone knows now in 1965 the Interceptor was put into service the appearance of the two 128s was greatly influenced by the Tuple designs and the 98 project.

It looks like a bomber next to the bombers it looks modest although for an Interceptor it is of course , a large type 17 and a half meters wingspan 30 meters long 7.1 meters high maximum takeoff weight of 43.7 tons The large swept wing has developed high lift devices, ailerons, flaps and spoilers, which allowed the plane to maintain a small minimum speed and simplify Well, takeoffs and landings are not so much to simplify them but to make them not so difficult. To reduce travel after landing. The plane was equipped with a brake parachute hidden in the tail. From below the landing gear is tricycle and quite powerful like that of a bomber. the front leg has two wheels the main gear has four wheel bogeys that run towards the wing fairings near the center section the air intakes are raised semicircular have dynamic airflow control cones and long channels that extend to the engines in the tail Meanwhile, the fuselage takes into account the area rule, so the plane has a narrow waste near the center section.

The burning heart of the 2128 is a pair of al-7f2 turbojet engines. A new enhanced version of the popular al7 engine. Each engine produces a thrust of 72 kilonewtons and no afterburner and a little more than 99 kilonewtons in afterburner, curiously the thrust of a couple of these was enough to under certain conditions keep the plane at supersonic speed without afterburner and the afterburner allowed it to accelerate at a maximum of 1042 knots and up to 899 knots with Mach 1.5 missiles but the main advantage was the range and duration of flight, the 2128 when on patrol could fly for up to three hours and had a range of less than 1300 miles.

I note right away that this is not a The combat radius, however, was much larger than that of other relatives of the Interceptor. The practical ceiling reached 15.6 kilometers. The two 128 crew members are made up of two people, a pilot and a navigator, located in cabins one behind the other with individual lights. The family links with the Tupoleaf bombers are evidently here the glazing is very similar to that of the 222 and the filling of the cockpits was done in the same style. The most striking example of this was whole meat yolks and not the sticks familiar to fighters and interceptors, the equipment on board at the time of the creation of the 2128 was the most advanced and the dimensions of the aircraft gave engineers room to the imagination. received the commercial RPS radar capable of detecting targets at a distance of 50 kilometers and detecting them at 40 kilometers.

The weapons of the 2128 are not rich. in variety but for its time it was very serious the main caliber of the Interceptor was the R4 air-to-air missile named NATO aa5 Ash in the r4t versions with infrared guidance and the r4r with semi-active radar guidance the missiles are quite large each of the which weighs half a ton, carries a 53-kilogram warhead and is capable of attacking targets at a distance of up to 16 kilometers using infrared and up to 25 kilometers using radar, the combination of capabilities of the onboard systems and missiles greatly expanded the capabilities of the 2 -128 with them could attack even supersonic targets not only in pursuit but also in a frontal course at altitudes of up to 21 kilometers several kilometers above the roof of the aircraft with standard equipment the Interceptor received four missiles on pylons under the wing two r4t and 2 R4 are the plans were epic more than 20 regiments were supposed to be deployed along the Soviet border a whole system with hundreds of aircraft but the 2128 was a large, complex and expensive aircraft and the ambitions had to be reduced slightly Despite the rapid launch of the first series, full deliveries were not deployed until 1966.

Production continued until 1971, a total of 198 aircraft were assembled, most of which joined six aviation regiments and began to dominate the last Interceptor in the Air Defense Forces in 1964. By the way, the training was quite difficult, it was not easy to change from familiar fighters to Hefty and very specific machines, after much debate it was decided to create a special training aircraft, this is how it appeared The 2-128 UT with an additional cockpit in the nose, for which it received the nickname Pelican, the 2128 was a demanding machine, but once mastered, pilots got a tool without equal. The concept of using interceptors in conjunction with ground, ground or air forces has been preserved.

Location-based systems detect a target and direct interceptors which then attack at the same time. The 2128 was much more autonomous than its counterparts. It could conduct long patrols and work independently in regions where the air defense infrastructure was underdeveloped, which solved one of the main problems. problems covering the north the largest border almost empty and difficult to defend where the uninvited guests would probably have come from the world was lucky the main characters of the Third World War did not appear but games with a probable opponent in the race of the 2 - 128 bombers that did not fly were not rare, but there were many reconnaissance aircraft, from simpler devices to very interesting machines, mainly the SR-71, but there were no clashes, the Blackbirds did not cross the border and the Fiddlers flew in parallel, both maintaining an honorable distance. actually they just had to shoot at American balloons with reconnaissance equipment, but it was a boring battle for the United States, these devices were generally expandable and for the air defense of the USSR, well, a long-range heavy supersonic interceptor was not It was made for balloons in the late 1960s the bombing strategy had changed the concept of defense at low altitude penetration appeared where air defenses were less effective the tupolevs had to respond to this challenge so the 2128m appeared with new equipment to Onboard radar and missiles capable of attacking targets at altitudes below one kilometer, moreover, were not new serial machines, but a modification that was introduced into already produced aircraft.

By the way, there were many ideas for further development of the Interceptor and it involved a rather radical change: the replacement of the engines of the on-board systems. and weapons to the creation of multifunctional machines and bombers, the most brilliant of the project were the 2138 with a significant increase in the performance of the Interceptor and the 2-148, which was in general a new aircraft with different fuselage engines and a variable sweep . wing but these projects, like many others, were not implemented, were difficult and expensive, the 2138 potentially did not provide such amazing opportunities compared to the 128 and the 2148, despite its freshness, was already rather a multifunctional machine that turned out not be necessary for either of them. air defense needed a pure Interceptor and the Air Force already had multi-role aircraft, interestingly the appearance of the mig-25 did not at all lead to the end of the 2128 career despite the fact that the Mig was, of course, a revolutionary machine and received for the first time a completely wild performance in some respects was inferior to tupolev which continued to serve successfully alongside its formidable brother, but the appearance of the mig-31 put an end to this service the newest aircraft with all its similarities The mig- 25 was much more advanced and began to quickly replace its ancestors, however this replacement was not instantaneous and the 2128 continued to fly until the early 1990s, after the end of operations most of the fleet was waiting the sad fate of recycling some of the planes were stored and others went to museums the first prototype was lucky not only did it have a rather stormy and dangerous career which it managed to survive but after completing its service it went to the Central Museum of the Air Force Now it's in monina about this I think the story can be concluded the veteran Interceptor appeared where it was needed and whenwas needed completed this task and retired leaving many memories for everyone who worked with this for several decades like and subscribe to the channel and if you want to see the videos early see exclusive behind the scenes content or just support the channel consider joining our patreon community fast flights and soft landings for you and may you encounter missiles only at exhibitions