The shot of the tail fin section of a TU95 Bear is very pertinent as this aircraft can trace it's lineage back to the TU4 Bull and thus the irony of an aircraft still in service today being a descendant of an American bomber is not lost on me!!
The Soviets reverse engineered the B29. On the replicated aircraft the designers even copied a patch over a tear in the skin from the original plane. This patch was on every plane the Soviets built afterwards.
The russians also copied the intake blades from the F4 Phantom. The F4 had steel blades to cut through emergency runway nets on aircraft carriers, otherwise the net would constrict around the fuselage and crush it. McDonnell-Douglass kept the blades on for the land-based Army variant, so when the russians noticed, they thought it was related to aerodynamics at Mach 2 and above. They put aluminum blades on the MiG-23, which scared everyone into thinking it was aircraft carrier deployable. The fact that they used flimsy aluminum blades only further confused NATO when they got a MiG-23 from a defector, as they would not survive an impact with a net, let alone cut anything. EDIT: I got it wrong, it was apparently the MiG-23, not the 25 or 31. Either that, or the whole story's an urban legend.
For anybody curious about to unusual engine configuration of the TU-4 in the thumbnail image, it's serving as a test bed for the massive NK-12 turboprop that would go on to to power the TU-95 Bear, a distant relative of the TU-4.
@@fearfulgrot agreed. I really love his voice and channel but I do believe his upload schedule between ALL of the dark series has left him kind of rushing through to keep uploads and I definitely feel his channels quality has suffered. I can remember when the dark channel didn't even have a voice and was just words typed over the pictures so its definitely come a long way lol.
The Chinese acquired around a dozen Tu-4 bombers from the Soviet Union, to extend their useful life some of them were re-engined with turbo-props, the last of these aircraft wasn’t retired until the late eighties.
@@ImpossiblyBlack DAMNN RIGHT HE DID!!!!!!!!!!!!;--PREHAPPS I WILL JUST CLICK;--PAUSE & READ THE COMMENTS NEXT TIME!!!;---YOU TUBE KNOWS WHEN YOU "QUIT WATCHING A VEDIO"!!!!!!!!!!!
I talked to one of the crew members one day. He told me the whole story. Over an hour. I paused him and got every detail out of him. It was a magnificent interview. My best one ever. Greatest story of all time.
Way back in the end 60s, I read a short novel about a Soviet nuclear attack on the US in Readers Digest. The front page had an illustration of a TU-4 flying over the city in the story. I always thought the author didn't have a clue. Seems he did.
The Readers Digest was an obsessively anti Communist magazine. The US population was fed garbage by Readers Digest, Time magazine, Newsweek magazine and the US News and World Report. Not much has changed.
Kind of. The range of their bull was still rather short to hump over the North Pole and Canada\Northern Atlantic into US cities and unless the Sovie's had built a secret island airfield to hop through between the Union' and the Island over into the US and even then the fuel\payload range would have been a suicide run. A much better ranged one true but suicidal none the less.
@@michaelwhalen2442 I wonder if I could find a copy somewhere. I think I was about 12-13 when it read it in one of their condensed books. Thanks for providing the name.
@@dragonsword7370 Another sci fi novel from the 70s-80s had that scenario of a suicide run. Dark December about a guy trying to get to Menlo Park California from his former missile base at Dutch Island, up in Alaska. During his travels he ends up captured by a group of ex biker types, and tossed into a cage with a Soviet airman. The guy survived his flight from Russia to the US, One way, in a Tu-16.
I’m actually impressed by the amount of these planes that were built. When I first heard about the TU-4 I thought it was a one off plane reverse engineered from a B-29. Lo and behold there were 847 of these things built, some were even given to and built by China. In fact some were modified into an AWACS system by China and were in use by the PLAAF until the late 80s. Seeing the prototypes that were developed from this plane and you can see how it slowly evolved into the TU-95 which is still in use as Russia’s premier long range strategic bomber today. Such an impressive plane!
I'm convinced that when the soviet defector flew the Mig 25 to Japan and the Soviets demanded it back, the Americans should have told them they could have it back as soon as the 4- B29s were returned.
