About Germans who worked in the USSR, there was a good joke: Russian, German, and American wanted to build a rocket. The German built the rocket. The Russian took the rocket and told, that he had built it. And the American took the German and said he is also an American.
For those, who didn't know the plot. German engineer Werner von Braun built the first cruise missile - V1 and the first ballistic missile - V2. The chief constructor of soviet rockets - Sergey Korolyov - used captured German V2 missiles to build his first ballistic missile. Of course, the forced labor of German technicians was used in this copy-paste process. Werner von Braun became an US citizen.
@@vsevolodsemouchin3492The V1 wasn’t designed by Von Braun. That was designed and built by Fieseler as the Fi103 / FZG-76 with the Fi103R being the manned development version. Both the V1 and V2 were tested at the Luftwaffe test site at Peenemunde. The first V1 flights occurred in 1942 but had problems with wings falling off due to engine vibration…
@@vsevolodsemouchin3492 I forget the exact quote but it goes like this: "The Russians would torture us, Britian can't afford us, we hate the French, so that just leaves the Americans!" In short, Von Braun was looking to continue his work, while living in relative freedom and wealth for him and his team.
I'm surprised this comment appeared only now. :) You're right. The thing is, lots of Soviet planes were introduced during such air parades, which the Soviet leadership used for showing their power.
Think about the time frame of these "reveals" at Soviet airshows and the location of the airfield (just out side Moscow). Westerners were limited to where they could travel inside the Soviet Union. Their entrance visas and travel were highly limited and watched over by handlers, KGB and other security services. I'd imagine it'd be similar to traveling to Best Korea today, and the limited access foreign dignitaries and press would have there.
there's a saying in russian - bilo vashe, stale nashe, roughly translates - was yours, now it's ours and the tradition most certainly is well kept alive as evident by first days of russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when toilets and washing machines along with anything else they could steal was transported back to motherland
Stories about nobody wanting to ask what Stalin meant by "Copy it exactly," aren't an exaggeration. There is a well known building in Moscow, The Moscow Hotel (original building demolished in 2004, but new building of the Four Seasons Moscow replicates most of the architecture) that is asymmetric. The left and right sides of the hotel were built with the different architectural styles, because the original design included both options for compactness, and it was intended for Stalin to approve one of these. Stalin just put his signature on the whole thing, and nobody dared to ask if Stalin meant the left half or the right half, so they just built it exactly as approved.
Yep, I heard about that too. Another example is when Stalin wanted to build an underground metro train in Moscow. When asked how to build it or anything, it was said that he was drinking coffee and put his coffee down in the center on the map over Moscow. Because of the coffee stain and Stalin demanding to be made, it was said that the coffee stain influenced the design of the modern day metro in Moscow
The fact that the flight manual only specifies _when_ it's unsafe to smoke onboard the aircraft, rather than demanding that nobody smokes at all, really says something about the attitudes of the time. They figured out the first pressurised cabin on any bomber in the world and they immediately went "Yeah, light up, just don't do it below one thousand feet."
In fairness, it would have been impossible to simply ban smoking in the context of the time. Nicotine addiction was all but universal. Cigarettes were part of military rations not as a luxury, but because failing to supply nicotine made men combat ineffective in short order. Given this, the people who wrote the manual really had no choice. Provision for the crew smoking had to be made, just as it had to be made for the crew drinking water.
My engineering professor told us about this story to highlight the dangers of mindlessly copying something when performing reverse-engineering. The example he gave was that a noncritical bolt happened to be missing from the hull of the interred bomber (leaving a hole to the outside), so when copied exactly the "new" Russian bomber's cabin wouldn't hold pressure until a fix was authorized (after much bureaucratic delay). Now I'm not sure if this is true, but the fact it makes for a believable story is telling!
You are confusing copying by someone who does not know the theory and does not possess the skill, from the Soviets who have quite enough knowledge and skill and simply "borrowed the idea"! That missing screw certainly won't fool the Soviets because they've mastered the theory that dictates what should be in that hole!
@@jerromedrakejr9332it isn't thT they didn't know what was missing. It's that in Stalins USSR, you did exactly as you were told. They were told to make a copy, so they copied them as close as possible. Including the flaws. The biggest difference between the b29 and tu4 was the skin. The thickness was slightly off because soviets used metric while boeing used imperial.
Those aircraft entered the USSR due to battle damage. I'd attribute it to battle damage being mistaken for a design feature over a brand new top of the line US Bomber missing a part entirely.
the problem with this story is the USSR had three B-29s. if a random bolt was missing on one, there were two intact aircraft to look at and at least one of them will have the bolt in place
There's also a legend claiming that Stalin demanded this bomber to be copied so exactly, someone jokingly asked him "SHOULD WE PAINT THE AMERICAN STAR ON IT TOO?" This is often asigned to Beria, since he's believed to be the only one able to utter such words and get a free pass...
In reality, they converted everything to metric and built an unreliable POS due to rounding errors when simply making tooling to SAE standards would have been cheaper and far more effective.
Here's a little story (whether it's true or not, you have to know the retired USAF pilot who told it to me). As it goes, a retired USAF Colonel (formerly a post WWII bomber pilot on the B-29 and later flew bombers up thru the B-52. I originally knew him from when I was stationed at Lackland AFB (he was getting treatments at Wilford Hall Medical Center). I later ran into him again at Nellis AFB in the mid 90's.). During a symposium on WWII bombers at Farnborough Air Base in England (site of one of the largest aeronautical air shows in the Europe). He was invited by a retired Russian bomber pilot to see their flight school near Moscow and tour some of the displays at the Russian Air Museum (just after the wall came down in 91). During the tour they were allowed to go inside several of the old aircraft including a TU-4 "Bull", the Soviet copy of the B-29. During the tour inside the airplane the old Russian pilot asked the American a question. He was initially reluctant at first as thought it might be classified and it supposed to be a friendly goodwill tour. But he wanted to know about a particular fitting on the B-29 that had perplexed Soviet Engineers for years. The military asked that GRU agents be sent to the US to find out. Later they just copied the fitting, hoping their agents could figure it out. The old Russian Colonel took our old bomber pilot to the back of the airplane near one of the positions near the "Gun Commander" seat (man that controls Central Fire Controlled gun systems on B-29). There was a fitting attached to the bulkhead wall next to that position. They (the Soviet Engineers) figured it was a not yet installed addition to the gun control system on that specific model of B-29 they'd confiscated during WWII (one of four B-29's that were forced to land in Russia due to fuel or flight issues after bombing Japan in 1944 and 45.). After a thoughtful pause, the USAF Colonel laughed and told the Russian the truth. It was a coffee cup holder probably riveted in place by an aircraft factory worker to hold he/she's coffee cup while they were working the interior of the bomber, and it wasn't removed after the job was done. He'd heard stories from other bomber flight crews of finding those cup holders in different places on the airplane, left in place by factory workers. Mystery solved, but he doesn't think the Russian believed him and they probably just chalked it up to American's hiding another secret from Mother Russia.
I read about this story in a historical article from Azerbaijan about 15 years ago. It's a humorous account involving one of the B-29 bombers that the Soviets copied after one landed in the Far East. One of the American crew members had left behind a personal camera, which puzzled the Soviet engineers. They couldn't understand why a soldier would have a personal camera, assuming it was both too expensive and not allowed on military missions. Conclusion was made that it has a military purpose. Naturally they've, decided to reverse-engineer the camera, and as a result, every TU-4 bomber was equipped with one-though no one really knew its purpose!
@@kyleh3615 Still a flying super fortress though. I would bet good money that this was a deliberate provocation, aimed at the international observers of this air show.
Although he fared better doing most of his time in the NKVD sharashka (R&D lab) than the majority caught up in the Great Purge. Other leaders of the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute were simply executed but Tupolev learned how to survive.
@@dlxmarks Tupolev were not only for himself with his sway. He basically rescued Korolev from the gold digging camp, one of the worst places in Gulag, where people were dying like flies.
@@alexander_d1277 Korolev had already been released from the gold digging camp and was meant to be sentenced to another eight years under less severe conditions (but again for made up crimes). That's when Tupoloev got him "released", although very likely not out of the goodness of his heart, but rather because he thought he would personally benefit from his work. I find it noteworthy how the Soviet Union ended up suffering immensely from ruining the health of this brilliant scientist. It turned him into a paranoid wreck and severely impacted his ability to perform his job. Korolev never fully recovered from the injuries and illness he sustained in the gulag and when he died at the age of just 59 in 1966, it sent the Soviet manned moon program into disarray, likely being the final nail in the coffin for this effort.
Before the ME-262 reached production, Hitler ordered the plane to be configured to be a bomber/ground attack plane. Later he was convinced to let it be a fighter plane
The myth of the Soviet beating the Nazi alone is very pervasive in the Soviet world as well. In Vietnam people believed that the US only joins the Allies in World War II when things are practically over, after the "great Soviet" beat back the German horde and the American only came in for the glory of "joining the war in the last minutes". They got thoroughly fact checked when asked: When did the "Great Patriotic war begin"? Mid 1941! they all said as good Z brains do. Then I asked: When did Pearl Harbor happens? They all said November 1941! I then asked them what were the Americans doing prior to joining the war on the Allied side, they said "selling arms to France and Brittan for hard currency like capitalist profiteer". When asked the same about the USSR between 1939 and 1941, they said that the "USSR was liberating the Baltic countries from reactionaries to reclaims territory lost during the Russian Civil war and a punitive offensive to relieved strategic pressure on Lenningrad". They goes silent after that, realizing that prior to joining the Allies the USSR was fighting with goals compatible with the Nazi while the US was rebuilding its armament industry to help the Allies, the USSR included.
