Who created the TU 104 jet plane. Russian Aviation

Back in 1953, the government of the Soviet Union entrusted employees of the Tupolev design bureau with a responsible task. The essence new job was to create a new passenger airliner. It was from this event that the history of the creation of the legendary Tu-104 began.

It was not in vain that the choice fell on this design bureau, because this Soviet aircraft manufacturer a little earlier managed to successfully complete the construction of the Tu-16 missile-carrying bomber, the flight characteristics of which were noted by many world aircraft manufacturers.

Airplane Tu-104

The Soviet aircraft developer decided not to create new project future airliner, but to construct a Tu-104 passenger aircraft based on a previously involved project used for the production of a bomber. Considering that this solution helped the designers save a lot of time, the first project on paper was presented by engineers literally a year later. The Ministry of the Soviet Union studied and approved the draft version. The approval received allowed the design bureau employees to begin developing the first Soviet airliner, the Tu-104, in the summer of 1954.

According to the initial project, the designers were supposed to equip the passenger jet airliner with two power units developed at the Mikulin Design Bureau - AM 3M 500. Taking into account the technical characteristics included in the project by the engineers, the future airliner had to accommodate at least 50 passengers, the airliner could lift into the sky a cargo weighing up to 1200 kg, and the maximum speed limit of the aircraft should reach 1000 km/h.

Of course, the design engineers did not borrow all the components from the prototype. The following elements were manufactured exactly as originals to equip the passenger airliner:

cockpit;
power unit nacelles;
tail unit;
wing and landing gear.

It was also decided to equip the air transport with flight and navigation equipment similar to the bomber, without the use of military devices.

The Tu-104 aircraft was equipped with a completely new layout, in particular we're talking about about a more spacious fuselage and air intake for power units.

The best employees of the design bureau took part in the design process. A very fast pace was chosen for the work, which helped aircraft manufacturers at the end of 1954 of the last century to present a finished project for evaluation and approval. After reviewing the results of the work, representatives of the state commission approved and approved the model of the future passenger airliner presented by the engineers.

Construction of the first model of the legendary air transport was completed in the spring of 1955 at the Kharkov Aircraft Plant (KhAZ). Testing of the aircraft at the plant began in the summer and continued until the end of autumn. Having received excellent initial results, the airliner was subjected to mandatory state tests.

Probably the most significant time period for the new model passenger airliner It turned out to be 1956. In the spring of this year, the Tu-104 aircraft joined the arsenal of the civilian Soviet fleet, and in the fall it took to the skies as a passenger scheduled carrier. For the first time, a passenger airliner had to serve the route from the Moscow pier to the Irkutsk air pier, making a transfer at Omsk airport.

Soviet design engineers, together with the Kharkov Aviation Plant, managed in a record short period of time to create and put into operation the first model of a jet passenger aircraft, the technical characteristics of which were superior to all previously operated analogues. It took Soviet developers only 3 years to create a completely new passenger airliner.

Salon Tu-104

“Cons” and some features of the new model

Unfortunately, experts also noted several negative aspects regarding the jet passenger airliner:

Insufficient comfort for those on board. This is clearly visible in the photo of the Tu-104 interior. This inconvenience was especially pronounced at altitudes exceeding 10,000 meters, as soon as the pressure reached 0.45 atmospheres. In order to protect passengers, it was decided to make certain changes to the design of the airliner, in particular, to install between the cockpit and passenger compartment sealed partition. A photo of the Tu-104 aircraft will help you visually familiarize yourself with the changes made.
The expert commission also noted that if air transport is too overloaded, then if one of the engines fails, the plane will not be able to continue flying.
In turn, the pilots also noted some omissions, in particular, they were talking about difficult piloting by air at an altitude exceeding 10,000 meters. Design engineers who analyzed the shortcomings noted by the crew again had to make changes to the design of the airliner. First of all, it was decided to reduce the angle of the previously installed stabilizer, which in turn helped to expand the range required by pilots at the moment of deflection of the steering wheel. The attitude indicator was also replaced with a more sensitive and soft model used to equip military fighters.