Unfortunately that would have required someone with either the guts (and balls) of ol' blood and guts himself, G.S. Patton, or someone with common sense who would've enjoyed calling the USSR's bluff on their capabilities inflicting any significant damage if they were to attempt an attack
@@davidb2206 Yeager flew the defector's Mig-15 in Japan, during the Korean war, along with Albert Boyd and Tom Collins. I don't think he was involved with the Mig-25. I can't find any record saying the Mig--25 was flown at all. If you know of one, please post a link.
Should be noted, Hap did not pilot the B-29 which force landed in Russia [3:35], it was named after him. He was approaching 60 at this time and was in bad health, having multiple heart attacks in recent years, so would not have been able to fly grueling long range combat missions even if he wanted to.
@@DragonSt3alth Understand it may not be feasible to edit videos like this once they are published, but Hap Arnold flying a combat mission, forced to land in Russia and becoming a prisoner for months is not minor
@@Paladin1873 There were a number of high profile aviators in WW2, probably the most obvious was Lindbergh who flew dozens of combat missions in the PTO, even had a kill, and all as a civilian. Lemay too was a combat vet having flown a lead position on the disastrous Schweinfurt raid, and went on [largely because of Hap] to shape US strategic bombing doctrine for the next couple decades ,, But those guys were in their prime or close to it, didn't rank that high and were in good health, none of which could be said about Hap, great tactician though he was.
The Russians even copied part serial numbers and missed rivet holes thinking that they were put there by Boeing for a reason. One thing the Russians didnt copy though was the metal thickness. They went with thicker, poorer quality sheets.
I talked to an old soviet metallurgical engineer who was a professor at my university. He mentioned this how they had to use a different thickness of aluminum sheet because the factories had no way of making imperial thickness sheets with building new plants. Very cool old professor had many great stories about soviet military engineering
Some years ago I read a article about the TU4. There was a major change from the B29 in regard to the thickness of the aluminium sheets. The USSR could not produce the same sheets as used on B29. Tupolev had to use thicker and thiner sheets depending on stress within the area. This was a major redesign causing major work.
The first three Bulls (the actual ones built by the Soviets NOT salvaged) were such close copies that until news reports showed the control columns clearly they had the BOEING flying b symbol in the middle of them. I know that Boeing attempted to sue, but I do NOT know what happened to that case!
Was this the first time the Soviets started reverse engineering aircraft to this degree? Seems like they got pretty good at it, all the way up to the Concordski.
@@toddsmith8608 Not sure, I know Aero engines seem to have remarkably similar layouts and engineering. I know that nearly EVERY engine manufacturer in the United States has sued them or tried to, the thing that amuses them all (and has caused them to lose the suits), is that the Russians/Soviets cannot replicate that level of metallurgy, and fine control machining so nearly all those engines have significantly WORSE FUEL ECONOMY! GE laughs at the Russian knock of their TF-101 (which get 30% less fuel economy (and SMOKES)) The USAF does too!
They went to great lengths in order to copy the B-29. But it took them quite a while. Whether or not it was worth it, they gained a LOT of insight in then modern aircraft design and technology. Metalurgy, Electrotechnics and so on, they had to take apart literally every little piece down to its nuts and bolt. An amazing feat, but in the end, just a copycat. It took them way longer to improve upon it.
Remember, the B-29 was the single most expensive war program of WWII. Most expensive than the Manhattan Project! All because of know mechanical failures of the early aircraft so the Soviets got the cost for next to nothing. They should have had orders to destroy the aircraft to keep them from falling into enemy hands.. From what I've read, they damn near did that on their own much of the time
@@OldGeezer55 From what I've read about these forced landings most crews thought the aircraft would be refueled and they'd be allowed to continue back to base after ad hoc repairs had been made. Most of these were rather dismayed when they were rudely loaded onto trucks bound for internment camps by angry-faced Soviet troops carrying submachine guns...
@@OldGeezer55 Back then the Sovjets weren´t the enemy, that only came later, at least if i understood the time line. The Sovjets argued that they needed the bombers against the then-still fighting Japanese.
@@sim.frischh9781 False. The Soviets we're very much the enemy and the whole West knew it right from the start. The West tolerated the USSR as an alliance of convenience. As soon as it became clear that Fascism in Europe was on its way out, the British and Americans began immediately discussing how to deal with the Soviet problem.
I have a flight log with a flight engineer with TU-4 time logged. I also got a load balancer slide rule for the TU-4. It is so identical to the balancer for the B-29 of which I have 3 varients. These are used to calculate how and where to place cargo, personnel, and fuel loads fir the load masters.
