Drinking vodka may not sound that unusual for the crew of a Soviet airplane that has just
come back from a long mission. What is unusual though is that instead of a bottle of vodka,
they are having shots from a bucket. Here’s the interesting part: That bucket of vodka was filled
up from the very airplane that the crew flew back on. Look, it’s right there behind them.
Believe it or not, this airplane was designed to fly out with about 52 gallons of Vodka in order
to keep its crew of 3 more comfortable during the flight. Whatever vodka was not used up during the
flight would then be divvied up between the crew and maintenance personnel on the ground.
Everywhere else, you carry the booze. But in mother Russia, the booze carries you! It should
come at no surprise that Tu22, the Soviet Union’s first supersonic bomber to enter production,
was nicknamed the "supersonic booze carrier". But aside from that nickname, this airplane
was a complete disappointment, which earned it other nicknames like error-plane, Defectocraft
and worst of all, the Man Eater. But why Andrey Tupolev, the Father of Soviet aviation, ended up
creating one of the most disappointing airplanes that he had ever designed, is Not What You Think!
The Soviet Union successfully tested its very first atomic bomb in August of 1949
but the Soviet’s ability to merely detonate a nuclear bomb on their own land was not yet a
threat to the United States. That’s because the Soviets didn’t yet have a way to carry a nuclear
weapon all the way to the United States. They had developed a bullet, but they had no gun. But
within 3 years, the Soviets developed the Tu-16 bomber, which was indeed
nuclear capable and with a range of 3,000 miles, could drop nukes on US territories.
But by the time the Tu-16 was operational, new challenges and barriers were surfacing.
On the other side, the US Air Force introduced the B-52 Stratofortress in 1955 – a long-range,
strategic bomber, capable of delivering nuclear weapons to the Soviet Union.
This was the same bomber that starting in 1960, under operation Chrome Dome,
was armed with thermonuclear weapons and remained on continuous airborne alert,
24/7 for 8 years, as they flew to certain points on the Soviet Union's border.
The challenge for the American B-52 and the Soviet Tu-16 bombers was that they were subsonic,
and the era of supersonic flight had already begun. In the mid 1950s, both nations introduced
their first supersonic fighters, the Soviet Mig-19 and the American F-102. This meant
that the subsonic American and Soviet bombers were now vulnerable to supersonic interceptors.
The advancements with surface to air missiles was yet another threat to subsonic flight.
In the years that followed, Americans developed their first operational supersonic bomber – the
B-58 Hustler. It’s first flight was in November of 1956, and the airplane entered service with the US
Air Force in March of 1960. The Hustler could in fact reach a speed of Mach 2.
It is during this era and in response to the American developments that the Tu-22
supersonic booze carrier was developed. And who better to help with this than the
most prominent aviation engineer of that time, Andrey Tupolev, the Father of Soviet aviation.
With more than 100 airplane designs that had been used in both civilian and military applications,
Tupolev and his team got started … and they initially looked no farther than
the existing Tu-16 bomber, which had actually been developed by Tupolev.
To make the Tu-16 supersonic, the team decided to double its engine count, from 2 to 4 turbojets.
But after some experimentation, it turned out that a supersonic
bomber would need a brand new supersonic design. For example,
They were placed all the way back, on the two sides of the vertical stabilizer,
supposedly to resolve the unintended pitching of the aircraft when it reached Mach 1.
But having the engine at the back had many downsides. For example, it caused the center of
gravity of the aircraft to move toward the back, which meant in order to stay level, the aircraft
had to move quite fast, otherwise its nose would tip up and cause the airplane to stall. It is for
this precise reason that the Tu-22 had to maintain a landing speed of around 220 miles per hour.
To be fair, the American B-58 Hustler also required a very high landing speed,
and was even equipped with a drogue parachute to slow down upon landing.
But a brand new design, especially done under a time crunch is bound to have
problems and the first fatal disaster on a Tu-22 prototype happened in 1959.
It was a smooth flight until the airplane started going supersonic, and soon,
it began to vibrate until the crew heard a loud snap. The plane started going down rapidly.
The pilot was ordered to eject, but he stayed until the end, trying to save the airplane.
This unfortunate crash claimed the lives of the crew of two that were onboard.
Engineers only found one reason for the crash – flutter in the
stabilizers during supersonic flight.
You’d think an airplane like this was not ready to go into production, you know, until the bugs were
worked out. But in the interest of keeping things moving, the serial production of the Tu-22 began.
Another unconventional design on the Tu-22 was that the crew had to be loaded from underneath
the aircraft. The crew members would sit on their chairs, get strapped in, and lifted up into the
cockpit. The hatches were then closed and locked underneath them. The biggest downside of this
design was that it forced the ejection system to also work downwards in case of an emergency.
Normally, airplanes eject upward, which can allow for zero-zero ejection, meaning that
even if something went wrong while the airplane is stationary, the crew could still survive.
But a downward ejection system meant that the minimum altitude for safe ejection was at least
1,150 ft. This effectively prevented pilots from using ejection seats if
anything were to go wrong during take-off or landing. And guess what? Most aviation
accidents happen when the airplane is taking off or is about to land.
By 1962, about 20 aircraft had been produced, but they were technically still being used for testing
features and working out the bugs. A total of 311 Tu-22s were built, but over 20% of them were lost.
Aside from some poor design choices that resulted in crashes, another potential factor
was the makeup of the crew. There were 3 people onboard – One pilot, one navigator and one gunner.
There was no co-pilot, which was quite unusual for a heavy bomber.
It is suspected that having a single pilot may have directly or indirectly
caused some of the Tu-22 crashes, simply due to the pilot making mistakes. For example
by misreading the flight instruments, which were newly designed for the Tu-22.
A co-pilot would have provided a second set of eyes to reduce such mistakes.
Over the course of 30 years of operations, more than 40 crew members lost their lives.
This is what earned the Tu-22 the nickname of Man-Eater.
But there was one thing that worked flawlessly on the Tu-22, and it ran on 52 Gallons of vodka!
The comfort of the crew onboard the Tu-22 was quite important, and that included an
airconditioned cockpit. The air conditioning system was fairly simple. It took the hot air
from the engine compressor and ran it through a tank that had a mixture of 60% distilled water
and 40% ethanol – effectively a tank of vodka. The alcohol would absorb the heat and evaporate
at a rate of about 10 gallons per hour of flight, and in return, cool air would enter the cockpit.
Upon landing, any leftover vodka was drained from the tank and then distributed between the
flight crew and ground crew. The beauty of the A/C system was that it could be controlled by
the crew during flight. If the crew ran the air conditioning less, it meant that more
vodka would be left in the tank. That seemed like a very reasonable trade-off to the crew,
which would drink up upon landing and even take some home. As you can imagine the higher-ups were
not happy about this, but what can you do? The Tu-22 was arguably the most Soviet airplane in
the Soviet Union. Not only it failed to meet its targets and killed many of its pilots,
it managed to stay in service for decades while being chilled with vodka!
From its first public appearance in July of 1961, where thousands of people watched it
fly during a parade, until the late 1990s, when it was gradually phased out in favor
of the more-capable Tupolev Tu-22M, many variants of the Tu-22 were built. But one in particular,
the Tu-22U, the trainer version of the airplane, had two major upgrades:
One – the additional cockpit for the trainee, and two – the significantly
larger air conditioning unit, filled with twice as much vodka!