Why Soviet Pilots Called It “The Booze Carrier”: The Tupolev Tu-22 Story

july 9 1961 hundreds of thousands of people gathered on tuition airfield not far from moscow to watch a grand air parade dedicated to the soviet aviation day it was an outstanding two-hour long air show and matched by anything the soviet people have seen before and not only soviets among the crowds of excited spectators one could easily notice people in unusually looking uniforms who were watching the airshow with serious faces and vigorously making notes they were military representatives from nato countries for whom attending such parades was not so much a leisure event but rather a service duty and that day a special surprise prepared by the soviets was waiting for them it was the conclusion of the parade when everyone's attention was caught by 10 unusually looking aircrafts that swiftly flew over the airfield the aerodynamic shape and swept wings resembled the fighter but the mysterious planes were three times the fighter size while the soviet people were shout and enjoy the guests from the west were anxiously making notes and sketches of the new soviet aircraft that was the day of the first public appearance for the first soviet supersonic bomber the tupolev tu-22 andre tupolev was one of the most prominent soviet aircraft engineers who created more than 100 aircrafts some of which set 78 world records among his most famous creations is the largest airplane in the world of the sergis amt20 maxim corki the first soviet commercial jet tu-104 soviet concord tu-144 as well as military aircraft like tu-16 and one of the most recognizable bombers in the world the famous tu-95 bear but among all of tupolev's achievements there is also one quite unusual airplane that tupolev himself referred to as his most unfortunate creation perhaps best of all the troubles and the controversy of this plane which was meant to terrify the enemies of the ussr could be seen through the variety of nicknames that the tupolev's bomber received during its long career it initially received the nato reporting name bullshot which was deemed to be inappropriate then beauty which was deemed to be too complimentary and finally the blinder that remained with the plane ever since there was no consistency with the names in the soviet air force either among the russian pilots the tu-22 was called the pricker for its shape the man-eater for killing its own pilots as well as de facto craft and aeroplane but arguably the most famous among all others was the name supersonic boost carrier the story of tupolev tu-22 begins in the early years of the cold war the soviet union managed to build and test its own nuclear bomb but there was little to no sense of having the nuclear weapon if you can't deliver the bomb to the enemy territory unlike the us which had b-36 and b-52 bombers that were capable of making intercontinental flights the ussr at the time didn't have any reliable nuclear bomb carrier to threaten not only the us territory but even the targets in europe the only bombers available to the soviet air force were all tu-4s the tupolev's copy of the american b-29 which were not suitable for this task due to insufficient range the first successful response to the existing problem was the tupolev tu-16 medium bomber whose serial production began in 1954. it was a very good and reliable aircraft that would become the backbone of soviet bomber aviation for the following decades however it did not fix the problem completely although the first surface-to-air missiles had started to appear interceptor aircrafts were still the main threat for the bombers so in the mid 50s speed and altitude remain the main protection for bombers subsonic tu-16 although being a good aircraft appeared at the time when britain and the united states were completing the development of their supersonic interceptors which would greatly increase the vulnerability of the soviet bombers to break enemy error defense a new supersonic bomber was urgently needed and android tupolev was the one who suggested building such a bomber in the light of the latest news from the united states about the ongoing development of this supersonic bomber b-58 hustler which would be capable of flying at twice the speed of sound the soviet government agreed to tupole's proposal who soon presented two draft projects for approval the first one suggested the construction of a bomber that would be designed based on the existing subsonic 2u16 with an anticipated speed of up to 1500 kilometers per hour while the second project was to build a fundamentally new aircraft capable of speeds of up to 1700 kilometers per hour comrade krunich of the soviet minister of aviation at the time reported to khrushchev the deadline suggested by 2.4 sending the bomber that is based on the tu-16 to state trials is march 1958 this is certainly unacceptable since by the time this bomber would be sent to serial production its flight characteristics would become outdated meanwhile the second bomber proposed by comrade tupolev is of high interest since it may provide our air force with a significant advancement but the soviet union would not be