Subsequently, aircraft developers had to solve the problem associated with the landing gear, which quite often fell out under significant overloads, which the designers managed to cope with perfectly. Numerous upgrades and elimination of shortcomings have helped to increase the performance characteristics of the jet passenger airliner.

Over the history of its existence, aircraft manufacturers produced only 29 Tu-104 models, and then began to create more advanced models based on the first jet passenger airliner.

It was the Tu-104 aircraft that was considered since 1956 as the main aircraft owned by the famous Aeroflot airline, serviced by the most popular destinations from the Moscow pier. Moreover, the Tu-104 passenger aircraft was the first to serve international flight to New York in 1957.

Updated models

Design engineers continued to work on modernizing the passenger jet airliner. Thanks to the well-established work, at the beginning of 1957, an updated Tu-104A model was created with an increased passenger capacity of up to 70 people. Engineers also equipped the new model with a more powerful RD 3M power plant and new navigation devices.

About a year later, the developers presented another development, which was given the name Tu-104 B. The length of this model reached 40 meters, and up to 100 passengers could be accommodated on board. It was this model that was first decided to be equipped with a kitchen, allocating space for this room in the forward salon.

This model was not the last in a long list of passenger jet ships created by the hands of Soviet engineers. After all, almost every year talented designers presented updated versions of jet aircraft. Some projects were never approved due to the presence of numerous shortcomings, while others are currently being used for their intended purpose.

In contact with

In June 1955, an experimental aircraft “104” developed by the Tupolev Design Bureau took off from the airfield in Zhukovsky near Moscow. Factory testing of the machine began, which by the fall of the same year would turn into the Tu-104 jet airliner - the third in the world, the second put into operation and the first in the USSR.

The very topic of the “104th” moved forward only after Stalin’s death, although proposals to create a jet passenger fleet were repeatedly put forward during his time. But the leader, with his characteristic economy and penchant for repeated reinsurance, inexorably “cut down” such ideas. The country had just overcome the post-war devastation and could not afford significant “non-core” expenses, and jet passenger aviation in the early 50s was still not a problem of prime necessity for the Soviet national economy.

There is a common joke among railway students: “Soviet carriages are not designed to carry passengers, they are adapted for it.” When creating the first Soviet jet airliner, the Tupolev Design Bureau used a similar principle, but seriously and competently. The successful Tu-16 bomber was taken as a basis (the “104” aircraft even at one time bore the designation Tu-16P - “passenger”) in order to gain resources and time for the overall development of the design.

Thus, the task of training flight technical personnel was also simplified, and savings were also made on ground maintenance and repair equipment.

As one of the arguments in favor of creating such an aircraft, A.N. Tupolev cited the possibility of flights to high altitude, “above the weather” - propeller-driven passenger aircraft, which had a small ceiling, suffered mercilessly from bumpiness. But it was there that the first jet airliner was guarded by a new, as yet unknown danger.

When it comes to a passenger aircraft, the first thing that seriously concerns potential passengers is reliability. Who in the USSR has not heard the black song: “Tu-104 is the fastest plane: it will take you to the grave in two minutes”? For all its offensiveness, it somehow reflected a harsh reality. The plane was made in a hurry. Accident rate new car exceeded reasonable - by today's standards - indicators. Over the entire history of operation, 37 vehicles suffered serious accidents - 18% of the total number produced. At the same time, it should be noted that the “104th” behaved much more decently in flight than its English competitor “Comet” from the De Havilland company (23% of lost vehicles), which had an unhealthy habit of falling apart in the air due to fatigue. loads in a carelessly designed fuselage.

The first Tu-104 aircraft flew in early November 1955. Thus, development took very little time. During this flight, there were problems: during the flight, the plane was unexpectedly thrown up, after which control of the machine was lost for some time. The pilots called this condition “catch.” The reason for this phenomenon could not be determined. Despite this, the operation of the aircraft continued, and testing did not stop.

Khrushchev liked the Tu-104 plane so much that he even decided to fly it to Great Britain in 1956. Since the problems with the plane could not be resolved, he was persuaded to abandon such a flight. But it was necessary to demonstrate to the world the successes of Soviet aircraft manufacturing. Therefore, by order of Khrushchev, the Tu-104 was driven to the British capital.

