What does it mean that the ceiling is more than 12000 meters, the speed is more than 800 kilometers, and the range can be more than 3500 kilometers after calculation?! This flying wing in front of you will be an aircraft that cannot be shot down at high altitude!

Record! It is estimated that no plane in the world can fly higher and faster than it!

The Gorky research base was shaken, and Polikarpov was also extremely shocked - a new design concept could play such an effective role, and several young people who had just graduated from the aviation academy created a miracle!

Of course, this miracle has a strong guarantee: the relatively mature and powerful DP-1-2 turbojet engine, the maximum thrust of the two engines with a total of 1,850 kilograms gives the most powerful power support for this flying wing, which will weigh more than 9 tons. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

The day before yesterday, Ilyushchenko, chief test pilot of the Central Aircraft Design Bureau, who had watched the flight of the flying wing, inspected the plane and confirmed with engine experts that it could immediately take off again, and replaced the designer to fly the plane himself.

Instead of taking the same risks as the young designer, the chief test pilot made a modest 20-minute flight at low and medium speeds, and when he returned to the ground, he made a professional assessment - the flight quality was fairly smooth, but the pilot had to maintain a higher level of concentration in flight than a conventional aircraft, and factors such as crosswinds affected it slightly more than a conventional aircraft.

Moreover, Ilyushchenko believes that such a flying wing cannot do a large-angle dive or a maneuver with too much amplitude, and the operation must be gentle, otherwise it is easy to get into danger and enter an irreversible attitude imbalance.

But regardless of the shortcomings, the two terrible indicators of speed and altitude, plus sufficient range, were enough to study it further - and Borykarpov decided to report to the Air Force Committee and transfer the plane to Zhukov.

Ilyushchenko served as a test pilot for the transfer, and as a result, a world record for the speed of a 500-kilometer closed course was set in an ordinary transfer!

Of course, this record will not be made public, top secret!

Because he also had to serve as a test pilot for a new jet fighter, the Zhukov Academy selected two pilots with test flight experience to take over the flight wing test flight, and the chief test pilot, Shyanov, both of whom had been exposed to the jet engines of the Gorky research base and met the conditions for test flights.

At present, the jet fighter research project, codenamed "I-20," is in the stage of putting the engine on board, and it is impossible for Borikarpov and Ilyushchenko to stay in Zhukov for too long, nor can they conduct research at both ends, so they simply hand over all the 30 or so people involved in the research of the flying wing to the research office of the Zhukov Aviation Institute, and let the scientific research personnel under Arkhipov take over the work together -- this is the wartime aviation system under the Soviet system, and of course it would not have been possible to do so without an enlightened chief designer like Borikalpov.

Zhukovrong had very good conditions and had the technical strength to repair and maintain jet engines, and Gorky also sent a group of technicians to support the test flight of the flying wing.

So why did you choose Zhukov in the end? There are three main reasons for this:

1. There is a long enough reinforced concrete runway. In the first few test flights, the fuel tanks of the flying wing were not filled at all, but just like that, the running distance has almost reached two-thirds of the length of the runway of the Gorky Research Base airfield, reaching one kilometer! According to preliminary estimates, if you take off at full capacity, the runway distance may be close to 1,800 meters, and you may even need a two-kilometer runway!

The take-off and running distance of the propeller aircraft does not need to exceed 1 km, that is, the bomber is generally between 600 and 800 meters, and the choice of the airport for this jet-engined aircraft is a matter of weight, which gives the designer a headache! But this also reminded Polikarpov and others that the length of the reinforced concrete runway at the Gorky Research Base airfield must be lengthened after the weather warms up!

It is best to build a runway day and night, and the best runway is to have no longitudinal seams on the entire runway! However, this non-stop work will seem unlikely to be done in one go, and the solution is to minimize the size of the seams and use special seam glue to fill the gaps.

We must not allow a new fighter to take off with full load in the future and rush off the runway due to insufficient runway length and cause an accident!

2. The research institute of the Zhukov Institute is able to reach an altitude of 18,000 meters with an altimeter, designed products based on air pressure calculations, although it has never been used. Because the flight altitude of the flying wing far exceeded the designer's expectations, although this will make the Soviet cockpit pressurization technology more mature, but the cockpit made according to the P-2 pressurized cockpit technology is still insufficient pressurization above that altitude, and it must be added a guarantee.

This guarantee Zhukov has, that is, the high-altitude pressurized flight suit developed: in Lin Jun's opinion, although it is very primitive, but with the pressurized cockpit, it should be able to ensure the life safety of pilots flying below 18,000 meters.

3. Zhukov had the most complete radar monitoring system in the Soviet Union, which was also a part of Moscow's air defense system, which Gorky did not have.

