The assimilation of atomic and thermonuclear technologies gave military strategists the temptation to ensure victory in a war by targeted strikes against the industrial centers of the enemy, which could significantly undermine his economic potential.
However, the difficult task arose of delivering the warhead to the target. Moreover, for the USSR, this task was more acute than for the United States. Before the revolution in Cuba, which won in 1959, the USSR did not have the opportunity to possess military bases near the territory of a potential enemy.
And the United States had a whole chain of such bases on the territories of its allied countries, stretching almost along the entire perimeter around the borders of the USSR. Therefore, to deliver an atomic bomb using aviation, American aircraft only needed to have a range flight of about 4,000 km, and Soviet strategic bombers had to cover a distance of 16,000 km.
If we take into account the need to bypass the areas of concentration of enemy air defense forces, then it was required to cover a distance of 25,000 km, more than half the distance of the equator. Under the leadership of the Soviet aircraft designer A. M. Myasishchev in the USSR, for the first time in the world, a system for refueling an aircraft in the air was created. But even with two refueling, the bomber flew no more than 14,000 km, while burning a whole lake of fuel.
The idea of creating an aircraft with a nuclear reactor
In search of a solution to this difficult problem, engineering and design thought seized on the idea of creating an aircraft that uses a nuclear reactor on board as energy for its engine. The work on this project, which even nowadays strongly gives off science fiction, was headed by the same A. M. Myasishchev.
He was born in 1902 in the small provincial town of Efremov in the south of the Tula province in the family of a merchant of the second guild and graduated from the Moscow Higher Technical School. Bauman. In the questionnaires, he tried to hide his merchant origin, but this did not save him from being arrested in 1937. While serving the term to which he was sentenced for alleged espionage in favor of the United States, he worked in a design "sharashka" together with Tupolev and Korolev.
The reason for the accusations was Myasishchev's trip to the United States. He headed the Soviet commission charged with the acquisition of the Douglas transport aircraft technology from the United States.
In the USSR, this aircraft was named LI-2. More than 14,000 of these aircraft were produced, which served in aviation for 40 years and played a significant role during the war years, including in the delivery of goods for partisans.
To implement the idea of creating an aircraft with a nuclear installation on board the Myasishchev Design Bureau was instructed by an official decree of the USSR Council of Ministers in 1955. The Myasishchev Design Bureau was the first in the USSR to use electronic computers for aircraft design. The creation of an aircraft engine based on a nuclear reactor was led by A. M. Lyulka, a graduate of the Kiev Polytechnic University, in 1968. became an academician.
However, the idea turned out to be extremely difficult to implement. Why?
- Firstly, it was extremely difficult to protect the crew from radiation. The cockpit, equipped with lead shielding, reached up to a third of the mass of the entire aircraft structure. At the same time, the aircraft's crew, which consisted of two people, was deprived of the ability to visualize and had to control the flight exclusively by instruments. This task was solved, but this prompted the idea to develop an unmanned version of the aircraft. With this option, the problem of protecting the crew from radiation would disappear, which would reduce the mass of the entire structure by a third. But the Air Force command did not support the unmanned version for fear of problems with maneuvering in the air.
- Secondly, the ground handling of the radioactive aircraft was significantly complicated. Ground personnel also needed radiation protection. And methods of aircraft maintenance using remote manipulators were considered. But this required a simplified design.
- Thirdly, the significant mass of the aircraft (not less than 250 tons) required very strong runways.
The option of a seaplane capable of taking off and landing on water was considered. And in order not to restrict the basing of such an aircraft only to the southern regions of the country, the problem of preventing icing in the coastal zone in winter was studied and quite successfully solved. Such seaplanes could be based on the coast at a considerable distance from each other, which significantly complicated the task of destroying them by the enemy before takeoff. For the first time, such developments to combat coastal ice were made in Sweden. Simple devices made it possible to maintain the coastal water area in an ice-free state by circulating air through pipes throughout the year.
The atomic seaplane could stay in the air for more than a day. And this was quite enough to fulfill the combat missions assigned to him. However, the problem of radioactive contamination of the terrain in the basing areas was not solved. And in 1957 the project was closed. The 50s can be considered a golden period in the development of aviation both in the USSR and in other countries. However, by the end of this decade, rockets finally proved their greater efficiency in comparison with aviation. And rocketry began to bypass the aircraft industry in the division of funding.
The work on Myasishchev's atomic aircraft, although it was not brought to mass production, served, however, a good help in the design of an unmanned control system for a reusable spacecraft "Buran".
In this project, already in his declining years, Lieutenant General of the Engineering Troops Myasishchev took an active part. He died in 1978. All charges of espionage in favor of the United States were dropped from him during his lifetime, he was fully rehabilitated after the XX Congress of the CPSU.
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