History of Soviet Cold War Military Aircraft

I am not the only one that like the Ilyusion CAS plane.....



It wasn't awful... the Su-25 was just better in some ways.

It was still a major achievement for the Soviets at the time.

It is funny because when the Americans funded the Russians to test the Tu-144 for their own supersonic airliner ideas the Europeans complained that they spent money to raise the dead when they had Concords available for the job, but the Americans simply said the Tu-144 with the Blackjack engines is a Mach 2.5 aircraft and that is what they were planning so it better suited what they were working on than the slower European plane.

As for your favourite "Eurocanard's" roots...

From what I have read that was a very popular aircraft... safe and easy to fly... by designing it so the canard stalled first it essentially became stall proof... the canard stall meant the nose dropped and stopped the stall. The main wing didn't stall so it didn't lose control and fall to the ground.

It is the MiG-8... one of the very few MiGs with an even number.

The MiG-101 was supposed to be a CAS type aircraft like a twin engined bronco using two helicopter engines driving propellers and they had a twin engined multipurpose aircraft based on that which would have been the MiG-110 but neither were adopted.

GarryB wrote:
It is funny because when the Americans funded the Russians to test the Tu-144 for their own supersonic airliner ideas the Europeans complained that they spent money to raise the dead when they had Concords available for the job, but the Americans simply said the Tu-144 with the Blackjack engines is a Mach 2.5 aircraft and that is what they were planning so it better suited what they were working on than the slower European plane.

The last version of the Tu-144 (the Tu-144D) was superior to the Concord in all aspects.

GarryB wrote:It is the MiG-8... one of the very few MiGs with an even number.

It had a big role to play - it was used to determine the sweep angle of Mig-15 fighter!  

GarryB wrote:
From what I have read that was a very popular aircraft... safe and easy to fly... by designing it so the canard stalled first it essentially became stall proof... the canard stall meant the nose dropped and stopped the stall. The main wing didn't stall so it didn't lose control and fall to the ground.

Are you sure we are talking about the same interceptor - the Ye-8?!  

The Ye-8 was a beauty but - unlike your claim above - proved to be quite a handful!

This was a radical redesign of the Mig-21 of what was initially planned to become the Mig-23. Two prototypes were built.  The canards fitted with anti-flutter booms lacked actuators. The unpowered canards - that was first fitted and tested on an earlier experimental MiG interceptor, significantly improved the interceptor's maneuverability. However after a number of test flights the canard locking mechanism for high speed flights was prone to jam causing major vibrations.

The interceptor was basically designed around the Sapfeer-1 radar. Due to the size of the radar the splitter air intake was moved to the bottom of the interceptor. However the initial automatic intake ramp proved troublesome and had to be removed and was changed to manual control by the pilot. You had to be an expert pilot in order to effectively control it, but a far more serious problem was actually the powerplant/air intake. The engine was indeed a huge problem by itself, but the intakes made it even worse!  Engine surge was experienced on almost all the test flights. The upside was it gave the MiG test pilots ground braking experience on how to restart a jet engine in flight!      

Despite many attempts to improve airflow in the intake - the engine remained erratic and the compression stall issue was never resolved. In fact one of the chief test pilots and Hero of the Soviet Union was seriously injured and lost his ability to fly in a nasty accident as a result of a compressor that actually exploded during flight!

Several modifications to the Ye-8 were made or proposed to improve the design but in the end the whole project was dropped on account of serious technical difficulties/deficiencies.

So no GarryB - the somewhat promising interceptor was not "a very popular aircraft" that was "safe and easy to fly" - otherwise it would have become the Mig-23.