、、、、、、

The young designer named Nikolai Triterjevich Gaidar handed Lin Jun a large handout folder in his hand, which contained a simple set of drawings of the flying wing, which allowed him to understand its internal structure.

Lin Jun remembered that no aircraft designer in the Soviet Union who was a little famous could match the other people in Gaidar and his "young group" in front of him, and it seemed that with one inducement and their own efforts, there would be a few more names on the list of world aviation designers.

"What, you still want to add a cannon to it?"

One of the drawings indicated that it would also install a total of six 23mm cannons on either side of the outer edge of the engine, and Lin Jun asked. In the belly of the wing, the location of the bomb bay is very clearly marked, that is, this prototype test aircraft has a complete bomb delivery system: according to the marking, the bomb compartment can carry two one-ton bombs, but this will reduce the fuel load a lot. The standard bomb load is two 500-kilogram bombs.

"Marshal, this was originally conceived, but after the test flight, we, together with General Designer Borikarpov, as well as Comrade Ilyushchenko, believed that it could not become a fighter, it would not be possible to do a violent maneuver higher than 5 Gs, and the gun design would be canceled. Saving weight and increasing fuel capacity, it should only be used as a bomber, and of course it can also be converted into a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft. ”

"The special aerodynamic structure of the flying wing cannot be a highly maneuverable fighter unless there are rocket weapons that can automatically track the attack. You're right, don't waste time trying to increase its mobility in aerial combat, just try to keep it stable. Lin Jun's tone was a little appreciative, but it was also very serious - greed is not rotten, otherwise you will fall into a dead end!

Flying wings, there are a lot of early flying wing studies that Soviet aviation designers know, such as the flying wing experimental aircraft X-218 designed and manufactured by John Northrop in the United States in 1928 and the flying wing ****** built by the Horton brothers, which have appeared in aviation magazines, but the Soviet Union has not spent much effort on research.

For flying wing research, Lin Jun knew that the most persistent explorers should be John Nussen Northrop and the company he founded. Northrop devoted his whole life to the development and exploration of flying wing aircraft, but it ended up in disgrace again and again for various reasons - judging from the reasons that Lin Jun knew in his previous life, it was not entirely because Northrop's design was technically not up to par, but because other external reasons determined Northrop's frustration.

Theoretically, because the aerodynamic shape of the flying wing helps to minimize drag, it has unbeatable advantages over conventionally constructed aircraft in terms of speed, range and flight economy.

It was at Lin Junfei's Su-27 that the flight resistance of the traditional aerodynamic shape aircraft was still 2-4 times that of the flying wing!

On the blueprints, the flying wing fully deserves the title of "the future of the aircraft": but there is always a difference between theory and practice, and the flying wing design actually cramms the cockpit, engines and external equipment compartment into a pair of large wings, and the result is that the number of control surfaces of the aircraft is reduced, which seems to be an insurmountable difficulty in the era of no fly-by-wire flight control system.

The early flyer explorers were almost invariably hindered by the instability and difficulty of controlling the aircraft. Technical bottlenecks and the turbulent external environment have made most of the early flying-wing explorers disappear from the stage of aviation history sooner or later, and only Northrop has persevered for decades in history, designing one flying wing aircraft after another, and constantly moving in the direction of practicality.

Even after his death, Northrop did not give up on this seemingly hopeless exploration, and still led the development trend of flying wing aircraft.

Northrop and his team of 33 people are probably on public display of their N-1M wing, and the U.S. military will also realize the value of the wing, and will list it as an altitude aircraft secret project, and Northrop's wing will be hidden in the dark in the United States for a long time.

And then, the XB-35 bomber project would make Northrop miserable: from the time Northrop was founded until the XB-35 was developed, Northrop had sent 12 tailless layout aircraft into the sky. Northrop's engineers have extensive experience with flying wing design and have done hundreds of wind tunnel experiments.

The XB-35 bomber project was the first time in history that the flying wing became a possible option for the design of bombers in the field of military aviation.

In terms of playing the role of a bomber, the flying wing design has five major advantages: 1. The low lift-to-drag ratio of the flying wing design means that the XB-35 in actual use can fly farther, faster and more economical under the same load;

2. The simple structure of the flying wing reduces the technical risk and the construction cost is also lower;

3. The weight distribution is more superior and reasonable, and the transverse interval design makes the bomb weight and the weight of the aircraft itself more evenly distributed on the wing surface.

4. It is more convenient to load and unload cargo, because the load of the flying wing aircraft is placed in the compartment across the entire wing, so it is more convenient to load and unload;

5. The XB-35 has smaller targets than conventional bombers in both offensive and defensive battles - with the same power and load, the XB-35 is twenty percent faster than conventional bombers.

