- Was it a technological marvel
that nearly succeeded, or simply a product of espionage? There are a lot of questions
and misunderstandings about the Tupolev-144 or Concordski,
as many of you might know it. But perhaps the thing
it is most remembered for was a tragic, fatal crash that happened
at the 1973 Paris Air Show, almost exactly 50 years ago. Stay tuned. (delightful tune) The allure of supersonic passenger travel wasn't unique
to the makers of the Concorde. I just did a video
about the mysterious Everglades Jetport and how it was deeply connected
to the American efforts to create their own supersonic airliner. But what about the Soviet Union? In the early 1960s, the Soviets
also had a very busy aviation industry that had created a number
of attention-grabbing aircraft, both civilian and military. And since it was public knowledge
that the British and the French were working
on a supersonic passenger aircraft, the Soviets weren't just going
to be sitting on their hands. Now, you might think
it's a little bit weird that the Soviet Union
would even be interested in a design like that, something that would carry
relatively few passengers over just medium distances. But the Soviets knew the propaganda value
of launching such a design, especially if they could do it
before the West. And they weren't just about
to throw in the towel. The Soviet Union launched
the Tupolev-144 program in July, 1963, just six months
after the launch of the Concorde program. And after a surprisingly fast development,
even by the standards of that era, the aircraft flew for the first time
on the 31st of December, 1968, about two months
before the Concorde did. But from the very start,
there were suggestions that the Tupolev-144
managed to beat the Concorde to the air simply because of either espionage or because its development
was really rushed, resulting in an aircraft
too immature to be really useful. With that criticism in mind, let's look at what the Tupolev-144's
specifications actually were and how they compared
to the Concorde's. To start with, the Tupolev-144
was a bit bigger than the Concorde. It was around 4 meters
or 13 feet longer and with a wingspan just over 3 meters
or 10 feet greater than the Concorde. As a result, Concorde had a single aisle cabin layout
with two seats on either side of the aisle in what was essentially
an all-business cabin. This gave the Concorde
a capacity of 100 seats, although in theory, it could probably squeeze in
a few more if needed. But by contrast, the Soviet jet
actually had a two-class cabin, with five seats on each row
in second class and three seats across in the first class. This meant that in total,
it had seats for 150 passengers, making its passenger capacity
50% higher than the Concorde. The 144 was actually also
a little bit faster. You see, Concorde's designers
had picked a cruise speed of Mach 2 specifically to be able
to use aluminium throughout which was a much better understood material
and easier to work with compared to the more exotic titanium
which the Soviets favored. What this meant was that in practice, Concorde's speed
was temperature-limited to Mach 2.04, although it could fly a little bit faster
in the right conditions. The Tupolev-144 instead
used titanium and steel for its wing leading edges
and also in some other areas where they were subjected
to higher friction heat in cruise, and this enabled it
to cruise at Mach 2.15. But in practice, it cruised at Mach 2
just like the Concorde. Having looked at all of that,
you could say that the Tupolev-144 was actually a bit more ambitious
than the Concorde, but not quite as extreme
as Boeing's plans for the 2707 SST. Like I mentioned in my last video,
in their most conservative plans, the American SST
was supposed to fly at Mach 2.7, using a wide body construction,
carrying 230 passengers. But as we all know,
that never happened. But now we get to the range. And this is where the specs
of the Tupolev 144 actually starts to fall behind
those of the Concorde. Even in its final D version, which actually
never got to carry passengers, the Tupolev-144 couldn't fly further
than 3,500 nautical miles. And that's to be compared
with the Concorde's 3900 nautical miles. Now, that might not sound
like a huge difference. But it meant that the Concorde
could fly across the Atlantic while the Tupolev-144 just couldn't. But was this really
a deal-breaker for the design? Actually, no. And that's because the Soviets were planning to use the aircraft
a bit differently from the way the British
and the French were. And that strategy difference could have easily tipped the balance
into the Soviet jet's favor. And I'll explain
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of the channel. Now back to the video. A key factor that could have helped the Tupolev-144 to become successful
was simply geography. Unlike Britain and France or many other countries