Joining the war in the last minutes and taking (or trying to take) all the credit describes the Soviets in Manchuria for sure. To be fair if I had the soviets on one side and the allies on another, I know who I'm surrendering to. I'm not sure that's quite the point the revanchists are trying to make however.
ironic too, since after the US won WW2, Vietnam asked the US for help to liberate them from France, since we were liberating so many other countries from teh Axis powers.
I also like that homo sovieticus totally ignore that if British stopped fighting before Nazis roll in to USSR it would be much worse. Like Bismarck alone used same amount of metal as all tanks that invaded USSR… How many resources would be pushed in to the army if German fleet would be not busy in Atlantic.
26:33 Soviet version: "Start the Retro-encabulator; the hydromagnetic fluidity controller with reversable twin-spool electro-programmable thermo-fluxable device" American version: "Start the Putt-putt with the flooshie thingy"
The Germans were done in 1944 already, yet Stalin insisted on tge Western Allies to build a second and later even third Front against them. The Germans were incapable of large offensive Operations by 1943 already with Operation "Citadell" being their last Hurray.
And the pillaging they did as they approached Berlin. IF it looked vaguely technical, it got ripped out and shipped home. They did it, the Americans did it, the British did it, and even though I've never read anything about it, I'll put money on the French having a technical search unit in their occupation area too.
@@ArtjomKoslow the west had already opened fronts against Germany in Britain, Atlantic, Baltics, med, North Africa, and Italy prior to 1944. Not to mention supporting underground efforts in multiple countries, namely France.
Comrade! What is putt-putt? 🤣 Long ago when I was a kid, I read a Reader's Digest story about a Soviet attack on an American city. It was illustrated with a TU-4 flying over the city. I thought the artist just did it because he had no idea about Soviet aircraft. Took years before I found out about the TU-4.
Could have been a case of accidental accuracy. The artist using an American bomber as reference and slapped on red stars on it without giving it a second thought, and it just happened to be the one design the Soviets copied. Happens enough to have TV tropes declare "Accidental Accuracy" a trope, at least.
Shipping the entire Brewster management team to Russia would have been more effective. The Brewster designs weren’t necessarily bad but out of date and incapable of high altitude operations due to lack of an adequate supercharger (the P-38 had the same problem)), the build quality was appalling.
I grew up hearing an anecdote about the Soviets painstakingly copying every minute detail of a downed American plane right down to drilling bullet holes in one of the wings in the same position that the original was damaged
Since I grew up in East Germany, I of course knew about the reparations payments to the USSR after the Second World War. But I was never really aware that so many Germans had to work for the communists after the war. A very interesting video. Thank you for it!
Refusing to fight Japan wasn't the only time old Stalin did the USA dirty during the war, according to Alexander Pokryshkin in his autobiography written after the war a load of P-63s was delivered and he was told by his commander "The Americans said these are only to be used in the far east when we declare war on Japan, therefor comrade Pokryshkin if anybody asked you are still flying a P-39" and he walked off 🤣
To be fair, asking to host an USA airbase would have ended the SU neutrality towards Japan. Which would mean a possible land invasion at a time the Soviet Union had its hands full with the war in Europe, and the Japanese Navy attacking Soviets ships carrying lend-lease shipments to Vladivostok. It a rather unrealistic demand by Roosevelt.
Also, in relation to other comment from the video, many of the crews were officially interned but "unofficially" found their way near Persia (Iran), where they did "escape" to be retrieved by the British/American.
USSR refusing to fight Japan in 1942 was the right call and every Allied country knew it. After all, Europe first was the strategy they agreed upon the US joining the war in 1941. Besides, remember this was right during what most people consider the turning point of WW2, the Battle of Stalingrad. Without the Soviet tying up so many Axis troops (even by the liberation of France in fall of 1944 there were still twice as many Axis divisions on the Eastern Front than on the Western Front, and those numbers only reached parity by the time the Soviet knocking out every Eastern European allies of Germany), would North African campaign be as successful? How about the Italian campaign? Without those successes, maybe Italy could stay in the war much longer? And what about Operation Overlord? So IMO someone who argues that the Soviets going to war with Japan would shorten the war either has zero clue about WW2 history or is willfully ignorant. Possibly someone who frequently fantasizes in WW2 forums that Germany could win if they only did an X thing instead of Y.
Couple of trivia I would like to add (and maybe the author can fact check me) 1. TU-95 is also descendant of TU-4 and therefore B-29. 2. One of the three B-29s interred was named "Trampstamp" by its American crew and soviets had a tough time trying to decipher the meaning ending up translating something like "vagabond".
@@bluemountain4181 Exactly. "Tramp stamp" was definitely not a phrase yet in the 40s. It's like saying "One of the bombers was nicknamed "Hawk Tuah"; Soviet translators spent an extensive amount of time attempting to translate this unknown American phrase, but without success."
The Tu95 is NOT related to the B29. The Tu85 was developed from it, but that wasnt put into service. Tu 95 uses swept wing and turboprops... none of this is US origin.
@@S300V TU-95 engine built by austrian and german engineers, probably the airframe too. russian without forcing others to work for them would still struggle to build a steam engine. :)
Ah, another great example of Soviet forward thinking smykalka - copying. It's strange Muscovites doesn't like the West, they're emulating everything Western they can get their hands on. Thanks, dude. Your videos are a treat.
I’m curious… how many times did the US actually get their hands on a soviet aircraft and realized “Wow, this thing is better than what we have”? Usually it’s just “This thing is pretty far below what we thought it would be”
From what ive read it seems like they initially had trouble dealing with migs in Korea. Their solution was to deploy a new fighter which outperformed the mig
I think probably Mi-24, in terms of ordinance capacity it could be better than the AH-64. It is not a bad airframe and does come with some very nice features(like cargo capacity and extra pylons compare to western attack helicopters). But i would say it probably suffer in the electronic part.
@@yamchadragonball6983 The Sabre had better performance at lower altitudes and was a bit more nimble. The Mig-15 had better high-altitude performance and stronger armament. Overall, it was a rare case of two sides having fighters that were almost evenly matched. What gave the UN/US forces an edge was better training and rotation system, which ensured that there were always enough experienced pilots in the theater.
@@Qba86The MiG-15 had a catastrophic stall spin characteristic. If you are below 5000ft and you stall, an immediate ejection is strongly recommended before the aircraft went into an inverted flat spin.
Thank you for this video!!! Was having a kinda of down moment but saw the notifcation about your new video and really made me excited and really enjoy watching!!! Much love to your videos please keep up the great work as always!!!!
@@RCsev070 and who won it exactly? The last time soviets were first to do something was the first space station, Americans caught up 2 years later. First man on the moon? 'murica. Soviets caught up? never. First successful Mars probe lander? 'murica. Soviets caught up? never because failure immediately after landing doesn't count as success. First to Jupiter? 'murica. Soviets caught up? never. etc. etc. While I must commend their valiant efforts with Venus, there is no other way to put it: soviets lost the space race, just like everything else.
@@RCsev070Soviet space achievements were mostly the simple milestones that are only significant because they got it first and it was easy to put in newspapers. NASA's space achievements were much more substantial but very technical that if you put it in the news, only people in the know would understand the significance. Hence the only thing people remember is them getting to the moon (most don't even remember that they visited the moon dozens of times)
"The myth that Russia defeated Napoleon" isn't actually a new development in America. I'm 33, and I've heard that said my entire life. It's always been taken as a given that the primary reason for Napoleon's defeat was his invasion of Russia, often with very vivid descriptions of a beaten French army stumbling back west after having been defeated by General Winter. (Most of the time it's the only part of Napoleon's life that's even mentioned.) It's not a partisan political thing either, because I've seen people of every political persuasion say that. Your video here is actually the first time in my life that I've actually stopped and asked myself, "Wait. Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo was two years after the Battle of Moscow. That's an eternity in war time. Just how much of a connection is there?"
The ruination of the Grande Armee in 1812, leads directly to The Sixth Coalition and eventually Leipzig. So Russia did play a big part in finally ending him. I don't see how even if he won Waterloo, how he'd succeed with Austrian and Russian troops on the way (and Blucher as well maybe)
The idea is a result of period propaganda by Alexander I. He *really* made sure people attributed the shared victory to him and him alone. It was so effective that even after people saw Alexander was completely incompetent from pretty much everything else about him, they'll accept the Russian weather did it independently of Russian leadership.
"Start the putt-putt" reminded me of a running joke in college. When asked how to do something, my classmates would give the most vague and incoherent instructions possible while still giving the correct information. The goal was to sound like a bumbling idiot while making complete sense to whoever was asking for direction. That phrase was the perfect description of what the instructions would sound like. "Steer with your feet" was another good one when describing the steering characteristics of a one wheel wonder dune buggy.
Communism, mooching off capitalism since inception Also in the US we’ve been making the russia v Napoleon for years before the orangutan. The remark about invading russia in winter has been around since at least 2010
@@onlyhereformoney175 you literally described the mooching in question. They didn't purchase the license, they didn't develop their own. They stole the bombers and copied it, mooching off of billions of dollars and man-hours the US had to spend to develop it from scratch.
@@onlyhereformoney175not exactly - sure, R-3350 were very temperamental and caused a lot of fires, but those were teething problems, after cooling issues were solved, they were very good engines
No offense taken regarding the Metric/SI vs US customary/Imperial units systems. I’m taking a college course on Finite Element Analysis software right now and even when displaying and using imperial units for the front end(I.e. what the user sees) the software (ANSYS, if anyone cares) always converts all dimensions and other data into metric before carrying out any calculations. SI is just better
The US customary/imperial units have been defined to the metric/SI units since 1958. That's why all computerised measurements are calculated to the metric unit standard even if specified in imperial.