The arrival of the Soviet airliner, according to the British press, produced an effect comparable to the landing of a UFO. The next day, a second copy of the Tu-104, with a different number, arrived in London. A message appeared in British newspapers that it was the same plane, and the “Russian priests” were “repainting the numbers on their prototype plane.” "Russian priests" are Russian pilots dressed all in black. Chief designer A.N. Tupolev was offended and, firstly, ordered funds to be allocated for the pilots to dress in something fashionable and not black, and the next day - March 25, 1956 - to send three Tu-104s to London at once, which was done.

This was a triumph for the Soviet Union - after all, at that time, no other country in the world had operational jets. passenger airliners did not have.

First regular flight Tu-104 flew on September 15, 1956. And in 1958, a bad streak began.

As further developments of events showed, the problems with “pickup” were not resolved. In August 1958, a Tu-104 plane lost control and crashed, killing 64 people. Designer Tupolev denied in every possible way that there were any problems, and the disaster, according to him, was the fault of the crew. There is a version that the plane simply did not have enough fuel. But after some time, the second Tu-104 crashed, going into a tailspin and crashing into the ground.

And two months later, exactly the same situation arose near Kanash.

On October 7, 1958, the new Tu-104A with tail number CCCP-42362, controlled by the crew of the most experienced pilot Harold Kuznetsov, flew the Beijing - Omsk - Moscow flight. The flight altitude was 12 kilometers. In the cabin there were mainly foreign citizens - a delegation of Chinese and North Korean Komsomol activists.

The weather in Moscow was bad, at the alternate airfield Gorky, too, and after flying over Kazan, the controller ordered to turn around and head to Sverdlovsk, which was suitable for landing. During a turn at an altitude of 10,000 meters, the plane most likely entered a zone of strong turbulence and a “pickup” occurred - a spontaneous increase in the pitch angle uncontrolled by the crew. Suddenly, the plane was thrown up sharply, and with such force that such a huge colossus flew up two kilometers, went up from the flight level, lost speed, fell onto the wing and went into a tailspin.

In the situation that arose, the crew did everything possible to save the plane. But the lack of elevator travel did not allow the vehicle to be brought out of death mode. Harold Kuznetsov, knowing that Birobidzhan history might be repeating itself, ordered the flight radio operator to broadcast his words to the ground.

Crew commander Harold Kuznetsov and co-pilot Anton Artemyev tried to level the plane, taking the helm all the way. But it did not help. Then the plane went down sharply, not obeying the controls. Thus, the plane entered a steep uncontrolled dive. On supersonic speed, almost vertically, the plane was rushing towards the ground.

Here the crew accomplished the almost impossible: commander Harold Kuznetsov, in two minutes of falling from a height of 13 kilometers, managed to radio the behavior of the vehicle. The connection worked almost until the moment of collision with the ground. The commander's last words were: “Farewell. We are dying."

The plane crashed in the Vurnar region of Chuvashia, a few tens of meters from the plane railway Moscow - Kazan - Sverdlovsk, near the village of Bulatovo. 65 passengers and 9 crew members were killed.

According to the results of the work of the state commission, the accident lasted no more than two minutes.

The information conveyed by Kuznetsov was of great value, since all previous incidents remained unsolved. None of the investigations conducted by specialists from the Main Directorate of the Civil Air Fleet, the Air Force, the State Research Institute, as well as the Tupolev Design Bureau itself could shed light on what actually happened. Many assumptions have been made: technical malfunction, design defects, poor weather, crew errors.

All the cones, of course, fell on the heads of the pilots, since in technical specifications no one doubted the aircraft. But the information transmitted by Kuznetsov dotted the i’s. From the information received, the commission concluded that the plane was caught in a huge updraft. None of the designers could even imagine that this was possible at an altitude of more than 9 kilometers, since simple piston engines could rise to a much lower height. Therefore, such a phenomenon as turbulence was considered a trifle. Until tragedy struck.