Having studied aircraft engines in-depth for decades as part of my Military History Degree I was always curious about the reverse engineering of the B 29. I noted the segment here where the Soviets used their own radial engines. This is common knowledge. But not why. The R 3350 tread so much new ground. It was complex, problematic, and almost doomed the B 29 program. This was not acceptable to the AAF. Both overheating during taxiing and full load climb out including the loss of the X B 29 due to an engine fire that spread to one of the fuel tanks delayed the program so badly that Boeing resorted to having Allison install V 3420 liquid cooled 24 cylinder engines, a doubled Allison V 1710, as a possible solution. The V3420 was one of the very few successful "doubled" engines ever built but never saw full production or use in WW2. A legendary "might have been". The result was better performance & reliability but liquid cooling's vulnerability to battle damage(American heavy bombers used air cooled engines for good reason) & more delays for extensive redesign work (not to mention whether Allison could produce enough engines...) coupled with the resolution of some of the R 3350 issues (& political pressure too...) Resulted in the retention of the R 3350. Few were happy with this. This AAF decision resulted in the loss of many overloaded & over heated aircraft and their crews. Redesigned propeller cuffs & frequent inspection/replacements of upper cylinders, & Bendix fuel injection, among other "fixes" brought reliability up to Command acceptability but never created full aircrew confidence. Pre takeoff proceedures involved shutting down different engines to cool them. Cylinder head temps were a tricky story in many long over water return fights. Engine failures on return lead to flight engineers to shut down questionable engines. The costly takeover of Saipan for P 51 escorts and more importantly emergency B 29 landings was an explicit admission that B29s had unresolved issues not related to battle damage that the bombing effort could not be delayed for. Undoubtedly the Soviets were aware of these issues. Substituting Soviet engines sidestepped the R 3350 issues but the soviet engines were of lower performance. Since the TU 4 platform did not usually have to cover the distances and altitudes of the B29s it would appear an acceptable compromise but never publicised. The development of jet & turboprop powerplants side stepped the touchy nature of the last of the Western piston engines for the Soviets.
The loss of B29 prototype #2 was not due to an engine fire, the Truman commission blamed it in that but further investigation found out that a faulty fuel filler cap leaked fuel all over the engine causing the fire, it not only wasn't the engine's fault but it also led to many myths about the engine's and the problems related to them, as it turns out most weren't the fault of the engine's, later on it was discovered that the company that got the contract to produce the cylinder head temperature guages for the B29 production plants hadn't ever made them before and wasn't calibrating them properly, they were all showing colder than the actual temperatures some as much as 100°F cold, this caused flight engineers to open the cowl flaps too late to prevent engine's from suffering extensive heat damage.
Soviet engine choice has more to do with the fact they had already developed a very similar engine for the I-185 fighter. That engine was incredibly advanced for its time but had major teething issues in 1941 when it was abandoned in favor of proven designs because the situation on the ground was dire. In the post-war period they had all the resources and time they needed to improve its reliability which was a lot easier than reverse-engineering a whole new engine
By the time the TU4 was mass produced it was already out of date, although the amount produced was impressive. Later a TU4 that was given to china and converted to an AWACS; with turbo prop engines and a radar dish.
At the same time, the US was scrapping B-29 bombers while purchasing the B-50, which originally listed as a B-29 variant, (with the Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major engine) but was changed to the B-50 so that Congress wouldn't complain about replacing old B-29s with newer B-29s. Most of the B-50s were converted to become the first aerial tanker aircraft
Thats BS, they were hardly obsolete just cause the us had a higher power version of the b29 (the b50). The tu4 and b50 were produced during the same years. A bomber that outclassed everything else out there except for the b50, is hardly what you would call outdated.
@@Coyote27981 The B-29 was superseded by the B-36 in 1948 and the B-47 in 1951, though they were assigned to carrying nuclear weapons. The B-29 remained the primary heavy bomber used during the Korean War (1951-1953).
..so if they built a whole bunch of them, how did they avoid getting exported to the U.S. in the 1990's when so many warbirds and warbird wrecks were coming out of Russia?...since there are only a couple flyable B-29's, and few survivors, I would have thought the warbird scene would have been all over any surviving TU-4's(since they were basically B-29's)...