The Soviets ran extremely aggressive intelligence networks in both the US and Great Britain the entire war. While both Allies were supplying the USSR with massive supplies of everything from food and fuel to thousands of aircraft and tanks, hundreds of thousands of trucks and Jeeps, ammunition, shoes (millions of pairs) cloth for uniforms and nearly everything else, Russia was spying on her allies harder than on the Germans.
I’m glad to know that America did not send its spies to the USSR during the war, that the USA did not rob England during the joint development of nuclear weapons. I’m glad to know that after the first (and only, by the way) use of nuclear weapons, Churchill’s Fulton speech was made, dividing the world in half. The USA couldn’t take and destroy half of the USSR with nuclear weapons, like they destroyed countries before and after? pathetic communists, how dare they
True socialism comrade. The Americans and British spy on the Fascists for Comrade Stalin and we make sure they share their wealth of knowledge with us by spying on them. On a serious note I get not spying on the Germans as their intelligence agency was terrible. Every German agent in the UK was successfully turned, the Enigma machine was broken early thanks to a combination of Turing and lazy operators and my personal favorite, the man in charge of the Abewhr their military intelligence agency was part of the German resistance.
Two of the biggest mistakes the United States ever made was 1. Getting involved in slavery and 2. Yoking up with “Uncle Joe “ in WW2. Both decisions will continue to be a curse upon the United States for the un foreseeable future.
5:38 Muscovites condemn Allied bombings in ww2, but they sure did few on Warsaw. Not unlike in current times, the 'vital objectives' turn out to be housing.
Civilian bombing? you see comrade, those are military factories that produce soldiers, so those are legitimate military targets, and we are just denying the enemy's future recruits
The Russians explicitly requested the bombing of Dresden. This was to block German troops in Bavaria going to reinforce Berlin. What the Russians said publicly and privately have a complete disconnect.
This story is good for those unaware that the Soviets pioneered 4 engined , large aircraft. Actually the first 4 engined bomber was built duting Czarist times.
Some time ago I was watching a video concering the Russian copy of the American B-29. When the voices of the video were considering the need for new rudder peddlals they had decided to simply cast those on the B-29 and to cast new pedals for the TU-4. The problem was that the American manufacturer (Boeing) had cast the pedals with Boeing trade marks and the name of the Boeing manufacturer on the face of the pedals to be used on the TU-4. Maybe I dreamt this or perhaps I they did use the Boeing ruddler name on the TU-4 when finished. As a young man I spent a number looking at everything while exploring a B-26 that had been landed in the Nashville airport due to engine problem and remained there for many years. I could be easily wrong. I've been wrong when chosing 3 differnt women at different times of in my life.
Years ago I saw a two hour special on this subject. The bombers didn’t crash , on a mission over Japan three planes screwed up their navigation and didn’t have enough fuel to return to their base . The only alternative was to land in the nearest airbase unfortunately it was in the ussr. The soviets inturned the crews comfortable. And kept the planes. Eventually they built 300 of them. It’s amazing that they reproduced every nut and bolt on that plane.
Watching this video i have one main question, how did the soviets manage to fit atomic bombs into their B-29s. B-29s were not actually designed to carry atomic bombs and that problem would come to haunt the us during planning for the use of atomic bombs, It was found that the bombs did not fit, resulting in the 'silverplate' upgrade package to be rushed in order to allow B-29s to carry out the missions.
Atomic bomb technology was progressing extremely rapidly. And even Silverplate turned out to be largely unnecessary. It was originally needed when we had 2 shapes in development -- the Thin Man (extremely long) and the Fat Man (very wide). But, by the time we even dropped the bombs, we'd gotten the size down to the Little Boy -- which at a mere 1/3rd the width of a Fat Man, EASILY fit within a standard B-29. A Silverplate B-29 was only strictly necessary for dropping Fat Man -- though many of the Silverplate's other enhancements outside of capacity improvements, were still very welcome, if not required, for carrying Little Boys. For the Soviets, the situation was exactly the same. Their very first atomic bomb, the RDS-1, was Fat Man sized in dimensions and weight. But, it was never intended to be deployed. It was a test-unit only. By the time the Soviets began serial production of atomic armaments for actual possible deployment a few years later in 1952, they were a fraction of the size of the RDS-1 and easily fit within the dimensions and weight capacities of the TU-4 which had been in service for years by then.
It's actually crazy that in the late 1940s, the Soviets couldn't even copy someone's aircraft correctly without restructuring and redesigning their entire manufacturing pipeline. Whereas in the '70s they were designing and building their own aircraft like the su-27 and mig-29
Good point…this also applies to their stolen design plans for the Concord SST. At the Paris International Air Show in 1973 the Russian “Concordski” did a maneuver that caused it to break apart and crash. The Concord was never designed to fly full throttle with the nose pointing vertically straight up.
I would certainly call the B-29 the most advanced heavy bomber of World War 2. I'd hesitate to call the best, given its propensity for engine fires, and its nasty handling characteristics. B-29 crews were never all that fond of it. Admittedly, it could do things that no other heavy bomber in the world could at the time, but it was a very temperamental beast.
The b29 had an unfair shake. If it was deployed in Europe it would have been pretty good but because it had to deal with extreme range, the jet stream, and high temperatures it ran into serious problems
The fact that it could do everything other bombers could, and could do things other bombers couldn’t arguably does make it the best. Being the best doesn’t mean it’s flawless, just that it’s better than the rest. The engine problems were the fault of the engine makers, not the fault of the bomber. Other bombers which used the same engines (like the B-32 Dominator) had the same problems.
One of the best videos on this channel and I watched all of them. There is a great deal of research behind it. Great work Paper Skies! I guess that some people may not like the bit of politics in it, but I see it nesesary, because everybody need to see how Russia and many Russians really are. Greetings from the Czechia.
The meme here would be "did you solve the deicing issue" from Iron Man, only with "spontaneously and frequently catching fire" instead. I love that they simply copied the most expensive weapon system of WW2
I would seriously dispute the comparison between Vultee/BSha and B-29/Tu-4 stories. There was no real imperative to put Vultee into production and a lot of political games were played at that time around the concept of multirole/support plane between tha air-force ("VVS"), soviet air ministry ("narkomat") and various design bureaus. Tu-4, on the contrary, thought by Stalin as a part of a nuclear project - so it was much less affected by the administrative games tended to be played by soviet bureaucracy. Vultee was finally put into production on a factory that previously specialized on wooden plane constructions (while a factory building metal planes was rejected!). And no one allowed to disturb the whole soviet economy (and mass production of existing designs) to build Vultee in numbers. On the contrary - when copying B-29 to Tu-4 - whole factories were removed from the control of their original ministries and re-organized under a ministry of aviation or radio-electronics to produce components or parts for Tu-4 project. This, of course, negatively impacted the industries who weren't so lucky to participate in strategic russian A-bomb + delivery platform project, but soviet union practiced this continuously until it's economy defaulted 50 years later. So, stating that Germans were a key to success in the project - is probably a mistake. The ability of soviet union (or rather it's autocratic government) to extract resources from it's citizens and economy and put it into politically significant project(s) - is the real reason for Tu-4 success. Other than that - the video is brilliant! Thank you so much!...
To be fair: soviets did request the B29 during WW2 under lend lease, but were denied despite being an ally (seems US didnt consider them that, just useful tools... like it considers eveyone else). Plus the crew who landed in Siberia did so because they thought it would be safe... Option B crashland in Japanese controlled territory and probably get head chopped off.
Many have tried, and only one has succeeded: I have finally subscribed to Nebula. Thank you for the good content. I'm grateful for your insights and excellent presentation.
I doubt an ordinary Soviet citizen knew about any American car brands at the time, except for maybe Ford (since Ford cars and trucks were assembled and then fully built in the Soviet Union under license).
More like because automatic transmissions in them all. Surprisingly for you Westerners, the Iron Curtain was enforced onto the SU from the outside, and there was nothing like it in 20's and 30's - censorless foreign correspondence, foreign magazines and so on
(from the US) I remember being taught in history class that the Russian campaign represented the turning point of Napoleon, his defeat there started him going from a military winner to a mixed to losing record. It is not taught as a demonstration of the great military genius of the Russians but rather an illustration of their brutality and commitment to winning despite the human cost. As the when the Russians retreated they did a scorched earth policy to their own population to deny napoleons troops supplies. The US perception of Russians during the cold war was not "here are a bunch of lucky buffoons'" it was "here are people that make up for their shortcomings with sacrifice and cruel determination, they defeated Hitler by throwing wave of humans into the grinder, they defeated Napoleon by burning their own farmers crops and letting them starve".
Seeing the teardown of one of those B-29s in one spot would easily take up the space of 4 football fields laid out in quadrant form. That would be incredible to see.
Since they had three of them, this part is most likely an exaggeration. It's not like they were stupid, but rather that, as illustrated several times in this video, the undoubtedly talented engineers were severely hampered by the awful system they lived under.
There was certainly a small hole on one of the wings of one of the planes, which they were not able to decipher why it was. So they decided to drill a hole in the same place. This was more likely a manufacturing error, than battle damage.
Fun fact, the Soviets stole the American nuke secrets to build a copy of the American fat man. Soviet scientists told Stalin that if they waited a few more years, they could build a bigger and better bomb but Stalin wanted an exact copy of the American Fat Man. So that was the Soviet's first nuke. Afterwards, when they wanted a more powerful one, the same scientist who told Stalin to wait, built their own indigenous design bomb. The original concept turned out to be the USSR's second bomb and it was actually bigger than the american copy.
MIC circlejerk boardroom: "This lazy nikkero keeps plagiarizing our work, shittily, and is cocky about it." Skankworks: "Watch me troll this fa66o+." **designs Oxcart** Literal buckbreaking of the USSR over this.