the soviet union if the first option would not be accepted for execution thus the new supersonic aircraft received a subsonic fuselage and the designation plane 105. fortunately after multiple experiments and calculations tupolev decided to reject the 216 body and for a moment it seemed that the ray of common sense shimmered over the plane's fate but not for long everything went back to usual when it came to engine layout design rejecting all the proposals and research data for supersonic bomber offered by tsagi tupolev himself chose a very unusual placing for the engines they were mounted atop the rear fuselage on either side of the fin the layout that was extremely rare in aviation v4 and thanks to tu-22 has never been used since the first prototype of the plane 105 was built by the end of 1957 and on june 21 1958 the plane 105 flown by test pilot yuri alasha made its maiden flight the first flights of the plane show the huge discrepancy was the anticipated performance but the soviet union would not be the soviet union if that discrepancy would surprise anyone in tupolev's team they already knew that way before the prototype was even completed but despite that the construction was not stopped and tupolev simultaneously started the construction of the second revised version of the prototype which in particular would employ the area rule that significantly reduced the drag on the supersonic speed the second prototype received the designation 105a and made its meeting flight on september 7 1959. although the joy was not complete since roughly around that time the first prototype was lost in the accident to be fair 105 8 didn't last for a long time either on its seventh flight while on supersonic speed due to the flattering stabilizers the plane was destroyed killing two crew members including test pilot yuri alashev but the soviet union would not be the soviet union if the decision that was made after losing both prototypes in accidents would not have been to approve the aircraft for serial production [Music] despite the long list of problems the decision was made to launch the serial production of the new aircraft which received the designation tu-22 and fixed all the issues while the plane was being produced and tested also unlike other new aircrafts they decided to skip the usual first stage of the factory test and jump straight to the next one which would involve the air force representatives the progress of the test program could hardly be called smooths but on the other hand it was quite in line with the overall start of the tu-22 project on september 22 1960 the first serial-produced tu-22 took off into the sky and yet two months later in november the third build aircraft was already lost after making an emergency landing what was interesting about that crash as one of the tu-22 test pilots evgeny klimov recalled when the body of the radio operator konstantin sharbakov was recovered from the debris he was considered dead so his body was evacuated and placed in the morgue fortunately quite soon afterwards his wife headed to the morgue aggressively demanding to see her husband and when they eventually decided to bring her his body it appeared all of a sudden that he was actually still alive it quickly became obvious during the first tu-22 flight test that the bomber did not meet the needed requirements for the speed and flight range but despite that the air ministry set the plan to build 42 aircrafts during the next year of 1961. in reality though out of that ambitious plan only 12 tu-22s were constructed primarily because of the constant changes being made to aircraft construction based on the ongoing flight trials anyways all tu-22s built at the time were sent to the airport in tucsona in 1961 to show the western countries the potential of the soviet air power to be fair nato representatives were highly impressed which was probably by far the only task to u22 managed to succeed with on september 25th 1961 the second and final stage of the production trials began and just two weeks later on october 10th yet another bomber was lost after being completely burned down as a result of engine fire during the ground test in total up to 20 aircrafts were used during the production test even though officially they were all serial models in reality they were still test machines for instance the 7th serial model was used for testing the ailerons and flaps the aids for structural tests in fact only the 20 as aircraft truly became a serial bomber after completing its 60-second test flight in july 1962. in one of the meetings discussing the progress of the tu-22 test lights andrey tupelov said the plane is good the engine is good we should go ahead what was interesting is that in 1962 even though the aircraft had not yet completed the production trials and was not yet officially accepted into military service several operational air force units were already equipped with the first tu-22s and it was unsurprising that the soviet military pilots were not eager to say the least to fly on this bomber even though multiple fixes and improvements had already been made to the aircraft it was still full of various