Funfact: The tu95 earlier was a modified tu4, overtime however it’s characteristics totally changed and eventually now has almost no part that resembles the tu-4
@@caribman10 Alright then, let's prove it, proof is what matters after all Yes it is true, the tu95 was a heavily modified tu-4, derivations from fuselage, that's the best it was derived, hence people claiming its a modified tu-4, though the dimensions have change , however the old original tu95 was soon upgraded and not too long after even its fuselage had changes, like the current one, the nose also completely changed, now we have this tu95 resembling nothing of the tu-4,.can we really even call it a tu-4 derived plane anymore? Nope, we really can't, and good sir, for that matter if I cannot appease you in this matter you can search up the internet on this matter
They also had battle damage repairs and the captain had left his personal camera an expensive 35 mm for the day. Every single bomber had a camera on it's dash on the pilots side. I was at the Central Airforce museum of Soviet Union in Dec of 2017.
Stalin told to the engineer in charge with the reverse engineering that he wants an indentical plane. He got his copy including the bullets holes and patches.
@@ARO10-3 Engineer: It is done. Engineer 2: Almost. *pulls out a large gun and carefully shoots large caliber guns in precise spots.* Ok NOW it's done, comrade.
It was said that the B-29 that was disassembled, the General H H Arnold Special, had a quick fix applied to it. And since Stalin ordered an exact replica, that quick fix was present on every single Tu-4. It was also said that Tupolev was against the idea of replicating the B-29, he believed that for the same amount of time and resources, he could have produced 3 new designs, and by the time the B-29 was successfully replicated, the west would have likely produced more modern designs that would have rendered the B-29 obsolete. But then again, nobody disobeys orders from Stalin. Later on China used the Tu-4 to create their first ever AWACS, the KJ-1 (literally meaning Airborne Warning-1). But it was made in the 1970s, when the first AEW B-29 models were made in 1951.
Tupolev didn't want to copy the B-29 because they were already working on the ANT-64 that had very similar characteristics. Probably Stalin was right with his idea of copying the B-29 because the ANT-64 still needed at least 3 more years of developing and testing before entering service while just copying the B-29 was way faster and they needed to catch up quickly.
@@Krolmir96 but no designer with an ounce of pride will ever want to copy another’s work. I'm sure Tupolev would have preferred to build his own product.
The quick fix you are talking about was patches covering bullet holes. The engineers debated on not replicating the patches but decided to do so out of fear that Stalin would be upset that they didn't exactly replicate it.
Ah, the power of postwar propaganda... They had three complete B29s, plus one damaged one. Any repair patches would have been different on each one... it's a story that is often repeated, but isn't actually true. If you give it a second of thought, you will realise how nonsensical it is.
@@CaptHollister it is a weird story. And somehow I doubt anyone got a close enough look to confirm it. But it's close enough to other Soviet bizarro-world weirdness to be almost believable.
They also had battle damage repairs and the captain had left his personal camera an expensive 35 mm for the day. Every single bomber had a camera on it's dash on the pilots side. I was at the Central Airforce museum of Soviet Union in Dec of 2017.
@@symphinitystugiii3476 It was not a "random" camera. It was an expensive Lika 35mm that was left by the pilot. But yes every single Airframe has Boeing on the rudder peddles and the battle damage and repairs. A dictator like Stalin will have you killed, If you do not follow orders. "Watch Enemy at the gates" movie for the Soviet mindset.
@@dootthedooter Actually no it wasn't. It only became capable of dropping the atomic (not nuclear) bomb in 1945 and then only because of large modifications to bomb doors, adding fuel tanks and the use of the Avro Lancaster bomb racks and release systems.
@@neiloflongbeck5705 Was that a serious question? If it was then a nuclear (aka a hydrogen) bomb a fusion reaction making it more powerful and destructive. It works by the fusion of light nuclei into a heavier one, taking its energy and power from the nuclear fusion of hydrogen isotopes. It requires very high temperatures to launch a fusion reaction; thus, it is also known as a thermonuclear bomb. That fusion reaction is triggered by: An atomic bomb which is another kind of nuclear bomb that uses nuclear fission alone and is triggered by TNT causing plutonium to compress and become dense which in turn causes atoms to bump into each other and break down causing the bomb to explode.