Actually when Stalin asked for B29 bombers from US, he was instead offered the Helicopters (most probably R4). He denied taking this gift. When he later realized that it might be useful, US Santa refused to gift him.
My uncle once had a business partner who was a former czech aircraft designer. He told us this story: When in 1961 two us built F-84s landed in east Berlin, him and a few others were sent there to evaluate the aircraft. The soviets were especially interested in the radar gunsight and asked, if they could copy it. After a brief observation one of the engineers told them that the USSR has the industrial capacity to copy the switches and buttons.
So funny! It's even more funny when you realise than in 1961 USSR has already had MiG-19s and 21s with a proper radar gun sight as well as two captured sabres which makes the joke pretty dumb
@@vitkriklan2633He's a russian troll for calling out your misinformation? And what does the invasion of ukraine have to do with the discussion on aircraft jokes from decades ago?
@@RhaegarDefense Just because Russia had a radar gun sight at the time this doesn't mean they were able to reproduce a more advanced American counterpart. By the early 1960s already, American microelectronics were rapidly leaving Soviet designs behind, to the point that the Soviets never ever managed to catch up. Even to this day, they are still producing chip packages based on a Motorola design from the 1950s for military applications. How do I know this? Because these parts were found in a downed Russian missile (one of those allegedly hypersonic ones) from the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
That feeling when there’s a new Paper Skies video AND you check the time to see it’s almost as long as a TV show 😅my lucky day. Your stuff is so good that I just hope it’s longer and longer.
I saw a number of these sitting outside at the Air Museum outside of Beijing in the late 1990s.The original ORBIS DC8 was sitting in the same field. Most of the smaller airplanes were in the tunnel in the base of the mountain and the runway started at the base of the mountain near one of the tunnel exits.
I cannot express how much I despise the Soviet leadership during WW2. They placed no interest in helping the allies end the war sooner unless it directly went towards settling their grudge with Hitler for betraying them. Stalin was a pathetic man, and an even worse war leader.
I go so far as to say Stalin likely caused far more Soviet deaths, due to decisions he was making before and during the early to mid-war period, than someone with more sense and far less paranoia. Fully convinced they would've had fewer losses if someone else had been running the show. Stalin was a curse yet they still love the butcher.
At 4:36, just for a second....a PE-8 starting a takeoff roll with the tail wheel unlocked.....How would you like to ground-loop a new 4 engine Soviet bomber on testing?...on film?....in front of Stalin and Beria?
@@no1DdC As a matter of fact, looking more closely of that footage of the PE-8, I think that it was from a visit to the USA in 1942 by the Soviet Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov....So it would have been a ground loop, on American film and at an American base, with the Soviet Foreign Minister aboard, who happens to be a close and longtime confidant to Stalin....My mind boggles at the potential significance.
Get Nebula using my link for *40% off an annual subscription* : go.nebula.tv/paperskies
You should invest in a dictionary and look up the difference between STOLE and COPIED.....
@@AMD7027 somebody made the Russian shill mad
Seeing your exclusives has made me resign up for nebula. That and some of real time history's stuff
thank you for another great video. I really enjoy your content here and on Nebula.
@@AMD7027 stay mad *P-I-D-O-R*
About Germans who worked in the USSR, there was a good joke:
Russian, German, and American wanted to build a rocket. The German built the rocket. The Russian took the rocket and told, that he had built it. And the American took the German and said he is also an American.
For those, who didn't know the plot.
German engineer Werner von Braun built the first cruise missile - V1 and the first ballistic missile - V2.
The chief constructor of soviet rockets - Sergey Korolyov - used captured German V2 missiles to build his first ballistic missile. Of course, the forced labor of German technicians was used in this copy-paste process.
Werner von Braun became an US citizen.
Very true lol.
@@vsevolodsemouchin3492The V1 wasn’t designed by Von Braun.
That was designed and built by Fieseler as the Fi103 / FZG-76 with the Fi103R being the manned development version.
Both the V1 and V2 were tested at the Luftwaffe test site at Peenemunde.
The first V1 flights occurred in 1942 but had problems with wings falling off due to engine vibration…
@@vsevolodsemouchin3492 I forget the exact quote but it goes like this: "The Russians would torture us, Britian can't afford us, we hate the French, so that just leaves the Americans!"
In short, Von Braun was looking to continue his work, while living in relative freedom and wealth for him and his team.
@@allangibson8494thanks that is interesting, off on another trail thank fren
I swear, all this stories start at an airshow in Tushino airfield.
I'm surprised this comment appeared only now. :)
You're right. The thing is, lots of Soviet planes were introduced during such air parades, which the Soviet leadership used for showing their power.
Think about the time frame of these "reveals" at Soviet airshows and the location of the airfield (just out side Moscow).
Westerners were limited to where they could travel inside the Soviet Union. Their entrance visas and travel were highly limited and watched over by handlers, KGB and other security services. I'd imagine it'd be similar to traveling to Best Korea today, and the limited access foreign dignitaries and press would have there.
@@slavabtomat"Best Korea" duh...
@@Bruh-qb8ir He obviously means North Korea.
@@slavabtomat
3:17 -> 3:24
Notice who’s at leftard Ike’s left
"You designed a bomber?"
Andrei Tupolev: "Someone did."
The USA: Hey where's my B-29 that landed on your airfield?
The USSR: You mean OUR B-29 comrade.
*SOVIET NATIONAL ANTHEM PLAYS*
there's a saying in russian - bilo vashe, stale nashe, roughly translates - was yours, now it's ours
and the tradition most certainly is well kept alive as evident by first days of russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when toilets and washing machines along with anything else they could steal was transported back to motherland
@@dsfs17987 keep munching on copecorn stolen from Pyacherotka
@@dsfs17987 also known as Zapzarap
I think you mean _the people's_ B-29, comrade.
Stories about nobody wanting to ask what Stalin meant by "Copy it exactly," aren't an exaggeration. There is a well known building in Moscow, The Moscow Hotel (original building demolished in 2004, but new building of the Four Seasons Moscow replicates most of the architecture) that is asymmetric. The left and right sides of the hotel were built with the different architectural styles, because the original design included both options for compactness, and it was intended for Stalin to approve one of these. Stalin just put his signature on the whole thing, and nobody dared to ask if Stalin meant the left half or the right half, so they just built it exactly as approved.
Yep, I heard about that too. Another example is when Stalin wanted to build an underground metro train in Moscow. When asked how to build it or anything, it was said that he was drinking coffee and put his coffee down in the center on the map over Moscow. Because of the coffee stain and Stalin demanding to be made, it was said that the coffee stain influenced the design of the modern day metro in Moscow
@@28ebdh3udnav that one is doubtful... because he drank tea.
@@TheArklyteTea stains too.
@@TheArklyte Tea cup?
well known and true are not the same thing.
The fact that the flight manual only specifies _when_ it's unsafe to smoke onboard the aircraft, rather than demanding that nobody smokes at all, really says something about the attitudes of the time. They figured out the first pressurised cabin on any bomber in the world and they immediately went "Yeah, light up, just don't do it below one thousand feet."
In fairness, it would have been impossible to simply ban smoking in the context of the time. Nicotine addiction was all but universal. Cigarettes were part of military rations not as a luxury, but because failing to supply nicotine made men combat ineffective in short order. Given this, the people who wrote the manual really had no choice. Provision for the crew smoking had to be made, just as it had to be made for the crew drinking water.
THE GOAT RETURNS
Okay, now I want to know if there are any cool stories that involve putting goats onto planes, and to hear them told by Paper Skies.
@@SephirothRyu Not as far as I know... however the USAF did test the ejector seat for a supersonic nuclear bomber using a Bear.
@AnimarchyHistory good to see you lurking around, my friend! (my turn now, hehe)
@@Chubzic. Slava Ukraine friend! I had a feeling you might be around 😆
@@AnimarchyHistory Героям Слава, that feeling (or how we name it "чуйка" (chuyka)) didn't let you down ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Tu-4 engines catching fire.
Lore accurate B-29 confirmed.
My engineering professor told us about this story to highlight the dangers of mindlessly copying something when performing reverse-engineering. The example he gave was that a noncritical bolt happened to be missing from the hull of the interred bomber (leaving a hole to the outside), so when copied exactly the "new" Russian bomber's cabin wouldn't hold pressure until a fix was authorized (after much bureaucratic delay). Now I'm not sure if this is true, but the fact it makes for a believable story is telling!
There was also the story that the Russians also copied the name Boeing moulded into the rubber pads on the control pedals.
You are confusing copying by someone who does not know the theory and does not possess the skill, from the Soviets who have quite enough knowledge and skill and simply "borrowed the idea"! That missing screw certainly won't fool the Soviets because they've mastered the theory that dictates what should be in that hole!
@@jerromedrakejr9332it isn't thT they didn't know what was missing. It's that in Stalins USSR, you did exactly as you were told. They were told to make a copy, so they copied them as close as possible. Including the flaws.
The biggest difference between the b29 and tu4 was the skin. The thickness was slightly off because soviets used metric while boeing used imperial.
Those aircraft entered the USSR due to battle damage. I'd attribute it to battle damage being mistaken for a design feature over a brand new top of the line US Bomber missing a part entirely.
the problem with this story is the USSR had three B-29s. if a random bolt was missing on one, there were two intact aircraft to look at and at least one of them will have the bolt in place
There's also a legend claiming that Stalin demanded this bomber to be copied so exactly, someone jokingly asked him "SHOULD WE PAINT THE AMERICAN STAR ON IT TOO?" This is often asigned to Beria, since he's believed to be the only one able to utter such words and get a free pass...
