TU-4T "Bolshoi" Jet Powered Soviet Bomber

[Alvis 3.14159]

With the advent of jet aircraft, the leadership of the Soviet Union began to express concerns about keeping up with the decadent Westerners. One area urgently looked into was the Jet Bomber. With this type of aircraft, planes could hit capitalists fast and hard, without fear of interception

One of the first attempts was basically a jet engined version of the Tu-4 "Bull", which itself was a reverse engineered B-29. It seemed simple enough, add some jets to an existingly fast aircraft, and quick like borscht, you'd have a new, faster plane. Well, almost...

It turns out the airfoil design used on the B-29 had a limiting Mach factor, so the addition of jet engines only added 50 knots airspeed. The thirsty nature of early jet engines also meant that a massively large part of the payload had to be given over to fuel, and range suffered drastically as well. It turned out, the Tu-4T was capable of a slightly faster attack, at only 25% of the range of a conventional Tu-4, with only 31% of it's payload. A fully fuelled Tu-4T, taking off from Moscow, could only reach Kiev before requiring refuelling. Needless to say, the plane wasn't put into production, with only three prototypes being built.

However, the ever busy CIA and MI-6 were able to photograph the Tu-4T at a Soviet airfield, and it was assumed to be an operational aircraft. It was designated "Bolshoi" under the NATO naming protocols, and remained in the west's Cold War planning directives as late as 1967.




I based this on a Mechanix Illustrated magazine from the late 1950s, where they extolled the virtues of Guided Missiles to protect America. On the cover were jet powered B-29 types, being blown out of the sky by BOMARCs, apparently with contact fuses!
So, I took a 1/144 B-29 from Academy, moved the wing back a bit, raised the tail, and added the engines from a Revell 1/144 DC-8. Viola! Instant fake Russian Bomber!


Alvis Pi

[jcf]

Very cool realization of a good old pulp 'hobby' mag cover art.

One note, the Tu-4 didn't use the same airfoil as the B-29, following wind tunnel tests
of specimens of the Boeing 117 profile, Tupolev opted to go with the RAF-34 profile.

[Alvis 3.14159]

I did not know that! Drat, nothing like being wrong on a technical fault on something I totally made up

Kidding, thanks for the info.

Alvis Pi

[comrade harps]

The Ruskies were making a lot of jet and turboprop bombers based on the B-29/Tu-4 around then, so quite believable of them to test it out. 

[famvburg]

    Nice work, I like it! I like nearly anyting B-29 based. I wonder, tho, could the bomber on the cover be intended to be the Ilyushin Il-22? Also, does that B-29 model have an incorrectly shaped vertical tail? It looks mis-shaped like the old Aurora kit.

[frank2056]

That cam out great! I've always liked the idea of putting jets (or turboprops) on old prop planes.

[Taiidantomcat]

What a beauty!  Cool magazine also 

[Shasper]

Looks killa!

[McColm]

Great work.

[The Rat]

великолепный!

(Magnificent!)

[TomZ]

Great idea and wonderful execution.

TomZ

[zenrat]

Nice one Alvis.
Where to the main wheels retract to?

[Dizzyfugu]

This is a very good one! Love it. 

[Captain Canada]

Another wee beauty Alvis ! Love the way it looks. Sure would have been neat to have seen it fly. All that noise, and then to see it fly over with that big plan kof a wing !

I wonder how many of them would have went down when the warhead on that Bomarc went off ?

[Jesse220]

That is awesome. You should do a jet powered B-29 Superfortress