I seem to remember reading an extensive article on the Tu-4 and the massive reverse engineering project. Dark Skies mentioned the differences engendered by reverse engineering an imperial measured aeroplane on metric machine tools. This proved so difficult and fraught with failure, that the Soviets bought or acquired imperial machine tools just for the Tu-4. I learned from the article I read that the aeroplane actually disassembled for copying (The Hap' Arnold?) had, at some time, been struck by lightning. This fairly common occurrence had apparently left a pattern of three, tiny holes. Not knowing the purpose of these holes and unable to make decisions themselves, Tupolev faithfully recreated these holes in every subsequent Tu-4. Is that dedication or desperation?
I understand the one asssembly that couldn't be duplicated was the wheel/tire for the landing gear-Russia just went and bought them in the post-WWII surplus market!!!
This is also what I once read. Perhaps not for the rims but the tyres. They were unable to replicate the rubber compound and had to source the tyres via alternative ways.
Some people say the Germans got off easy after WWII and that a lot of their high ranking officials should've stayed in prison. Others say the Japanese got off easy after WWII, what with no war crime charges being levied against the Emperor. But in reality, it was the Soviets who got off easy during and after WWII. Both Germany and the USSR invaded Poland at the same time, yet war was only declared on Germany. Then tons of supplies were shipped to the Soviets in food, ammunition, vehicles and raw materials to help them -without which they would've surely lost WWII. Then there are incidents like those featured in this video, which went unpunished.
The objective of ww2 was to get rid off Germany once and for all, and take Italy and Japan out of the table, leaving France, UK, URSS and USA as the sole stockholders. Even if they achieved the destruction of Germany they ended up with the implosion of France and UK as global superpowers. On the top of that they paved the way for the inevitable rise of China as the main superpower in the long term.
They did not declare war on the USSR because they knew that Poland didn't had any right to own those zones. The Polish government treated them like colonies during the 20 years they owned them and everyone knew it. Even today they still belong to Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine, Poland never claimed them again.
@@Krolmir96 lmao, like they cared about something like this. They saw an opportunity to get rid off from a possible competitor and opted for Germany, Italy, and Japan. They didn't care for civilians of other cultures they could not care less.
3:30 I believe you have made an error! The General Hap Arnold you referred to was a B-29 named after him. He didn’t fly combat missions during the War. This Aircraft was disassembled and it’s components studied for reproduction. The Dedication Plaque bearing his name was saved and is to the best of my knowledge still in Russia.
Thank you! He must not be very familiar with American generals during WW2. There’s no way someone like Henry “Hap” Arnold, one of a handful of 5-star generals from that era, would have been put in any situation where he would be in danger. He was far too valuable ✌🏻🇺🇸
The crews were all under strict orders to not make an emergency landing in Soviet territory. The only other option was to surrender to the Japanese and be killed in medical experiments, and if you were particularly unlucky have your body parts eaten afterwards. The interned aircrews were eventually allowed to escape from Soviet internment. Not a fun experience but preferable to the other option.
@@thomasklimchuk441 At one point the British calmly stood by and looked the other way as Germans which they supposedly disarmed and controlled were killing Soviet PoWs. That happened near Tromsø, Norway, roughly from 10 to 31 May 1945.
Remember reading this story somewhere years ago. It also said that some parts, like the tires, were actual USAAC surplus purchased after the war. Also, soviet engineers wore special soft soled shoes when touring american factories so they could collect machining chips to reverse engineer the metalurgy.
Nope, not the USA. England invited Soviet aircraft personnel to review the Rolls Royce jet engine plant where the Nene engine was made. Hot section blades are the most critical part of a gas turbine, and the Soviets had problems with their knock-offs of the German BMW and Junkers axial-flow turbines. The same problems that the Germans had, less advanced metallurgy. Hence the Soviet delegation wearing the soft soled shoes.
There's a supposedly apocryphal story that Tupolev dared to ask Stalin if they also had to copy the US markings when it came time to paint the first TU-4, and Stalin actually laughed and said "no, put our markings".
Gen. H. Hap Arnold did NOT land a B-29 in Vladivostok. The NAME of the bomber was 'The General H. H. Arnold Special' - a name given to it due to Gen. Arnold's special interest and support of the B-29 program. That was a pretty bad oversight.
Previously it was determined that many such errors were probably made intentionally, to stimulate the comment section. The algorithm. Is this the only significant error in this video? That's progress.