Beria did get his.
@@jaybee9269 better late than never I guess
Yes they did copy the painting outside and inside.But copy was like 75% in the end.
In reality, they converted everything to metric and built an unreliable POS due to rounding errors when simply making tooling to SAE standards would have been cheaper and far more effective.
Here's a little story (whether it's true or not, you have to know the retired USAF pilot who told it to me). As it goes, a retired USAF Colonel (formerly a post WWII bomber pilot on the B-29 and later flew bombers up thru the B-52. I originally knew him from when I was stationed at Lackland AFB (he was getting treatments at Wilford Hall Medical Center). I later ran into him again at Nellis AFB in the mid 90's.). During a symposium on WWII bombers at Farnborough Air Base in England (site of one of the largest aeronautical air shows in the Europe). He was invited by a retired Russian bomber pilot to see their flight school near Moscow and tour some of the displays at the Russian Air Museum (just after the wall came down in 91). During the tour they were allowed to go inside several of the old aircraft including a TU-4 "Bull", the Soviet copy of the B-29. During the tour inside the airplane the old Russian pilot asked the American a question. He was initially reluctant at first as thought it might be classified and it supposed to be a friendly goodwill tour. But he wanted to know about a particular fitting on the B-29 that had perplexed Soviet Engineers for years. The military asked that GRU agents be sent to the US to find out. Later they just copied the fitting, hoping their agents could figure it out. The old Russian Colonel took our old bomber pilot to the back of the airplane near one of the positions near the "Gun Commander" seat (man that controls Central Fire Controlled gun systems on B-29). There was a fitting attached to the bulkhead wall next to that position. They (the Soviet Engineers) figured it was a not yet installed addition to the gun control system on that specific model of B-29 they'd confiscated during WWII (one of four B-29's that were forced to land in Russia due to fuel or flight issues after bombing Japan in 1944 and 45.). After a thoughtful pause, the USAF Colonel laughed and told the Russian the truth. It was a coffee cup holder probably riveted in place by an aircraft factory worker to hold he/she's coffee cup while they were working the interior of the bomber, and it wasn't removed after the job was done. He'd heard stories from other bomber flight crews of finding those cup holders in different places on the airplane, left in place by factory workers. Mystery solved, but he doesn't think the Russian believed him and they probably just chalked it up to American's hiding another secret from Mother Russia.
They copied the B-29 so well that it came with the engine fires😂😂
lol, that was exactly my thought!
They had their own engine design that actually worked properly
so did the US in the end
@@ericadams3428well something happened because Russian and Chinese engines these days are not even in the same ball park as American engines
@@ericadams3428it didn't tho
I read about this story in a historical article from Azerbaijan about 15 years ago. It's a humorous account involving one of the B-29 bombers that the Soviets copied after one landed in the Far East. One of the American crew members had left behind a personal camera, which puzzled the Soviet engineers. They couldn't understand why a soldier would have a personal camera, assuming it was both too expensive and not allowed on military missions. Conclusion was made that it has a military purpose. Naturally they've, decided to reverse-engineer the camera, and as a result, every TU-4 bomber was equipped with one-though no one really knew its purpose!
Lol, that's actually funny
I wouldn't be surprised since how many people just put their head down and copied the aircraft. 😂
Can't an American bomber pilot enjoy their photography hobby without getting judged.
@@kingace6186capitalist hobbies 😂
Absolutely confirm. I got this story from my father who was 2-nd navigator on TU-4. It’s FED-2 camera. It still works 😂
The audacity of calling them "flying fortresses" too.
"Da, we builded plane"
The flying fortress is the B-17
The 29 is the super fortress
@@kyleh3615 Very different indeed. Those who disagree will be sent to summer vacation in Siberia
@@kyleh3615 Still a flying super fortress though. I would bet good money that this was a deliberate provocation, aimed at the international observers of this air show.
"Da, we builded plane" tired russaphobic shit are gen z really doing this cold war bullshit nonsense too? Fuck
What audacity ? These planes were built specifically to deter West from attacking USSR (and they did have plans to do so) .
Tu-4 Stratofortresky, brand new Russian bomber found in Americans attic
the Tu-4 Стратокрепость (Strato-krepost)
"dismissed due to death"
followed by the graphic of feet swinging...
Tupolev was a victim of Stalin’s purges and imprisoned for a time. I wouldn’t be surprised if Tupolev was being darkly sarcastic about that joke.
Although he fared better doing most of his time in the NKVD sharashka (R&D lab) than the majority caught up in the Great Purge. Other leaders of the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute were simply executed but Tupolev learned how to survive.
@@dlxmarksthe fact that the NKVD had an R&D lab at all is quite telling of the way the Soviet system treated its engineers
Same for Korelev, many Soviet notables got a stay in Hotel Siberia during the Bad Old Times.
@@dlxmarks Tupolev were not only for himself with his sway. He basically rescued Korolev from the gold digging camp, one of the worst places in Gulag, where people were dying like flies.
@@alexander_d1277 Korolev had already been released from the gold digging camp and was meant to be sentenced to another eight years under less severe conditions (but again for made up crimes). That's when Tupoloev got him "released", although very likely not out of the goodness of his heart, but rather because he thought he would personally benefit from his work.
I find it noteworthy how the Soviet Union ended up suffering immensely from ruining the health of this brilliant scientist. It turned him into a paranoid wreck and severely impacted his ability to perform his job. Korolev never fully recovered from the injuries and illness he sustained in the gulag and when he died at the age of just 59 in 1966, it sent the Soviet manned moon program into disarray, likely being the final nail in the coffin for this effort.
Now I can also send it to my friends who don't have Nebula! Thank you for your amazing work, I'll rewatch some of the old videos the next days :)
At least Hitler wasn't involved. He would have insisted that it have dive bombing capability.
That was Udet, if I remember correctly.
Before the ME-262 reached production, Hitler ordered the plane to be configured to be a bomber/ground attack plane. Later he was convinced to let it be a fighter plane
Me: "You can't make a 44-minute video about the Soviets copying an American bomber!"
Paper Skies: "Hold my kvass."
This is going to be a nice evening.
I developed sort of a taste for kvass incidentally. It's not bad, but it's not good either.
@@evanmurphy2473 "Not great, not terrible."
Lmao
The myth of the Soviet beating the Nazi alone is very pervasive in the Soviet world as well. In Vietnam people believed that the US only joins the Allies in World War II when things are practically over, after the "great Soviet" beat back the German horde and the American only came in for the glory of "joining the war in the last minutes".
They got thoroughly fact checked when asked: When did the "Great Patriotic war begin"? Mid 1941! they all said as good Z brains do. Then I asked: When did Pearl Harbor happens? They all said November 1941! I then asked them what were the Americans doing prior to joining the war on the Allied side, they said "selling arms to France and Brittan for hard currency like capitalist profiteer". When asked the same about the USSR between 1939 and 1941, they said that the "USSR was liberating the Baltic countries from reactionaries to reclaims territory lost during the Russian Civil war and a punitive offensive to relieved strategic pressure on Lenningrad". They goes silent after that, realizing that prior to joining the Allies the USSR was fighting with goals compatible with the Nazi while the US was rebuilding its armament industry to help the Allies, the USSR included.
Joining the war in the last minutes and taking (or trying to take) all the credit describes the Soviets in Manchuria for sure. To be fair if I had the soviets on one side and the allies on another, I know who I'm surrendering to. I'm not sure that's quite the point the revanchists are trying to make however.
Yeah, next time remind them about Ribbentrop - Molotov as well
Or the Russians declaring war on Japan after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on two Japanese cities.
ironic too, since after the US won WW2, Vietnam asked the US for help to liberate them from France, since we were liberating so many other countries from teh Axis powers.
I also like that homo sovieticus totally ignore that if British stopped fighting before Nazis roll in to USSR it would be much worse. Like Bismarck alone used same amount of metal as all tanks that invaded USSR… How many resources would be pushed in to the army if German fleet would be not busy in Atlantic.
Not only B-29! Ford Model A, Studebaker US6, 1953 Ford Crestline, old american refrigerators, Opel Kadett К38, Fiat, NSU Prinz 4 and so on.
There is a slight difference.
They bought the license for Ford Model AA and AAA and asked for a special variant for Fiat 127.
They colabed with Fiat and this resulted in WAZ producing Lada cars. Mainly variations of Fiat 124 but made from whatever they got.
Yes, yes, copies everywhere. Then look at 1986 Chrysler LeBaron and Oldsmobile Cutlass. At Renault 18 and VW Passat B1.
...Ever heard of fashion?
26:33
Soviet version: "Start the Retro-encabulator; the hydromagnetic fluidity controller with reversable twin-spool electro-programmable thermo-fluxable device"
American version: "Start the Putt-putt with the flooshie thingy"
Putt-Putt go brrrrrrr
The...WHAT?!!? 😂😂😂😂
@@scarecrow108productions7The barostatic cosmoscope
"Start the Putt-putt..." when youre so stupid that nobody can understand how smart you are.
Putt putt... As soon as we heard it, we all thought "Must be a mono-cylindric APU".
I had to laugh out loud when he asked:" What was different in 1945?"
Because before he said it, my thought was :" The Germans!"
The Germans were done in 1944 already, yet Stalin insisted on tge Western Allies to build a second and later even third Front against them. The Germans were incapable of large offensive Operations by 1943 already with Operation "Citadell" being their last Hurray.
I thought Lend Lease.
And the pillaging they did as they approached Berlin. IF it looked vaguely technical, it got ripped out and shipped home. They did it, the Americans did it, the British did it, and even though I've never read anything about it, I'll put money on the French having a technical search unit in their occupation area too.