Kuznetsov's crew found themselves in the very center of a vertical air flow. Later, in the process of reproducing the flight, the designers were able to determine its parameters: the width of the air flow was about 2 kilometers, the length was about 13, and the thickness was about 6 kilometers. At the same time, its speed was approaching 300 kilometers per hour.

It was urgently necessary to find a way to combat such a dangerous natural phenomenon. As a result, the maximum flight altitude was reduced, the design itself was modernized, and new techniques for centering the machines were developed, but the problem was still not completely solved. The high accident rate remained at the same level, but what was the reason - either design errors or unpreparedness of the pilots - was difficult to determine.

The information provided was enough to find and fix the problem. The rules for centering the aircraft were changed, the angle of installation of the stabilizer was changed and the elevator was modified. Has also been reduced maximum height flight. The aircraft's tendency to get caught has been greatly reduced.

After that, the Tu-104 carried passengers for another three decades, and although there were some disasters (after all, about 200 aircraft were built and flown), their reasons were already different. The Tu-104 became Aeroflot's main passenger aircraft for a long time: for example, in 1960, the Tu-104 carried a third of passenger air traffic in the USSR. Over 23 years of operation, the Tu-104 fleet has transported approximately 100 million passengers, spending 2,000,000 flight hours in the air and completing more than 600,000 flights.

Much of the credit for this goes to Harold Kuznetsov and his crew. Here are their names:

Kuznetsov Harold Dmitrievich - PIC instructor
Artemov Anton Filimonovich - PIC
Rogozin Igor Aleksandrovich - co-pilot
Mumrienko Evgeniy Andreevich - navigator
Veselov Ivan Vladimirovich - flight mechanic
Fedorov Alexander Sergeevich - flight radio operator
Smolenskaya Maya Filippovna - flight attendant-translator
Goryushina Tatyana Borisovna - flight attendant
Maklakova Albina - flight attendant

It is not surprising that the plane gained bad fame. In 1960, the Tu-104 airliner was discontinued, and its place was temporarily taken by the Il-18 turboprop airliners. And since a long runway was needed to accelerate the Tu-104, it was used on domestic flights infrequently.

There was a need to create new passenger aircraft. Tupolev decided not to retreat from the intended path. As a result, the first modification of the Tu-104 was created - the Tu-124, which also had a high accident rate. Therefore, another variant was created - the Tu-134. This aircraft was more successful, therefore, since the start of operation in 1967, it is still flying on domestic airlines. And only in 1972 the first Tu-154 jet airliner appeared, which was not converted from a military vehicle, but was originally designed as a passenger one. This is one of the favorite aircraft of domestic experienced pilots.

Aeroflot removed the last Tu-104s from regular airlines only in 1979. But by that time the aircraft had firmly taken root in military aviation - it was used for training pilots of naval missile carriers, as a flying laboratory, for meteorological research and as a staff aircraft. The 104's flights were finally stopped only at the beginning of 1981, after an overloaded aircraft belonging to the USSR Navy crashed at a military airfield near Leningrad. The command staff was almost completely killed on it Pacific Fleet- 52 people, of which 17 were admirals and generals, including the fleet commander, Vice Admiral Emil Spiridonov, who owned the ill-fated vehicle.

Such a bitter experience forced domestic designers to think of new aerodynamic shapes that could withstand air flows.

Officially, the last flight of the Tu-104 took place in November 1986. But some people claim that at the very end of the 80s they saw “104s” on the aprons of regional airports and even in flight. The son of a warrior and the grandfather of Soviet jet airliners did not want to retire, remaining a kind of kind ghost in the impoverished but comfortably lived-in castle of the Russian civil aviation.

Near Moscow, on the Kiev highway, at the turn to Vnukovo airport, a Tu-104B was met, standing on a high pedestal. As it turned out, this plane was installed in 2006; before it, there was another Tu-104B at Vnukovo, which, by someone’s stupid order, was cut down in 2005. The aircraft's tail number is not real; the number USSR-L5412 was worn by the first Tu-104 that performed its first flight with passengers.