@@johnparnell9488 The error is pretty egregious - got a vibe it was a young researcher who couldn't tell the difference. For history buffs, Gen. Hap Arnold is a unique man. Only 9 men in US history have held the title of 5 Star Rank - (or General of the Army, Fleet Admiral, or General of the Air Force) - and only one - Henry 'Hap' Arnold - the father of US Air Force, held that rank in two services (army and air force).
Honestly, that was an honestly embarrassingly bad oversight. Dark Skies isn't actually at the scholarly level, and "humdingers" like this one happen often enough that they need to be better.
considering how troublesome the B-29 was, it probably made the Soviets waste a lot of effort replicating the B-29. However, they probably learned a lot too. What was worse was when the Brits sold Rolls Royce jet engines to the USSR. The Soviets promised they would only use the engines for civilian aircraft. They lied. They put the engines in the MIG-15. A lot of allied pilots died because of that idiotic mistake. Stalin stole everything he could…no matter how much it hurt his country’s reputation.
Well not true as always when a Yank gobs off. An 'idiotic mistake'? Really? The Nene was sold to Russia in 1946 and early 1947 when there was no 'Cold War' and they were still notional allies on that condition. After all the UK had supplied thousands of aircraft, tanks and billions of pounds worth of equipment to Russia from 1941 to 1946. Unlike the USA we supplied it all FoC. However those engines were not used in the MiG-15 as the Soviets reverse engineered THAT without the UK knowing as they had the B-29 and it was the Klimov RD-45 that went into the MiG-15. So was it also a mistake for that same Rolls Royce to export the same Nene to the USA where it was built as the Pratt & Whitney J-42 and fitted to the Panther and Starfire? Oh wait you Yanks are the good guys right?
@@1chish We knew that Stalin was an absolute authoritarian with murderous tendencies. He was orders of magnitude worse than any British or American leader. The Allies sold major amounts of war material to the USSR, but we did it balancing the need to aid the USSR in the war against the Axis versus the potential harm that could exist after the Axis was defeated. The inability to recognize the difference between the USSR under Stalin's rule and the other Allied countries was a big mistake.
@@hughgreentree What? 1. The USSR under Stalin was the same before as it was after the war and no country knew this better than the UK as close relatives of our Monarch had been slaughtered by the Trots in July 1918. 2. The UK's supplying them with the Nene started in 1946 while we were still supplying military aid as we had since July 1941. 3. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. It is 20/20 vision. Now which US President was predicting the 1950 Korean war in 1946/47? None. Had China not instigated that war then who supplied those Nenes would have been totally academic. You are conveniently relating two unrelated events to suit your confirmation bias. Of course had the US not used antiquated B-29s in Korea and had used jet bombers as the RAF then had then maybe the outcome would not have been so bad. The USA totally misjudged the abilities of both the Chinese and Russians. Selling jet engines in 1946 to both the USA and USSR was actually being even handed (in 1946 terms). 4. Again you are not accurate. Only ONE of the allies "sold major amounts of war material to the USSR" and that was the USA. The UK never charged the USSR for any of the millions of pounds worth of aircraft, tanks, machine tools and other equipment we sent from 2 weeks after the Nazis launched Barbarossa which was months before the first US sales arrived. Indeed we supplied aircraft to the USA so they could ship aircraft direct to the USSR. So we were also underwriting US supplies.
Well, we've gotten an Mi 24 Hind, a look at the Mig 25 and numerous other aircraft as pilots defected and the iron curtain collapsed , so I guess that balances things out.
A Soviet spy was stealing Americas nuclear secrets, a British Labour government sold the Soviets the jet engine but I'm sure the west acquired a few items themselves over time.
@@_Yep_Yep_ It was China who had the last laugh after they managed to cheat a senile kids hair sniffer who had boundary issues with his daughter into the White House, but you people love all that don't you?
Of course, God created the universe so that the USA could exist and rule the world with their pals, the Saudis, the Israelis and the other empire builders because God only loves America. But not South America or latin parts of North America or any 'darker' parts of North America especially those islands and especially that island where they overthrew their masters and refused to be good slaves because they thought they were as good as white people and deserved freedom. How dare they!
Ussr came about circa 1920, us and others failed in aid to white Russians and soviets won. That's not helping create the ussr. If you mean lend lease in ww ii it helped, but the reds did preþy well on their own. The nazis were marching backwards in ussr before normandy.