faults the problem of the flutter that caused the destruction of the second prototype still hadn't been completely fixed so tu-22 was not allowed to fly at speeds higher than mach 1.4 in addition to that there was a tendency for uneven aircraft skin hitting at supersonic speed which distorted the control rods and caused in particular the so-called reverse aileron effect that resulted in spontaneous rotation of the aircraft as alexa nikon of one of the tu-22 test pilots recalled to compensate the effect the pilot had to hold the aircraft yoke continuously with huge effort in the position at almost 90 degrees in the absence of the co-pilot site flights were extremely exhausting both physically and mentally and you heard it right tu-22 didn't have a co-pilot being the only heavy bomber in history that was flown by a single pilot only in fact it is believed that multiple crashes of tu-22 due to the pilot's mistakes in particular those caused by misreading newly designed and confusing cockpit instruments could have been avoided if there was a co-pilot present in the cockpit who could have noticed the mistake and alerted the captain and speaking about the cockpit its ergonomics was awful multiple levers and switches sticking out of the panels reminded the cockpit of a steam train rather than a modern supersonic aircraft the soviet pilots compared the t22 cockpit to a hedgehog being turned inside out as crazy as it may sound some pilots being unable to reach specific levers even use ropes or metal wire hooks to switch them during the flights in addition to this there was a poor visibility for the pilot from the cockpit the pilot's seat was located slightly to the left to improve visibility because of the bulkhead in the center of the windshield however when the pilot had to adjust the aircraft's heading because of the crossman from the left the bulkhead would completely block his view of the runway making the landing almost blind the accident rate was so high that inexperienced pilots were not allowed to fly in a crosswind of more than 12 meters per second if you are not familiar with wind speeds according to buffered scale this is considered as a strong breeze but even perfect weather wouldn't make the tu-22 flying any easier take for example the landing speed 350 kilometers per hour which is a lot for instance the landing speed of a mig-29 fighter is 30 percent lower and for the tu-22 pilot it was crucial to maintain that speed because if you fly slower you were exposed to extreme danger starting at a speed of 290 kilometers per hour the plane that had a rearward center of gravity because of the engines at the back would lift its nose and fall on its tail like a candle and the moment it starts nothing could be done to reverse that but the same engines made even a normal landing approach quite a task for the pilot since the thrust vector of the engines went significantly above the aircraft's longitudinal axis it created a noticeable dive effect that the pilot had to always be aware of and quickly compensate if needed but problems didn't end even after landing the tu-22 had a rare and quite unpleasant defect called galloping which is a strong vibration of landing gear buggies it significantly complicated control over the aircraft while running on the ground and in worst-case scenarios made one of the landing gears collapsed causing plane damage and aircrew injuries but that would be the least of the aircrew's concerns compared to one of the main and arguably the deadliest feature of the plane the downward ejection system unlike most of the modern aircrafts in which the pilot would be pushed upward in the case of emergency making safe ejection possible even at zero altitude the ejection system on tu-22 pushed the aircrew down with the minimum altitude for safe ejection at 350 meters considering that most of the accidents in aviation occur during either a takeoff or landing just imagine for a second the regular stress of the tv22 aircrews who knew that if anything happened with the plane below 350 meters it wouldn't leave them any chances to survive not to mention that on the early tu-22s because of the imperfection of the seat locks there were multiple cases of seats simply falling down out of the plane fortunately it happened on the ground but frequent spine injuries as a result of such falls didn't make it any better it was unsurprising that pilots didn't like the plane and there were even multiple cases when they refused to fly in tu-22 the production of the tupolev tu-22 was cancelled in 1969 yet by the end of 1975 out of 311 tu-22 is built at least 70 were already lost in accidents making the tu-22 the aircraft was the highest accident rate in the soviet air force thanks to that in addition to pricker which was the nickname the tu-22 received for its shape the list of the aircraft's name was extended to include aeroplane and de facto craft but since most of the accidents unfortunately included the loss of aircrew pilots more and more frequently began to call tu-22 the man-eater to be fair the situation with tu-22 became a little bit better after the mid-70s when the most dangerous flaws of the plane