Konstantin Bogdanov, for RIA Novosti

On June 17, 1955, exactly 55 years ago, an experimental aircraft “104” developed by the Tupolev Design Bureau took off from an airfield near Moscow in Zhukovsky. Factory testing of the machine began, which by the fall of the same year would turn into the Tu-104 jet airliner - the third in the world, the second put into operation and the first in the USSR.

The very topic of the “104th” moved from a dead point only after Stalin’s death, although proposals to create a jet passenger fleet were repeatedly put forward under him. But the leader, with his characteristic economy and penchant for repeated reinsurance, inexorably “cut down” such ideas. The country had just overcome the post-war devastation, and could not afford significant “non-core” expenses, and jet passenger aviation in the early 50s was still not a problem of prime necessity for the Soviet national economy.

There is a common joke among railway students: “Soviet carriages are not designed to carry passengers, they are adapted for it.” When creating the first Soviet jet airliner, the Tupolev Design Bureau used a similar principle, but seriously and competently. The successful Tu-16 bomber was taken as a basis (the “104” plane even at one time bore the designation Tu-16P - “passenger”) in order to gain resources and time during the overall development of the design. Thus, the task of training flight technical personnel was also simplified, and savings were also made on ground-based maintenance and repair equipment.

As one of the arguments in favor of creating such an aircraft, A.N. Tupolev cited the possibility of flying at high altitudes, “above the weather” - propeller-driven passenger aircraft, which had a small ceiling, suffered mercilessly from bumpiness. But it was there that the first jet airliner was guarded by a new, as yet unknown danger...

When it comes to on a passenger plane, the first thing that seriously begins to worry potential passengers is reliability. Who in the USSR has not heard the black song: “Tu-104 is the fastest plane: it will take you to the grave in two minutes”? For all its offensiveness, it somehow reflected a harsh reality. The plane was made in a hurry. The accident rate of the new car exceeded reasonable - by today's standards - indicators. Over the entire history of operation, 37 vehicles suffered serious accidents - 18% of the total number produced. At the same time, it should be noted that the “104th” behaved much more decently in flight than its English competitor “Comet” from the De Havilland company (23% of lost vehicles), which had an unhealthy habit of falling apart in the air due to fatigue. loads in a carelessly designed fuselage.

The Tu-104 made its first regular flight on September 15, 1956. And in 1958 it began black line. The first of the planes that died crashed after running out of fuel. But the second one, for an inexplicable reason, fell into a tailspin and crashed into the ground. Two months later - an absolutely similar disaster near Kanash. Here the crew accomplished the almost impossible: commander Harold Kuznetsov, in two minutes of falling from a height of 13 kilometers, managed to radio the behavior of the vehicle. It turned out that the liner was caught by a powerful updraft, it was thrown up two kilometers, and from there it, having lost lift, fell almost vertically down.
The information obtained helped make changes to the aircraft design and operating instructions, which more or less mitigated the stall problem, although they did not eliminate it completely. The overall accident rate, meanwhile, did not fall; the Tu-104 was especially successful in rough landings. It was sometimes difficult to separate design errors here from the unpreparedness of personnel for new technology. At one debriefing, having heard enough complaints from the flight crew about the behavior of the machine, an offended Tupolev said in anger: “It’s not a bad plane, it’s you who don’t know how to fly it!”

However, the car was disliked; it was discontinued in 1960 and at one time was even successfully pushed out of Aeroflot by Il-18 turboprop airliners. In addition, the infrastructure of the regional airfields of the Soviet Union was then rather poorly developed, and the Tu-104 was very sensitive to the length and quality of the runways. This hindered its widespread use on domestic flights.

It was necessary to create new machines, and at first Tupolev decided to do without revolutions. The first modification of the “104th” - the Tu-124 - was also characterized by a high accident rate and repeated the fate of its predecessor. The “124th” remains in history mainly for the incident on August 21, 1963 - a successful emergency splashdown in Leningrad on the Neva, right behind the Alexander Nevsky Bridge under construction (one of four successful splashdowns in the history of world civil aviation). But the Tu-134 - the third in the family of “retired military men” - turned out to be quite a successful machine: launched on air routes in 1967, it still takes to the skies on regional flights. It is believed that in the near future it will have to be replaced by the well-known Sukhoi Superjet.

