TU - 104 - the fastest aircraft (10 photos) Bashny.Net

The world's first passenger jet airliners became a British de Havilland DH.106 Comet, regular flights which began May 2, 1952. However, in 1954, after a series of disasters, flying this aircraft have been banned by Churchill himself up to find out why. The USSR had a chance to become the only one at the time a country with its own passenger airliner, the development of which began in the same 1954.



first production Tu-104 flew on November 5, 1955. The plane was developed in record time. With him there were problems - sometimes during the flight TU-104 suddenly tossed up, after which he temporarily lost control. Pilots call this effect "catch." The reason for this, of course, looking for but were not able to find quickly. We decided to continue the operation of the aircraft, and to resume testing.



TU-104 was so pleased to Khrushchev that he decided to make a visit to the UK in 1956 was on it. Because of the above problems, it hardly managed to dissuade him from it. The Soviet delegation went to London on a cruiser. But to prove Soviet technological superiority (British Comet still did not fly), Khrushchev ordered to drive the TU-104 in London.



The arrival of the Soviet airliner, in the opinion of the British press, produced an effect comparable to a UFO landing. The next day, he flew to London the second copy of the Tu-104, with another room. The British newspapers reported that it was one and the same plane, and the "Russian priests" "repaint the numbers on his experimental plane." "Russian priests" - a Russian pilots, dressed all in black. The chief designer AN Tupolev was offended, and, first, ordered to allocate funds to pilots that were dressed in something fashionable and black, and the next day - March 25, 1956 to send to London just three TU-104 at the same time that was done. < br /> It was a triumph - because at that moment more, no country in the world operating passenger jet airliners was not.



However, the above problem tossing the plane will not go away. August 15, 1958 Tu-104 lost control and crashed for good in the region of Chita. 64 people were killed. Tupolev denied the existence of structural shortcomings at the aircraft and believed that pilots simply do not control the plane.
October 17, 1958 TU-104 operated by Harold Kuznetsov left the tier up, gaining up to an additional two kilometers altitude, lost speed on the wing fell off and went into a tailspin.



The fall lasted only 2 minutes, and all this time Harold Kuznetsov, without losing self-control, to broadcast information about the parameters of flight. The plane crashed in the Chuvash Republic, killing 73 people. But that information transmitted Kuznetsov (and the "black boxes" did not yet exist), allowed to understand the cause of the "catch up", which could not be determined before that for three years.



Tupolev was wrong. The cause of the disaster were found flaws in the design of the aircraft, which had been eliminated. As with any other plane, a plane crash TU-104 later happened, but not because of the "pick-up».