with early orders of the Concorde, the Soviet Union was huge. And this meant that the use case
for the Tupolev-144 was radically different
than the Concorde's. Simply put, the Soviet Union
was so big that a supersonic airliner would be quite handy for domestic trips. But then you might ask,
doesn't that mean that the Soviet jet would have to fly
at supersonic speeds over land? Well, this was a big no, no
for the Concorde. And those who were passengers on ships and heard it crossing
the sound barrier over them will tell you why that was. (thunderous boom) (people chattering) Now, it turns out the Soviets weren't as worried
about Mach busting some small towns. When it was in service with Aeroflot, the airline primarily flew it
over sparsely populated areas. But beyond that,
they didn't really have any limitations. And when it came to international travel, the Tupolev-144 would eventually
have been able to fly from the eastern reaches
of the Soviet Union to destinations in Asia
by going supersonic over water. Another difference between
the Soviet Union and the West, which would come into play
a little bit later, was of course, the fuel prices. Because even after
the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and its effect on fuel prices worldwide, the Soviet Union wasn't as affected
as the rest of the world because of its domestic oil production. And this meant that a lot of the factors
that would spell real trouble for supersonic jets
in the rest of the world could be more manageable
for the Soviets, at least in certain extent. So, to recap, the Tupolev-144
actually had a solid use case that would have allowed both Aeroflot
and its manufacturers to gain experience
in passenger supersonic flights. This could have possibly given them
the opportunity to slowly improve its range
and capacity over time. So, what happened? Well, to try to understand this, we have to look a little bit closer
at the aircraft's actual design. Other than the size difference, the Tupolev-144 and the Concorde
look really similar, but there are some big differences. Obviously, they both use a delta wing,
which isn't actually that surprising because most designers
of supersonic jet projects turn to delta wings to meet the radically different
lift and drag requirements between a supersonic cruise at Mach 2 and the much lower subsonic aerodynamics
used during takeoff and landing. Concorde was equipped with what's called
an ogee-shaped or S-shaped delta, which made it behave well in a range of different
center of gravity configurations and also provided
a relatively low landing speed at a high angle of attack. But by contrast, the Tupolev-144's wing design
was much simpler. This meant that it needed canards, that's those smaller wings on its nose,
to improve its low speed characteristics and to reduce its takeoff
and landing speeds. The first prototype, by the way,
didn't have those canards. That really first only appeared
on the production variant of the jet. But the canards also added weight. And to keep them
from producing drag in cruise, Tupolev designed them to be retractable,
which added even more weight. And even with the canards extended, the Tupolev still needed to land
at a higher speed than the Concorde did, requiring longer landing distances,
more durable tires, and a brake parachute. The other key to why the Tupolev-144
didn't have the range of the Concorde had to do with its engines. In theory, the first engine
the Soviets fitted to the 144 was actually more advanced
than the Concorde's. This was a low bypass
afterburning turbofan called the Kuznetsov NK-144. By contrast, the Concorde had the
Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 turbojet which was a rather mature design. Basically, an evolution of the engine
for the Avro Vulcan Bomber, which first flew already back in 1952. Obviously, the Concorde version
was substantially improved. But more importantly,
this engine was a much better choice than the theoretically
more modern turbofan of the Tupolev-144. But how does that make any sense? All airliners today have turbofans,
not turbojets, right? Well, yes, they do and that's because,
as I've explained in other videos, it's normally more efficient to push a larger amount of air backwards
at the same speed than to push the same amount of air
backwards at higher speed. That's why turbofans today
are getting bigger and bigger in diameter, with more and more air
bypassing the turbine itself, which is known as a bigger bypass ratio. But this assumes
that we're flying subsonic like today's airliners do. At supersonic speeds,
this larger frontal area of high bypass turbofans
can actually start to become a problem, adding much more drag. Now, obviously,
I'm oversimplifying this a little bit. There are many
supersonic military jets today with afterburning low bypass turbofans,