And finally, in 1972, the Tu-154 appeared on air routes. The first domestic jet airliner, initially designed as a passenger airliner, without modifications and military heritage, but taking into account the contradictory operating experience of the 104/124/134 family. A heavy, powerful and complex machine that became the basis of the Soviet passenger aviation. An aircraft that is still loved by experienced domestic pilots for its unsurpassed range of aerobatic capabilities. A worthy grandson, who confidently took over from his awkward “demobilized” grandfather the difficult and difficult mission of “the country’s air worker.”

Aeroflot removed the last Tu-104s from regular airlines only in 1979. But by that time the plane had firmly taken root in military aviation - it was used for training pilots of naval missile carriers, as a flying laboratory, for meteorological research and as a staff aircraft. The 104's flights were finally stopped only at the beginning of 1981, after an overloaded aircraft belonging to the USSR Navy crashed at a military airfield near Leningrad. The command staff of the Pacific Fleet almost completely died on it - 52 people, of which 17 were admirals and generals, including the fleet commander, Vice Admiral Emil Spiridonov, who was in possession of the ill-fated vehicle.

Konstantin Bogdanov, for RIA Novosti

There is a common joke among railway students: “Soviet carriages are not designed to carry passengers, they are adapted for it.” When creating the first Soviet jet airliner, the Tupolev Design Bureau used a similar principle, but seriously and competently. The successful Tu-16 bomber was taken as a basis (the “104” plane even at one time bore the designation Tu-16P - “passenger”) in order to gain resources and time during the overall development of the design. Thus, the task of training flight technical personnel was also simplified, and savings were also made on ground-based maintenance and repair equipment.

When it comes to a passenger aircraft, the first thing that seriously begins to worry potential passengers is reliability. Who in the USSR has not heard the black song: “Tu-104 is the fastest plane: it will take you to the grave in two minutes”? For all its offensiveness, it somehow reflected a harsh reality. The plane was made in a hurry. The accident rate of the new car exceeded reasonable - by today's standards - indicators. Over the entire history of operation, 37 vehicles suffered serious accidents - 18% of the total number produced. At the same time, it should be noted that the “104th” behaved much more decently in flight than its English competitor “Comet” from the De Havilland company (23% of lost vehicles), which had an unhealthy habit of falling apart in the air due to fatigue. loads in a carelessly designed fuselage.

The Tu-104 made its first regular flight on September 15, 1956. And in 1958, a bad streak began. The first of the planes that died crashed after running out of fuel. But the second one, for an inexplicable reason, fell into a tailspin and crashed into the ground. Two months later - an absolutely similar disaster near Kanash. Here the crew accomplished the almost impossible: commander Harold Kuznetsov, in two minutes of falling from a height of 13 kilometers, managed to radio the behavior of the vehicle. It turned out that the liner was caught by a powerful updraft, it was thrown up two kilometers, and from there it, having lost lift, fell almost vertically down.
The information obtained helped make changes to the aircraft design and operating instructions, which more or less mitigated the stall problem, although they did not eliminate it completely. The overall accident rate, meanwhile, did not fall; the Tu-104 was especially successful in rough landings. It was sometimes difficult to separate design errors here from the unpreparedness of personnel for new technology. At one debriefing, having heard enough complaints from the flight crew about the behavior of the machine, an offended Tupolev said in anger: “It’s not a bad plane, it’s you who don’t know how to fly it!”

And finally, in 1972, the Tu-154 appeared on air routes. The first domestic jet airliner, initially designed as a passenger airliner, without modifications and military heritage, but taking into account the contradictory operating experience of the 104/124/134 family. A heavy, powerful and complex machine that became the basis of Soviet passenger aviation. An aircraft that is still loved by experienced domestic pilots for its unsurpassed range of aerobatic capabilities. A worthy grandson, who confidently took over from his awkward “demobilized” grandfather the difficult and difficult mission of “the country’s air worker.”

In the mid-1950s, a leader emerged in the confrontation between capitalism and socialism for primacy in aviation: the USSR introduced the world to the Tu-104, a jet passenger aircraft. But in the West they could not know that the airliner had a design error that made it practically uncontrollable, and the reluctance of aircraft designers to listen to the opinion of a simple pilot would lead to the fact that he could prove he was right only at the cost of his own life.

