The advent of jet aircraft changed everything. After the start of the Cold War between the US and the USSR, an arms race also started. Both sides paid great attention to the development of aviation, as it very quickly became one of the means of delivery, including nuclear weapons. In addition to ground-based air defense, both sides needed modern interceptor aircraft. The largest from the USSR was the Tu-128. What was this car?
In NATO, the Tu-128 was assigned the designation "Fiddler", which can be translated as "street violinist". It is worth noting that one should not look for any meaning in the tactical codes of the US Army. The classification is conditional. All fighter planes in it, both American and enemy, simply must begin with the letter “F”. There are capital letters in American encodings for all weapons and military equipment.
The development of the Tu-128 began in 1954 on the basis of OKB-301 under the guidance of designers D. FROM. Markov and I. F. Nezvalya. The engineers were given the task of designing the latest fighter that would allow them to provide effective air cover over the vast territory of the country of the Soviets. The USSR Ministry of Defense wanted to get a long-range vehicle for patrolling sparsely populated areas of the Far East and Siberia. The first project of the aircraft failed, and therefore in 1957 all the developments were transferred to OKB-156. As part of the Tu-128 project, engineers also created the latest all-aspect K-80 missiles and the Smerch radar.
A prototype Tu-128 appeared in the second half of 1960, and factory tests of the machine started in January 1961. Already in March, the first flight of the 128th was made, and in April the long-range fighter was brought to supersonic speed for the first time. State trials began in 1962. Finally, the fighter was adopted by the USSR in 1965, after which it was operated and was on combat duty until 1990. From 1962 to 1970, 188 of these aircraft were produced.
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A fighter with a wingspan of 17.53 meters and a fuselage length of 30.06 meters took on board a crew of two: commander and navigator. The maximum takeoff weight of the Tu-128 reached 43.7 tons, of which 15 tons was fuel. The fighter was driven by a pair of AL-7F-2 turbojet engines, which separately produced up to 6710 kgf without afterburner and up to 10100 kgf with afterburner. When loaded with four air-to-air missiles on an external suspension, the fighter's flight speed reached 1,655 km / h. The practical flight range is 2,565 km. The ceiling is 15.6 km above sea level.
Tu-128 service was carried out as part of six air defense regiments. An interesting fact: due to its huge dimensions (especially by the standards of a fighter), the aircraft was recognized as an airship. For this reason, Tu-128 pilots and navigators received higher salaries compared to other fighters. Very little is known about the combat use of the aircraft. Most of the documents on this subject are still classified. It is known that Tu-128s were regularly used to eliminate NATO reconnaissance probes. There are also references to the fact that in 1975 the Tu-128 crew shot down an American balloon over the Kazakh SSR.
If you want to know even more interesting things, then you should read about Soviet "superplane" Tu-114: what he annoyed the Americans.
Source: https://novate.ru/blogs/220422/62790/