had been finally fixed but nevertheless tu-22 remained an extremely hard aircraft to fly they didn't forgive pilots of any mistakes only the very best bomber pilots were selected to fly to u-22 which was the only aircraft in soviet air force which pilots received flight training not in schools but directly in air force units the training program was significantly improved with the introduction of tu-22u a trainer version of the aircraft which became incredibly popular and highly appreciated in the soviet air force and not for the second cockpit that was made for the student pilot but rather for the air conditioning system which was twice as big on the trainer version of the tu-22 that earned the plane an all-famous nickname supersonic boost carrier after pretty much day one of the tu-22 appearing in soviet air force units the aircraft received the nickname supersonic boost carrier there were also some other less common names like flying liquor store and vodka truck but the reason was the same the impressive amount of alcohol on board which was used as a refrigerant in the air conditioning system of the aircraft of course tu-22 was not the first airplane to use alcohol in the system it had been widely used before for instance in the preceding tu-16 which also had an alcohol in its anti-icing system however the amounts on board were usually quite modest and they were using industrial rectified spirits meanwhile the liquid mixture used on tu-22 consisted of 60 distilled water and 40 percent of the puris ethyl alcohol which in fact was no different from regular soviet vodka the air conditioning system was very simple and efficient to put it in very simple words just so you get the idea the hot air taken from the engine compressor goes through the pipes to the evaporator which is placed in the tank filled with the refrigerant the air then gets cooled and goes further to the ventilation system of the aircrew cabin as the alcohol evaporated it took away heat and cooled the ventilated air as simple as that the consumption of the alcohol mixture depended on the operating mode of the engines but what's important is that it could be controlled by the captain during the flight who could set its consumption to the minimum or even turn it off the standard consumption rate of the alcohol mixture was normally set at 40 liters per hour of light and unlike other systems of the tu-22 the air conditioning always worked perfectly well using the alcohol mixture up to the last drop in the tank at least that's how it looked in the reports and official documents but in reality soviet airmen immediately appreciated all the advantages of this brilliant engineering solution unused alcohol mixture usually would be just drained off from the aircraft and then used either in a direct way as a liquor drink or as a liquid currency without going too deep into what life was like in the ussr alcohol was frequently used as an unofficial payment method in the soviet union for various types of goods and services whether it was hiring workers to build yadacha or paying for your kids education in university it all depended only on the amount of alcohol that you had and tu-22 provided plenty of it the volume of the liquid tank which was soon called a drunk tank bright by the type of plane being 225 liters on combat aircrafts and up to 400 liters on the trainer version of the tu-22 the first thing the young pilot would do after arriving to the air force unit from the flight school would be to buy a canister a highly important and must-have item for any pilot while serving on tu-22 according to the unwritten rules the third part of the alcohol mixture that was saved after the flight would go to the air crew the ground maintenance service which was responsible for refilling and disposing of the alcohol mixture with the appearance of tu-22 in the air force became one of the most respectable units on the soviet air bases funny thing even with time and energy consuming types of work like snow cleaning or covering the plane unlike other aircrafts when it came to tu-22 there was always a long list of candidates there were even unofficial standard rates for various types of work usually measured in heaters since the rubber heater which could hold roughly three liters of the liquid was one of the most convenient ways of carrying alcohol unnoticed as one technician recalled all people that were coming home after working on tu-22 looked slightly pregnant because of the rubber heaters hidden under their jackets the mixture had different names depending on the military branch for example in naval aviation it was called shlomka the derivative of schlem the russian word for flight helmet which according to the tradition would be filled with alcohol for the young pilots to drink after completing the first flight on tu-22 but the most common was the name used in long-range aviation spaghe the russian word for ap the name was made because of the resemblance of a long metal ruler that was used to measure the level of alcohol mixture in the tank with the punching women unfortunately not everyone was able to properly deal with the excessive amounts of free alcohol