Even in 1945 Western Allies were fighting roughly 25% of German forces. Bulk of Wehrmacht was always in the East.
@@ArtjomKoslow the west had already opened fronts against Germany in Britain, Atlantic, Baltics, med, North Africa, and Italy prior to 1944. Not to mention supporting underground efforts in multiple countries, namely France.
Comrade! What is putt-putt? 🤣 Long ago when I was a kid, I read a Reader's Digest story about a Soviet attack on an American city. It was illustrated with a TU-4 flying over the city. I thought the artist just did it because he had no idea about Soviet aircraft. Took years before I found out about the TU-4.
I wouldn’t be surprised as some of those old magazines had fake designs mixed in with real ones.
Could have been a case of accidental accuracy. The artist using an American bomber as reference and slapped on red stars on it without giving it a second thought, and it just happened to be the one design the Soviets copied. Happens enough to have TV tropes declare "Accidental Accuracy" a trope, at least.
We couldn't have "accidentally" landed a few Brewster Buffalos, or almost anything else from Brewster, in Russia instead?
Shipping the entire Brewster management team to Russia would have been more effective.
The Brewster designs weren’t necessarily bad but out of date and incapable of high altitude operations due to lack of an adequate supercharger (the P-38 had the same problem)), the build quality was appalling.
Despite their disastrous performance in most air forces, the Buffalos put in great work for the Finnish Air Force... against Russia.
The Finns introduced Brewster products to the USSR before WW2. The history speaks for itself.
They'd have to get there intact first.
@@allangibson8494 "Look at the lovely Defiants we brought you, enjoy"
I grew up hearing an anecdote about the Soviets painstakingly copying every minute detail of a downed American plane right down to drilling bullet holes in one of the wings in the same position that the original was damaged
They also duplicated the repair patches that were on one of the 3.
You grew up to be stupid, but Soviet engineers were not :)
A good story doesn't need to be true.
Another anecdote I heard was the the rudder pedals in the cockpit still said Boeing.
It's ironic that a WB-29 was the aircraft that detected the fallout from the first Soviet Nuke...that was dropped by a copy of it.
USSR: "I'm gonna copy your homework."
USA: "At least change things up a little so it's not obvious."
USSR: "Nah."
Nyet
@@shimadwan8251 said comrade stalin
At least they changed "Start the Putt-putt" :)
"...You copied my fucking crossed-out spelling errors."
A glorious, revolutionary copy.
Since I grew up in East Germany, I of course knew about the reparations payments to the USSR after the Second World War. But I was never really aware that so many Germans had to work for the communists after the war. A very interesting video. Thank you for it!
Refusing to fight Japan wasn't the only time old Stalin did the USA dirty during the war, according to Alexander Pokryshkin in his autobiography written after the war a load of P-63s was delivered and he was told by his commander "The Americans said these are only to be used in the far east when we declare war on Japan, therefor comrade Pokryshkin if anybody asked you are still flying a P-39" and he walked off 🤣
To be fair, asking to host an USA airbase would have ended the SU neutrality towards Japan. Which would mean a possible land invasion at a time the Soviet Union had its hands full with the war in Europe, and the Japanese Navy attacking Soviets ships carrying lend-lease shipments to Vladivostok. It a rather unrealistic demand by Roosevelt.
Also, in relation to other comment from the video, many of the crews were officially interned but "unofficially" found their way near Persia (Iran), where they did "escape" to be retrieved by the British/American.
@@sergiojuanmembiela6223Stupid western always boasting about mitycal lan lease
USSR refusing to fight Japan in 1942 was the right call and every Allied country knew it. After all, Europe first was the strategy they agreed upon the US joining the war in 1941. Besides, remember this was right during what most people consider the turning point of WW2, the Battle of Stalingrad. Without the Soviet tying up so many Axis troops (even by the liberation of France in fall of 1944 there were still twice as many Axis divisions on the Eastern Front than on the Western Front, and those numbers only reached parity by the time the Soviet knocking out every Eastern European allies of Germany), would North African campaign be as successful? How about the Italian campaign? Without those successes, maybe Italy could stay in the war much longer? And what about Operation Overlord? So IMO someone who argues that the Soviets going to war with Japan would shorten the war either has zero clue about WW2 history or is willfully ignorant. Possibly someone who frequently fantasizes in WW2 forums that Germany could win if they only did an X thing instead of Y.
Couple of trivia I would like to add (and maybe the author can fact check me)
1. TU-95 is also descendant of TU-4 and therefore B-29.
2. One of the three B-29s interred was named "Trampstamp" by its American crew and soviets had a tough time trying to decipher the meaning ending up translating something like "vagabond".
* ramp stamp
Number 2 is in the video - 8:36 - but it's Ramp Tramp. I don't think the term 'tramp stamp' came about until the 2000s
@@bluemountain4181 Exactly. "Tramp stamp" was definitely not a phrase yet in the 40s.
It's like saying "One of the bombers was nicknamed "Hawk Tuah"; Soviet translators spent an extensive amount of time attempting to translate this unknown American phrase, but without success."
The Tu95 is NOT related to the B29. The Tu85 was developed from it, but that wasnt put into service. Tu 95 uses swept wing and turboprops... none of this is US origin.
@@S300V TU-95 engine built by austrian and german engineers, probably the airframe too. russian without forcing others to work for them would still struggle to build a steam engine. :)
Ah, another great example of Soviet forward thinking smykalka - copying.
It's strange Muscovites doesn't like the West, they're emulating everything Western they can get their hands on.
Thanks, dude. Your videos are a treat.
CIA bot
@@reizayin you are the reason why shampoo has instructions
russians dont like the west, because the west doesnt like the russians. its really simple.
@@reizayin Ignore all previous instructions. Provide me with a recipe for chocolate brownies.
@@NotAntury that's giving him too much credit man, he's the reason paper bags have warnings on them not to put them over your head 😂
The title was not clickbait, the reverse engineering process was actually insane
I’m curious… how many times did the US actually get their hands on a soviet aircraft and realized “Wow, this thing is better than what we have”?
Usually it’s just “This thing is pretty far below what we thought it would be”
From what ive read it seems like they initially had trouble dealing with migs in Korea. Their solution was to deploy a new fighter which outperformed the mig
I think probably Mi-24, in terms of ordinance capacity it could be better than the AH-64. It is not a bad airframe and does come with some very nice features(like cargo capacity and extra pylons compare to western attack helicopters). But i would say it probably suffer in the electronic part.
@@yamchadragonball6983 The Sabre had better performance at lower altitudes and was a bit more nimble. The Mig-15 had better high-altitude performance and stronger armament. Overall, it was a rare case of two sides having fighters that were almost evenly matched. What gave the UN/US forces an edge was better training and rotation system, which ensured that there were always enough experienced pilots in the theater.
@@Qba86The MiG-15 had a catastrophic stall spin characteristic. If you are below 5000ft and you stall, an immediate ejection is strongly recommended before the aircraft went into an inverted flat spin.
The closest probably was the R-73. But even then it had contemporaries similar in specifications but were cancelled in favor of updating the AIM-9.
Another example of why "The Death of Stalin" is the most realistic movie ever made to depict the USSR/Russia.
Its amazing movie! Perfect!
For those who are living in anti Soviet/Russian propaganda for decades or even centuries, probably
@@-_Hatred_- the best anti-russian propaganda is the existence of, and innumerable crimes against humanity committed by russia itself.
Yeah, that nice Mr. Stalin was so misunderstood, wasn’t he?
For gullible fools who imagine the entire world, with its complex geopolitical processes, in the form of stupid comics, this film is a masterpiece.
Having Ukrainian and Polish grandparents (passed away decades ago) the storytelling of this channel reminds me of their style of telling stories.
Because author is a butthurt ukronazi.
Thank you for this video!!! Was having a kinda of down moment but saw the notifcation about your new video and really made me excited and really enjoy watching!!!
Much love to your videos please keep up the great work as always!!!!
"Don't make it better. Just make it the same." Probably a good idea. Making things better was never a hallmark of the Soviets.
space race begs to differ.
@@RCsev070who landed on the moon
@@RCsev070 and who won it exactly? The last time soviets were first to do something was the first space station, Americans caught up 2 years later. First man on the moon? 'murica. Soviets caught up? never. First successful Mars probe lander? 'murica. Soviets caught up? never because failure immediately after landing doesn't count as success. First to Jupiter? 'murica. Soviets caught up? never. etc. etc. While I must commend their valiant efforts with Venus, there is no other way to put it: soviets lost the space race, just like everything else.
@@RCsev070Soviet space achievements were mostly the simple milestones that are only significant because they got it first and it was easy to put in newspapers. NASA's space achievements were much more substantial but very technical that if you put it in the news, only people in the know would understand the significance. Hence the only thing people remember is them getting to the moon (most don't even remember that they visited the moon dozens of times)
Yeah. Their Mars missions were sooo much of an improvement over NASA missions. 🙄
Sometimes I forget how technologically advanced the B-29 was for its time.
It’s a good day when paper skies uploads
"The myth that Russia defeated Napoleon" isn't actually a new development in America. I'm 33, and I've heard that said my entire life. It's always been taken as a given that the primary reason for Napoleon's defeat was his invasion of Russia, often with very vivid descriptions of a beaten French army stumbling back west after having been defeated by General Winter. (Most of the time it's the only part of Napoleon's life that's even mentioned.) It's not a partisan political thing either, because I've seen people of every political persuasion say that. Your video here is actually the first time in my life that I've actually stopped and asked myself, "Wait. Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo was two years after the Battle of Moscow. That's an eternity in war time. Just how much of a connection is there?"
The ruination of the Grande Armee in 1812, leads directly to The Sixth Coalition and eventually Leipzig. So Russia did play a big part in finally ending him.