The 1950s are the height of the arms race between the capitalist and socialist camps. This battle did not spare the aircraft industry either. A serious step in the development of world aviation was to be the introduction of jet aircraft, which had already been used quite successfully in the air force, into civil aviation. In the Soviet Union, such a breakthrough was the Tu-104 aircraft.

The development of the Soviet jet airliner began in 1954 by the Tupolev Design Bureau. To save time and resources, the Tu-16 jet, already existing and successfully operated by the USSR Air Force, was taken as a basis.

“The world's first civil jet aircraft” was the title that accompanied the Tu-104 in Soviet literature. But it did not correspond to reality. The British were truly the first in this regard - their jet "Comet" was created as a commercial jet passenger aircraft back in 1949.

However, the first generation of Komets did not roam the air for long: a whole series of airliner crashes in the first half of the 1950s. led to a ban on their operation at the instigation of Prime Minister Churchill personally. For four years the British corrected the mistakes, and only in 1958 the fourth, improved modification of the Comet was introduced into British civil airlines.

Such a pause by the British gave a head start to the Soviets, who hastily began to create their own jet aircraft for civil aviation. The Tu-104 made its first flight in November 1955, that is, the development of the airliner itself took hardly more than a year and a half. It is worth noting that the appearance, enormous speed for those times, a comfortable cabin and high standards of service - all this attracted a lot of attention to the new aircraft. Even the menu was personally compiled by the aircraft designer Andrei Nikolaevich Tupolev - in particular, it included red caviar and cognac.

However, such a rush caused a number of design problems, which together led to the mysterious behavior of the airliner in the air. The pilots themselves dubbed it a “pickup” - the plane was thrown up sharply, gaining altitude, then it turned over and quickly dived. In fact, the airliner became simply uncontrollable.

However, the problems in the operation of the Tu-104 did not bother the Soviet leadership, and it was decided to actively demonstrate the still unfinished aircraft, which behaved strangely and inexplicably in the air, to the West. The Tu-104 was taken to exhibitions and surprised aircraft manufacturers and ordinary people in Europe with it, who dubbed it the “Russian miracle”. Moreover, the plane delighted Nikita Khrushchev so much that he was going to fly it to London for the next demonstration, but fearing a poorly controlled airliner, the Secretary General was dissuaded from this idea.

When it became clear that a number of Tu-104s were suffering from this strange phenomenon, the Tupolev Design Bureau convened a commission to investigate the incidents and find the reasons for the occurrence of “pick-up” during the flight. It was decided to return the aircraft for testing. However, the temporary decommissioning of the “Russian Miracle” would look too suspicious for the capitalist camp. Despite the danger of new disasters, civil flights of the Tu-104 did not stop.

One of the aircraft's testers was Harold Kuznetsov, civil pilot, who flew specifically on the Tu-104. He had his own version of the appearance of the “pickup” - Kuznetsov saw the problem in the flaw in the control, the lack of elevator and stabilizers. But the high ranks, led by Tupolev, did not want to listen to the simple pilot. Moreover, the aircraft designer himself, refusing to admit his mistake, threw out a cynical phrase in his heart: “It’s not a bad plane, it’s you who don’t know how to fly it!”

And yet, Harold Kuznetsov managed to prove he was right, but the price was terrible: on October 17, 1958, while flying from Beijing to Moscow, the Tu-104, of which he was the commander, crashed in Chuvashia. The cause of the disaster was that same “catch.” Kuznetsov tried to the last to bring the plane out of the dive and continued to report instrument data right up to the fall. It was these records that made it possible to correct shortcomings in the management of the Tu-104.

However, these planes did not stop falling, although the cause of the crashes was no longer “catch.” The Tu-104 earned notoriety among the Soviet people, and they even reflected this in folklore - the words were superimposed on the funeral march: “Tu-104 is the fastest plane: it will take you to the grave in two minutes.”

Do you want to know what forced the leadership of the USSR to remove the infamous plane from service? Read about