but at the time that this was happening, getting those type of engines to work efficiently
was really, really hard. All this meant that Tupolev would eventually also adopt
a turbojet engine for the 144 called the Kolesov RD-36-51. But this came much later. All Tupolev 144 passengers
flew on the original, less efficient turbofan version. And actually,
it's not just the engines themselves that ended up hurting
the 144's efficiency and range. There was also another issue
with these engines which had to do
with where they were placed. As you can see here,
the four engines on the Tupolev-144 are much closer
to the aircraft's center line than the Concorde's are. Now, we pilots like having the engines
close to the plane's center line because that means
that we don't have to worry as much about asymmetric thrust
if one engine were to fail. But it seems like the main reason why the Tupolev engineers
put the engines where they did was because they wanted,
or rather needed, the engine air intakes to be very long. I will eventually do a video
focusing more on Concorde itself where I'm going to go into this
in more detail. But what you need to understand here
is that the Concorde's engine intakes were key to its success. Concorde was the first airliner to have an analog
fly-by-wire control system. But it also had an inlet-by-wire. And why was that? Well, if you think for a minute
about how much air a jet engine actually needs
to operate properly. During takeoff and at low speeds, it really needs all of the air
that it can get. But as soon as the aircraft's speed
starts coming close to the speed of sound, designers needed to make sure that the air going into the engine
was not supersonic. Obviously, on normal airliners, this isn't really a problem
because we don't go supersonic. Fighter jets and other supersonic jets have their own ways
of dealing with this problem. But in practice,
really fast and big supersonic jets needs engine inlets
that can change their geometry at different speed regimes to make sure that their engines
can continue to function properly. Both the Concorde and the Tupolev-144
had variable geometry inlets. The inlet-by-wire system in the Concorde
controlled the inlets and various gates at different speeds and conditions, including after an engine failure
at high speed. And crucially, they also helped make the engines
more efficient in cruise by increasing the overall pressure ratio. But the inlets on the Tupolev-144
were much simpler. So, to help control the airflow
and keep it more consistent, the Soviet engineers
made the inlets really long, twice as long as on the Concorde. But this additional length
also added a lot of drag. What all of these issues actually meant was that to sustain
the necessary power in cruise, the Tupolev 144 needed
a little bit of afterburner continuously. An afterburner works, simply put, by dumping extra fuel
into the back of the engine nozzle and then burning it. This generates more thrust, but at the price
of a much higher fuel burn and noise. And speaking of exhaust nozzles, the ones on the Concorde
also had a variable geometry which not only made it more efficient,
but it enabled reverse thrust on landing, which was another thing missing
from the Tupolev. That's partially why it needed
those drag parachutes after landing. The lack of reversers
might also have been why the Tupolev-144 had a unique eight-wheel
main gear boogie set up, possibly to allow for better braking. Although that gear design might also have to do with the way
it retracted into the fuselage, requiring relatively small diameter
wheels and tires. But according to some analysts,
the main problem with the Tupolev-144 was just the rush
of its initial development. It seems that completing it and getting it
into the air before Concorde was a highly politically-charged decision. And this takes us
to that fateful Paris Air Show on the 3rd of June, 1973,
50 years ago. Both the Concorde and the Tupolev-144 were scheduled to perform
back-to-back shows, meaning that effectively,
the show became a contest between the two. Unlike Concorde, the Tupolev didn't have
a fly-by-wire system, but it had a simpler stability
and control augmentation system. For the air show, it appears
that some protections and limitations in this system were turned off, possibly to allow for more elaborate
and eye-catching maneuvers. The Tupolev pilots had performed
their air show once already the day before without any type of issues. But on the 3rd of June,
just after the Concorde's performance, the Tupolev-144 crew appeared to make
an unscheduled steep climb near the end of their routine, which had not been part of their show
the previous day. This was then followed
by a very steep dive. And it appears that the airframe
of the 144 became overstressed when its pilots
tried to pull out of the dive, causing it to completely break apart. The aircraft hit the ground, instantly killing