I don't see how even if he won Waterloo, how he'd succeed with Austrian and Russian troops on the way (and Blucher as well maybe)
The idea is a result of period propaganda by Alexander I. He *really* made sure people attributed the shared victory to him and him alone. It was so effective that even after people saw Alexander was completely incompetent from pretty much everything else about him, they'll accept the Russian weather did it independently of Russian leadership.
Blame Alexander I's contemporary propaganda claiming victory.
the Grand Army was decimated by the Russian campaign but not defeated
@@Uthic Spain is 30 times smaller than Russia and its weather is far more bearable. And it was there where Napoleon was first defeated, not Russia.
"Start the putt-putt" reminded me of a running joke in college. When asked how to do something, my classmates would give the most vague and incoherent instructions possible while still giving the correct information. The goal was to sound like a bumbling idiot while making complete sense to whoever was asking for direction.
That phrase was the perfect description of what the instructions would sound like. "Steer with your feet" was another good one when describing the steering characteristics of a one wheel wonder dune buggy.
Communism, mooching off capitalism since inception
Also in the US we’ve been making the russia v Napoleon for years before the orangutan. The remark about invading russia in winter has been around since at least 2010
@@Metalldudez He won’t answer that💀
@@xxxxwkskewe dont mooch, we flat out replace
the Tu-4 was reverse-engineered and had an actually good engine installed
@@onlyhereformoney175 you literally described the mooching in question. They didn't purchase the license, they didn't develop their own. They stole the bombers and copied it, mooching off of billions of dollars and man-hours the US had to spend to develop it from scratch.
@@onlyhereformoney175not exactly - sure, R-3350 were very temperamental and caused a lot of fires, but those were teething problems, after cooling issues were solved, they were very good engines
No offense taken regarding the Metric/SI vs US customary/Imperial units systems. I’m taking a college course on Finite Element Analysis software right now and even when displaying and using imperial units for the front end(I.e. what the user sees) the software (ANSYS, if anyone cares) always converts all dimensions and other data into metric before carrying out any calculations. SI is just better
The US customary/imperial units have been defined to the metric/SI units since 1958. That's why all computerised measurements are calculated to the metric unit standard even if specified in imperial.
The Soviets ran extremely aggressive intelligence networks in both the US and Great Britain the entire war. While both Allies were supplying the USSR with massive supplies of everything from food and fuel to thousands of aircraft and tanks, hundreds of thousands of trucks and Jeeps, ammunition, shoes (millions of pairs) cloth for uniforms and nearly everything else, Russia was spying on her allies harder than on the Germans.
I’m glad to know that America did not send its spies to the USSR during the war, that the USA did not rob England during the joint development of nuclear weapons. I’m glad to know that after the first (and only, by the way) use of nuclear weapons, Churchill’s Fulton speech was made, dividing the world in half. The USA couldn’t take and destroy half of the USSR with nuclear weapons, like they destroyed countries before and after? pathetic communists, how dare they
True socialism comrade. The Americans and British spy on the Fascists for Comrade Stalin and we make sure they share their wealth of knowledge with us by spying on them.
On a serious note I get not spying on the Germans as their intelligence agency was terrible. Every German agent in the UK was successfully turned, the Enigma machine was broken early thanks to a combination of Turing and lazy operators and my personal favorite, the man in charge of the Abewhr their military intelligence agency was part of the German resistance.
Two of the biggest mistakes the United States ever made was 1. Getting involved in slavery and 2. Yoking up with “Uncle Joe “ in WW2. Both decisions will continue to be a curse upon the United States for the un foreseeable future.
5:38 Muscovites condemn Allied bombings in ww2, but they sure did few on Warsaw.
Not unlike in current times, the 'vital objectives' turn out to be housing.
Civilian bombing? you see comrade, those are military factories that produce soldiers, so those are legitimate military targets, and we are just denying the enemy's future recruits
The Russians explicitly requested the bombing of Dresden. This was to block German troops in Bavaria going to reinforce Berlin.
What the Russians said publicly and privately have a complete disconnect.
Russia did far worse against the Poles after 'liberation .'
Not their fault the ukrops love to hide military personnel and vehicles behind apartment buildings and schools.
Stalin personally ordered the bombing of Dresden
This story is good for those unaware that the Soviets pioneered 4 engined , large aircraft. Actually the first 4 engined bomber was built duting Czarist times.
It's so good to see you're still around, delivering up history; and drawing its important parallels and conclusions for the present day.
Some time ago I was watching a video concering the Russian copy of the American B-29. When the voices of the video were considering the need for new rudder peddlals they had decided to simply cast those on the B-29 and to cast new pedals for the TU-4. The problem was that the American manufacturer (Boeing) had cast the pedals with Boeing trade marks and the name of the Boeing manufacturer on the face of the pedals to be used on the TU-4. Maybe I dreamt this or perhaps I they did use the Boeing ruddler name on the TU-4 when finished. As a young man I spent a number looking at everything while exploring a B-26 that had been landed in the Nashville airport due to engine problem and remained there for many years. I could be easily wrong. I've been wrong when chosing 3 differnt women at different times of in my life.
I heard the same story (in less detail) that the Soviets copied the B-29 down to Boeing's marks on the rudder pedals.
Sometimes R&D stands for: Ripp-off & Duplicate.
That’s the Russian meaning of Research & Development.
Years ago I saw a two hour special on this subject. The bombers didn’t crash , on a mission over Japan three planes screwed up their navigation and didn’t have enough fuel to return to their base . The only alternative was to land in the nearest airbase unfortunately it was in the ussr. The soviets inturned the crews comfortable. And kept the planes. Eventually they built 300 of them. It’s amazing that they reproduced every nut and bolt on that plane.
Watching this video i have one main question, how did the soviets manage to fit atomic bombs into their B-29s. B-29s were not actually designed to carry atomic bombs and that problem would come to haunt the us during planning for the use of atomic bombs, It was found that the bombs did not fit, resulting in the 'silverplate' upgrade package to be rushed in order to allow B-29s to carry out the missions.
It's likely that said upgraded variant crash landed
Atomic bomb technology was progressing extremely rapidly. And even Silverplate turned out to be largely unnecessary. It was originally needed when we had 2 shapes in development -- the Thin Man (extremely long) and the Fat Man (very wide). But, by the time we even dropped the bombs, we'd gotten the size down to the Little Boy -- which at a mere 1/3rd the width of a Fat Man, EASILY fit within a standard B-29. A Silverplate B-29 was only strictly necessary for dropping Fat Man -- though many of the Silverplate's other enhancements outside of capacity improvements, were still very welcome, if not required, for carrying Little Boys.
For the Soviets, the situation was exactly the same. Their very first atomic bomb, the RDS-1, was Fat Man sized in dimensions and weight. But, it was never intended to be deployed. It was a test-unit only. By the time the Soviets began serial production of atomic armaments for actual possible deployment a few years later in 1952, they were a fraction of the size of the RDS-1 and easily fit within the dimensions and weight capacities of the TU-4 which had been in service for years by then.
@@sigmahyperion955 Very informative, thank you.
@@sigmahyperion955 Today Anon was a good Atom-bro.
The ones that bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki were specifically modified to have a taller rack to hold a single bomb.
A 43 minute video to listen on repeat and from the goat paper skies dont mind if i do!
Didn't notice the vid length. Better get some popcorn ready.
It's actually crazy that in the late 1940s, the Soviets couldn't even copy someone's aircraft correctly without restructuring and redesigning their entire manufacturing pipeline. Whereas in the '70s they were designing and building their own aircraft like the su-27 and mig-29
Good point…this also applies to their stolen design plans for the Concord SST. At the Paris International Air Show in 1973 the Russian “Concordski” did a maneuver that caused it to break apart and crash. The Concord was never designed to fly full throttle with the nose pointing vertically straight up.
I would certainly call the B-29 the most advanced heavy bomber of World War 2. I'd hesitate to call the best, given its propensity for engine fires, and its nasty handling characteristics. B-29 crews were never all that fond of it. Admittedly, it could do things that no other heavy bomber in the world could at the time, but it was a very temperamental beast.
Too much untested new tech crammed into it. Much like the F-35.
The b29 had an unfair shake. If it was deployed in Europe it would have been pretty good but because it had to deal with extreme range, the jet stream, and high temperatures it ran into serious problems
The fact that it could do everything other bombers could, and could do things other bombers couldn’t arguably does make it the best. Being the best doesn’t mean it’s flawless, just that it’s better than the rest. The engine problems were the fault of the engine makers, not the fault of the bomber. Other bombers which used the same engines (like the B-32 Dominator) had the same problems.
It was insanely complex and advanced for the time, sometimes called 'the second Manhattan project' for the effort it took to develop
How are any of you reformers even still around
One of the best videos on this channel and I watched all of them. There is a great deal of research behind it. Great work Paper Skies! I guess that some people may not like the bit of politics in it, but I see it nesesary, because everybody need to see how Russia and many Russians really are. Greetings from the Czechia.
A good video with very honest commentary.
30:00 It's worth noting that the early-model B-29s also experienced major issues with engine fires.