and for some error units spaghe became a real problem growing numbers of family conflicts and divorces forced the air command to strictly limit the consumption of the mixture and in worse cases even forbidding pilots to use air conditioning in flights at all though based on good intentions that order made the flat conditions for the aircrew close to a sauna at some point when dangerous rumors about shpaga reached the air ministry they even considered replacing it with some industrial non-consumable liquid but the air force representatives quickly pointed out their concerns imperfection of the ceiling in the air conditioning system already brings the smell of alcohol into the cockpit and if they were to use industrial liquid any damage in the ceiling would fill the pilot's cockpit with poisonous gas they even did an experiment and ministry of representatives while sitting in the tu-22 cockpit confirmed that they indeed detected the slight smell of alcohol of course they didn't know that before the experiment one of the air technicians was asked to put in the ventilation pipe a cotton cloth moistened and vodka that would produce the needed sand in the cockpit sure there is a chance it's just one of the many air force legends but nonetheless the question of replacing the spaghetti hasn't been raised ever since surprisingly despite all the troubles caused by tu-22 the aircraft had quite a long career and remained with soviet and then russian air forces until the end of 90s it's really hard to find something distinctively positive in the first soviet supersonic bomber to start with it completely failed as a bomber the role it was actually designed for out of 311 tu-22s ever built only 20 were in the bomber configuration and the rest of the planes were primarily rocket carriers and reconnaissance planes the role which the tu-22 proved to be relatively good at despite all the fixes made to the plane it always remained hard and dangerous to fly making it extremely unpopular among the soviet pilots arguably tu-22 caused more troubles to its own air force than to the enemy ones but to be fair to u22 served quite well by making a great impression on nato the plane was first seen during the soviet air parade in 1961 and caused quite a concern among the nato command the thing is that the main interceptor aircraft in europe at the time was a mach 2 f-104 starfighter which was capable of intercepting the tu-22 but 1961 was just the very beginning of starfighters deploying in europe sure there was an outstanding english electric lightning but it was only in britain and also still in relatively small numbers there was a superb french mirage 3 but 1961 was the year of its introduction so at the time their total number in service was little to nothing of course there was supersonic f-100 super saber but its total number was also relatively small and most importantly its maximum speed did not guarantee successful interception of tu-22 the thing is that the majority of the fighters in europe at the time were subsonic and the presence of the soviet bomber capable of supersonic speed was a real threat to western europe it was only later that nato had eventually deployed a sufficient number of new supersonic interceptors in europe and it was later that they learned the actual tu-22s capabilities but before it all happened the ussr already had received political advantages as well as started the development of the new tu-22m although having the same designation tu-22m was a fundamentally different aircraft that had nothing in common with its predecessor except maybe the troublesome start of its career but the soviet union would not be the soviet union but that's a completely different story altogether if you like aviation and stories like this please subscribe and hit the like button to support new episodes on this channel and watch my video about the unbelievable story of the f11 tiger the fighter that shot itself down with its own bullets that's all for now thanks for watching and see in the next video goodbye

Channel: Paper Skies

Views: 877,266

Rating: 4.923326 out of 5

Keywords: aviation, history, aviation history, paper skies, history of aviation, tupolev, tu-22, tupolev tu-22, tu-22 blinder, supersonic bomber, soviet bomber, soviet air force, supersonic booze carrier

Id: bKoHMXggEHU

Length: 24min 0sec (1440 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 03 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/bond0815]

Downward Ejection System.

Vodka based cooling unit.

Say no more.

[u/Expensive-Focus4911]

This was fantastic. I can imagine the look on NATO faces when, after scrambling to compete with the “state of the art” supersonic bomber that caught them by surprise, they learned about the disaster that was the TU-22

[u/motorbit]

bestest military aviation docu ever.

[u/BlazingFist]

Omg that downward ejection system actually had me cracking up. A third of the video being dedicated to vodka used in the air conditioning too lmao.

[u/spannermouse]

This guy has good style. Ive now watched most of his videos and they are all pretty good.

[u/whooo_me]

Very entertaining. And kinda terrifying.