Фотофакт: Ту-214ВПУ авиации ФСБ в полной окраске

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The Supersonic Tu-144 (Alias "Konkordskiy")

The configurations of the Russian supersonic Tu-144 and the Anglo-French supersonic Concorde are strikingly similar. Given the history of Soviet technical dependence on the West we can pose the question: Did the Soviets use the design of the Anglo-French Concorde for the Russian Tu-144?

Design work for Concorde began a decade before the British and French signed the Concorde agreement in 1962. Wind-tunnel testing, which yielded the data for the shape of the plane, began in the early 1950s. The Soviets had many other pressing problems in the early 1950s that were more important than research on a supersonic delta plane. However, the Tu-144 has a design concept very close to that of the Concorde. Both have modified double-delta wings, fixed geometry and low-aspect ratio for minimum drag. Fins and rudders are similar; neither aircraft has tailplanes. The major external differences are relatively slight variations in landing gear and engine position. In other words, superficially the Tu-144 is quite unlike anything the Soviets have designed previously, it is a significant jump in the technological horizon (but not as much as the aborted titanium U.S. supersonic plane) and should have required many years of testing and design work.

Dr. William Strang, technical director of British Aircraft Corporation's commercial aircraft division, has stated, "I thinkit likely that they did have some knowledge of the work we were doing which led to the general shape definition" (London Times, Sept. 27, 1971).

In September 1971 the British government expelled 105 Russian "diplomats" from England on charges of spying, and specifically military and industrial spying. According to the London Times, this espionage included "information on electronics, transformers, semiconductors, computer circuitry, and technical details of the Concorde and Olympus 593 engine" (Sept. 25, 1971).

Finally, Doyle, a reformed member of the British Communist party, confessed to accepting £5,000 from the Soviets for information on Concorde, "including manuals, sketches and small pieces of equipment." Security was so lax at the plant that Doyle and his Soviet friends once considered smuggling out a 16-foot missile disguised as a telegraph pole. This was no real problem as Doyle had keys to all secret departments and security was nonexistent, but he balked at having to answer to his chief for a missing missile. Concorde was one thing, a missile was something else.

British and French engineers may have some justification for renaming Tu-144 the "Konkordskiy."