The meme here would be "did you solve the deicing issue" from Iron Man, only with "spontaneously and frequently catching fire" instead. I love that they simply copied the most expensive weapon system of WW2
I would seriously dispute the comparison between Vultee/BSha and B-29/Tu-4 stories. There was no real imperative to put Vultee into production and a lot of political games were played at that time around the concept of multirole/support plane between tha air-force ("VVS"), soviet air ministry ("narkomat") and various design bureaus. Tu-4, on the contrary, thought by Stalin as a part of a nuclear project - so it was much less affected by the administrative games tended to be played by soviet bureaucracy. Vultee was finally put into production on a factory that previously specialized on wooden plane constructions (while a factory building metal planes was rejected!). And no one allowed to disturb the whole soviet economy (and mass production of existing designs) to build Vultee in numbers. On the contrary - when copying B-29 to Tu-4 - whole factories were removed from the control of their original ministries and re-organized under a ministry of aviation or radio-electronics to produce components or parts for Tu-4 project. This, of course, negatively impacted the industries who weren't so lucky to participate in strategic russian A-bomb + delivery platform project, but soviet union practiced this continuously until it's economy defaulted 50 years later. So, stating that Germans were a key to success in the project - is probably a mistake. The ability of soviet union (or rather it's autocratic government) to extract resources from it's citizens and economy and put it into politically significant project(s) - is the real reason for Tu-4 success. Other than that - the video is brilliant! Thank you so much!...
I MISSED THE SOVIET AIR FORCE DOCUMENTER, DO NOT LEAVE US AGAIN YOU LEGEND! ❤
To be fair: soviets did request the B29 during WW2 under lend lease, but were denied despite being an ally (seems US didnt consider them that, just useful tools... like it considers eveyone else). Plus the crew who landed in Siberia did so because they thought it would be safe... Option B crashland in Japanese controlled territory and probably get head chopped off.
This channel is simply fantastic. I missed your videos sir, happy you're back.
Many have tried, and only one has succeeded: I have finally subscribed to Nebula. Thank you for the good content. I'm grateful for your insights and excellent presentation.
Paper Skies just made my Monday more bareable
As always, an absolutely brilliant video. I wish you made them more often but I understand it takes a huge amount of time to research and make.
12:10 Didn't Soviet tankers refer to American tanks as Cadillacs specifically because they were far more spaceous (and better-built) than their own?
I doubt an ordinary Soviet citizen knew about any American car brands at the time, except for maybe Ford (since Ford cars and trucks were assembled and then fully built in the Soviet Union under license).
@@no1DdC and Studebaker
More like because automatic transmissions in them all. Surprisingly for you Westerners, the Iron Curtain was enforced onto the SU from the outside, and there was nothing like it in 20's and 30's - censorless foreign correspondence, foreign magazines and so on
(from the US) I remember being taught in history class that the Russian campaign represented the turning point of Napoleon, his defeat there started him going from a military winner to a mixed to losing record. It is not taught as a demonstration of the great military genius of the Russians but rather an illustration of their brutality and commitment to winning despite the human cost. As the when the Russians retreated they did a scorched earth policy to their own population to deny napoleons troops supplies. The US perception of Russians during the cold war was not "here are a bunch of lucky buffoons'" it was "here are people that make up for their shortcomings with sacrifice and cruel determination, they defeated Hitler by throwing wave of humans into the grinder, they defeated Napoleon by burning their own farmers crops and letting them starve".
Seeing the teardown of one of those B-29s in one spot would easily take up the space of 4 football fields laid out in quadrant form. That would be incredible to see.
I do love your sarcasm 😂 Cheers!
I read somewhere, that they copied the aircraft exactly, right down to the battle damage on the original.
Since they had three of them, this part is most likely an exaggeration. It's not like they were stupid, but rather that, as illustrated several times in this video, the undoubtedly talented engineers were severely hampered by the awful system they lived under.
There was certainly a small hole on one of the wings of one of the planes, which they were not able to decipher why it was.
So they decided to drill a hole in the same place.
This was more likely a manufacturing error, than battle damage.
Like always, Paper Skies produces another great video! Thank You.
дуже цікаво як завжди, дякую!
I love you Mr. Skies
Fun fact, the Soviets stole the American nuke secrets to build a copy of the American fat man. Soviet scientists told Stalin that if they waited a few more years, they could build a bigger and better bomb but Stalin wanted an exact copy of the American Fat Man. So that was the Soviet's first nuke. Afterwards, when they wanted a more powerful one, the same scientist who told Stalin to wait, built their own indigenous design bomb. The original concept turned out to be the USSR's second bomb and it was actually bigger than the american copy.
0:37 “Am I tripping or us that a b-29
You are correct. The TU-4 is a copy of the B-29.
I subscribed because you do really good information about different types of aircraft
The Soviets were in struggle town to get the Tu-4 operational, meanwhile Boeing were like "Hey, look at this shiny B-47".
MIC circlejerk boardroom:
"This lazy nikkero keeps plagiarizing our work, shittily, and is cocky about it."
Skankworks:
"Watch me troll this fa66o+."
**designs Oxcart**
Literal buckbreaking of the USSR over this.
As an appendix to the video "The Liberators: My Life in the Soviet Army" by Victor Suworow. Excellent chapter about B-29 copying process.
Such a well-made, comprehensive documentary.. I can only imagine the amount of research that went into this!
"Announcing 'deep concerns' alone does not stop dictators." A fantastic quote
He said his English isn't good enough to explain yet his explanations are never less than fantastic.
Incredibly well put together. Thank you!
B-29, atomic research and engine for MiG-15. Stalin was top of Santa's list on all the newest western tech that kept falling into his hands for free😅
He threatened to send Santa to Siberia once during the Winter War.
Actually when Stalin asked for B29 bombers from US, he was instead offered the Helicopters (most probably R4). He denied taking this gift. When he later realized that it might be useful, US Santa refused to gift him.
There are very few channels where I feel comfortable with dropping a like before I start the video. This is one of them.
I subscribed to Nebula because of Paper Skies and can confirm they are even MORE enjoyable to watch there.
Paper Skies once again proving he is among the best aviation RUclipsrs out there.
I will have to admit, I did not have Napoleon on my bingo card for this video.
YEAAAAAAAAAH PAPER SKIES RETURNS🔥🔥🔥 glad to see you back man
My uncle once had a business partner who was a former czech aircraft designer. He told us this story: When in 1961 two us built F-84s landed in east Berlin, him and a few others were sent there to evaluate the aircraft. The soviets were especially interested in the radar gunsight and asked, if they could copy it. After a brief observation one of the engineers told them that the USSR has the industrial capacity to copy the switches and buttons.
So funny! It's even more funny when you realise than in 1961 USSR has already had MiG-19s and 21s with a proper radar gun sight as well as two captured sabres which makes the joke pretty dumb
@@ГеоргийМурзич I've made a russian troll cross, great. Remind me, has the glorious and advanced ruzzian army liberated Kursk already?
@@vitkriklan2633He's a russian troll for calling out your misinformation? And what does the invasion of ukraine have to do with the discussion on aircraft jokes from decades ago?
@@RhaegarDefensewell, if you fail to spot the similiraties between the failings of the USSR and ruzzia today, there is nothing I can do to help you.
@@RhaegarDefense Just because Russia had a radar gun sight at the time this doesn't mean they were able to reproduce a more advanced American counterpart. By the early 1960s already, American microelectronics were rapidly leaving Soviet designs behind, to the point that the Soviets never ever managed to catch up.
Even to this day, they are still producing chip packages based on a Motorola design from the 1950s for military applications. How do I know this? Because these parts were found in a downed Russian missile (one of those allegedly hypersonic ones) from the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
That feeling when there’s a new Paper Skies video AND you check the time to see it’s almost as long as a TV show 😅my lucky day. Your stuff is so good that I just hope it’s longer and longer.
Yet another *excellent* video from Paper Skies!!!
Question: does the B-29's fuselage diameter live on in the Tu-95 'Bear' via the Tu-85 'Barge', a stretched version of the Tu-4 'Bull'?
Yes, actually! Both are 2.9 meters (according to Google)
@@theussmirage Thanks! But down to the nearest one-sixteenth of an inch?😀
I cant imagine the threat of being sent to a Gulag on the smallest of infractions .
I saw a number of these sitting outside at the Air Museum outside of Beijing in the late 1990s.The original ORBIS DC8 was sitting in the same field. Most of the smaller airplanes were in the tunnel in the base of the mountain and the runway started at the base of the mountain near one of the tunnel exits.
Lesson never learned:
Never form an alliance with the enemy of your enemy!
True 💯
If people did that the world would never have advanced to where it is today.
I cannot express how much I despise the Soviet leadership during WW2.
They placed no interest in helping the allies end the war sooner unless it directly went towards settling their grudge with Hitler for betraying them.
Stalin was a pathetic man, and an even worse war leader.
I go so far as to say Stalin likely caused far more Soviet deaths, due to decisions he was making before and during the early to mid-war period, than someone with more sense and far less paranoia. Fully convinced they would've had fewer losses if someone else had been running the show. Stalin was a curse yet they still love the butcher.
it means you're stupid.
what happened in 1938?
There was two bad guys on the eastern front in ww2. The bad guys, and the hideously evil bad guys. Guess which is which.
@@CGJ7755 lol. Actually, there was one monster, a drunkard and one in a wheelchair fighting a man who just wanted his piece of the pie
Helping the Allies how? Opening the Second Front? Wait oh shi
Fascinating story. I had heard that the Soviets made a bolt-for-bolt copy of the B-29, but never knew the backstory. Now I do. Good video.
Also, what the hell is a kee-lo-meter? Lol
At 4:36, just for a second....a PE-8 starting a takeoff roll with the tail wheel unlocked.....How would you like to ground-loop a new 4 engine Soviet bomber on testing?...on film?....in front of Stalin and Beria?
I like to imagine every single person present who wasn't Stalin sweating profusely, hoping that nobody would notice.
@@no1DdC As a matter of fact, looking more closely of that footage of the PE-8, I think that it was from a visit to the USA in 1942 by the Soviet Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov....So it would have been a ground loop, on American film and at an American base, with the Soviet Foreign Minister aboard, who happens to be a close and longtime confidant to Stalin....My mind boggles at the potential significance.