This show was on the History channel the other night, along with the other 3 episodes in the series (Japanese, Luftwaffe, Allies). This is the first time I’ve see the Russian one and it was quite an eye opener for me. The other 3, while informative, did not bring too much new information - especially the Luftwaffe one with the wide interest in Luft46 projects in the modelling world.
They discussed Russia’s own Ramjet & Turbojet project (One was attaching a pulse ramjet onto a Poliparkov I-16!). Both of which were cancelled by Stalin due to their slow development. Most history seems to imply all Russian jet technology were lifted from the Luftwaffe after their defeat, but evidently that’s not the case? Anyone with more knowledge in this field would like to comment?
Nearly all of the major countries involved in WW-II were doing research in fields of jet and rocket propulsion. The Russians were undoubtedly included in this. It is probably pretty much a common concession that the Germans were quite aways ahead of anyone else in these two fields. The west and the east both reaped huge amounts of information, hardware and personnel from German industry and science at the end of the war. The Russians added this to their own knowledge the same way we did and came up with some excellent hardware.
Both the Japanese in the 1930s and the Russians in the 40s, 50s and 60s have been accused of copying everything in their aerospace industry from the US. This is undoubtedly true to some extent, (ie TU-4 “BULL” is a direct copy of Boeing B-29), but they also did a lot of their own research and development. Some of that was superior to ours. Does SPUTNIK, Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereskova ring any bells?
Darwin [alien]
Yeah, I saw that also. The Russian episode was very interesting. Makes you wonder what kind of stuff they would have turned out if Stalin wasn’t so psycho.
So Swanny, going to expand from Luft46 to Russ46? Don’t know if you’ve seen this manufactur of Resin kits, seems to be a huge source of experimental planes, including the Borovkov-Florov “D” - pusher/Ramjet model featured in the show.
Man, I read an article on about 10 years ago, and ever since I have been trying to find drawings of it.
Does someone have those ? Or at least the name of that beast ?