all six crew members on board and causing eight more fatalities
on the ground. The investigation into the crash
didn't end up reaching a definitive conclusion
as to what caused it, and this gave rise
to several conspiracy theories. Some claimed that a French fighter jet
was flying too close to the 144 in order to photograph its canards,
surprising the Soviet pilots and leading to that final maneuver. In the Soviet Union,
some would later claim that the British and French
deliberately let Soviet spies steal compromised Concorde files to lead engineers
into making a faulty aircraft, which actually sounds insulting
both to Western and Soviet engineers, to be honest. There were also theories
around construction methods, metal fatigue, or issues involving
the bypassing of the stability system. But in any case, Tupolev, after the crash,
ended up strengthening the structure and modifying the flight controls to make overstressing the aircraft
much more difficult. When it came to actually making
the aircraft useful, both the Concorde and the Tupolev took a very long time
to enter into service. And when they actually did, the Tupolev again beat Concorde
by one month; well, sort of. In reality, when the Tupolev-144
entered service in December of 1975, it only flew mail and cargo,
basically continuing its test program. It actually started flying passengers
in November of 1977, well after the Concorde did. As for what it was like to fly in, apparently, its pilots
were kept really busy because the design
was still in its infancy and reliability always remained a problem. But probably the best known problem it had
at least from a passenger perspective, was its cabin noise,
which was so bad that people famously had to pass handwritten notes
to each other in the cabin in order to communicate in flight. This had partly to do with the continuous use
of afterburner in cruise, something that Concorde
only needed during takeoff, but also with the position of the engines and a very noisy
cabin pressurization system. In the end, the Tupolev-144
would stop flying passengers after just seven months, or 55 flights. This happened after a second accident, a crash landing that took place
in May of 1978 during a delivery test flight
of the improved Tupolev-144D variant. After an undetected fuel leak,
the aircraft caught fire. And two flight engineers
perished in the crash, while six others on board survived. Even though the cause of the crash
only affected this new variant, it appears that by this point, the Soviet leadership and Aeroflot
had simply had enough. The Tupolev-144
never flew passengers again, even though some freight
and mail flights restarted eventually. Later on, another incident included an uncontained
compressive disk failure in August of 1980 which happened during cruise
at supersonic speed. Another aircraft also suffered
some minor structural issues. So, in total, the Tupolev-144 fleet made
just 103 revenue flights, including cargo. But plans to bring it back
to service did persist. We know that because its production
officially didn't end until 1982. And after that,
it only got some use as a test bed, including for pilots
of the Soviet Buran space shuttle. There were other plans
for more versions of the aircraft, including military ones, but the Soviet Air Force and Navy
just weren't that interested. And more recently,
there were actually thoughts to revive the program
or launch its successor, called the Tupolev-244. That version would use
hydrogen burning engines and some technology borrowed
from the Tupolev-160 bomber, but it also didn't go anywhere. And in a really, really odd twist,
especially given the current geopolitics, the last user of the Tupolev-144
actually was NASA. - A new period of cooperation in aeronautics between Russia
and the United States. - This was part of a program that NASA called
the High Speed Civil Transport. In that program,
the last Tupolev-144 ever made was refurbished and fitted
with new afterburning turbofans borrowed from the Tupolev-160. The plane was flown within Russia
from 1996 until 1999, when NASA ended the program. Today, a number of Tupolev-144s
are showcased in various museums, just like the Concordes are. So, was this aircraft
just another failed supersonic project, or even the product of espionage? Well, sadly, it seems
like this interesting plane was seen by those in power
mainly as a propaganda tool, which no longer really mattered
after its initial successes and failures. As for the espionage question,
ultimately, it didn't really matter. In the end,
it was the execution of the project and the poor support that killed it, rather than anything to do
with its origins. Now, I really hope
that you liked this story. And if you did,
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and I'll see you next time; bye-bye.