However, the XB-35's unreliable power system and the fact that it might not be able to catch up with the war in the end was a doomed end.

Then there was the YB-49, which was seen by the Air Force as a medium bomber rather than a planned heavy bomber when it was nearing maturity: it had to compete in this field with the contemporaries XB-46, XB-47 and XB-48 programs, caught between the budget of the faster B-47 stratojet and the longer-range B-36 intercontinental bomber!

Political factors also played an important role in the eventual failure of the YB-49 flying-wing bomber project: in 1948-1952, people from Northrop's rival became defense secretary in the Truman administration. Against this background, the Air Force chose the B-36 over the B-49. Northrop was told that his YB-49 wing-bomber would be ordered by the Air Force, however, the plane would have to be produced by Convair, otherwise the Air Force would not buy his wing-wing bomber.

That is: Northrop will either produce the B-49 after being annexed by Convair, or cancel the order.

Northrop refuses to annex: He and his employees have built Northrop and fought for it for many years, and he owes his employees a debt of affection. If the B-49 were to be mass-produced, it would have to be carried out at Northrop's Hawthorn plant, with his engineers and technicians in charge, and there was no other way.

But because his company had to survive on other Air Force contracts, Northrop had to swallow the bitter pill of the cancellation of the B-49 production contract.

Maybe the flying wing was not mature in the forties and fifties, but it is one-sided to say that it is because the control system is immature and the line-by-wire flight control system cannot succeed before the advent of the fly-by-wire flight control system, just like the Ho-229 fighter-bomber, if the Red Army advances more slowly (it is the US Ninth Panzer Division that finally occupies its research base, but everyone understands that the decisive factor in the European theater depends on the powerful assault of the Red Army, otherwise the British and American forces are still watching the scenery across the English Channel). It will shock the world like the Messesmit 262!

The flight qualities of the Ho-229 fighter-bomber were acceptable, but history did not give it a chance!

The XB-35 was stuck in a dead knot in the powertrain, and its performance was not much better than other conventional layout bombers with piston engines, and the accuracy of long-range attacks was not comparable to that of the B-17, and with the advent of jet engines, it was doomed to failure.

The YB-49, which had already been popularized in the field of bombers by jet power, and the system of the American aviation industry, could only end in disgrace, although the US government had decided to take it - but the conditions offered were obviously difficult for Northrop and his loyal employees to accept.

The YB-49 was not a technical failure, but irresponsible maintenance and malicious sabotage (even after it was determined that the contract was going to be cancelled, it also set an all-time speed record, flew back and forth within the United States, shocked the aviation community, but in the end the engine caught fire - the airport ground personnel did not fill its engine with lubrication!). Apparently deliberately, since not at the airfield controlled by the company. And under the sharp teeth of the trust predators!

What would have happened to the development of flywing if 45 years ago there had been a flying-wing medium-range bomber with a reliable jet engine and flight qualities up to the Ho-229 class?

Needless to say, it will become the second Messesmit 262, and even more of a headache for opponents than it!

However, a prototype is a prototype, for example, Ilyushenko suggested: if it is to be used as a medium-range bomber, it is better to use a two-person crew - a pilot and a co-pilot, and two sets of flight control mechanisms.

At an average speed of 700 kilometers per hour, a 5-hour round-trip flight with full load will seriously drain the pilot's physical energy, which is almost comparable to 10 hours of flying a conventional aircraft alone!

The pilot needs to maintain a higher level of concentration, and the co-pilot can reduce the pressure on the pilot on the way, while also taking on the task of navigation and bomb dropping.

It's not difficult to design for a tandem, and the added weight isn't a problem – the elimination of self-defense weapons makes this possible, but the cockpit may not be very spacious: the front and co-pilot configurations have to be sideways, which are more comfortable than conventional bombers, and more like two fighter cockpits side by side.

Gaidar also plans to add two large auxiliary fuel tanks to the flying wing for long-distance raids - according to the calculation of fuel consumption and fuel load of the preliminary test flight, so that the range should be between 3,800 and 4,000 kilometers in the case of a one-ton bomb sortie: a fuel-carrying machine!

The DP-1-2 turbojet is an out-and-out oil tiger!

In the designer's opinion, how to ensure the normal operation of the DP-1-2, which had finally increased the first overhaul time to 120 hours, was a difficult problem - if it was a long-distance flight, the pilots would have to tremble for five hours, hoping that the two earth-shattering engines on both sides would not have problems!

With an average air life of 17 hours for the engines used in the Messersmit 262, and with several times the ground running time, the DP-1-2 is already pretty good - at least Lin Jun is satisfied.

Also satisfied with the engine was Borikarpov - for his design of the I-20, the DP-1-2 was clearly okay.

(Today's first shift, ask for a monthly pass.) (To be continued.) )