What's strange about this? When the B-29s landed in USSR, and please DO learn to remember that Russia and Soviet Union are two completely different things, or should we start calling USA the confederate states perhaps, because that would be the exact same kind of idiocy? When the B-29s landed in USSR, the Soviet union was still under a peacetreaty with Japan since the pre-WWII clashes, despite being allied with USA in Europe, they were effectively neutral in Asia, meaning that anything from EITHER of the warring sides that landed was to be interned. Do look up the Soviet-Japanese neutrality pact. And while they had the planes present, why shouldn't they see if they could reverse engineer them? It's not like they couldn't have designed something equal on their own, it would just have cost much more and taken a year or two extra, USSR did have the worlds largest heavy bomber just a decade earlier after all(they even bombed Berlin), but the extra cost during the war, of course they wouldn't waste resources like that. They already had comparable engines in the form of the Shvetsov ASh-73, which were derived from the same engine that the B-29 engines were derived from, even if it was 3 generations in between, although they were slightly more powerful due to having a bit larger cylinder volume, as their generation jumps did not exactly copy that .
The average person does not know their history they only know what they're told by their friends or what nonsense they see on social media unfortunately
At 3:56 we see how small these bombers actually were. The plane looks like a scale model, it looks like you couldn't stand up in it. But those sleek jet bombers in the opening scene at 0:03 were very impressive, fantastic 1947 technology.
The film used showing those jet bombers was not from 1947 and I suspect mid '60s. The Russians didn't have jet engines until the Rolls Royce Nene was sold to them in 1947 and their first jet aircraft was the Mig-15 using a reverse engineered Nene engine which first flew in December 1947. The RB.41 Nene was the engine licence built by Pratt & Whitney as the 'J-42' specifically to power the new Grumman Panther F9F-2 as Grumman planned to use the centrifugal-flow turbojet engine with 5,000 pounds rated thrust at 12,400 r.p.m. The Nene being more powerful (and more reliable) than any engine manufactured by an American company. The irony is that both the Mig-15 and the Panther came face to face in the Korean War.
Americans do not use ''Imperial '' measures. [9:05] We use the US Customary Measures system. Before Britain changed to metric, they used Imperial measures. They are different.
Does anyone know or able to explain what the narrator meant towards the end of this video when stating: "...by 1947, with months to go before Stains two year limit ended" ?
Allied forces bombed Bangkok near the end of WWII. I'm surprised to learn of this. Strange how this fact has remained unknown to me for most of my life.
Given the Soviet espionage, I wonder if it was sabotage that caused the B-29s to land in Russia. Additionally, if not for the espionage and reverse-engineering, it's likely the Soviets would never have been the threat they became. You think we could have learned from this, but no, and, 55 years later, we did the same thing with China and a US Navy EP-3. We're our own worst enemy when it comes to making our adversaries more of a threat.
@@gracchus7782 True, but is is suspicious that Stalin wanted these things badly, then in short succession, 4 landed on his proverbial lap. Coincident is pushing it.
There were alot of people who thought that the American system had failed and that communism was the answer. We even had traitors in the Roosevelt administration, indeed , there is strong evidence that Roosevelt himself was a traitor.
The State Department was infested with communists and socialists and Roosevelt even had at least one suspicious advisor. The decision to risk running out of gas over Russia was a political as well as a military decision. The communists in the State Department would do anything they could to steer the decision in Russia's favour. There were many patriots in the US air force who were opposed to even flying over Russian Territory. They knew what would happen if Stalin got his hands on this plane.
@@w.g.whitney7350 Virgin Mary appeared in Necedah, Wisconsin in 1950 to 1975 and told the names of many of the traitors in the Roosevelt administration.
The Soviet/Russian list is long and a bit shameless. The Space Shuttle and the Biron, the Concordsky, the atomic bomb, gas pipeline distribution technology, the B 29.......
It was an exercise to develop the Soviet capability to build an entire aircraft in a style they never had. The remit was "100 % CCCP components", no exceptions, including nuts, bolts, rivets Substitution of heavier and thicker metal was needed as they didn't have the equivalent alloys.
Does anyone know where the intro part (0:00 - 0:45) came from, i.e. original film of opening scenes from "Tushino Aviation Day 1947"? Many thanks in advance!
I'm not sure if it's true, but I heard that there was a manufacturing error in the dismantled B-29... if memory serves it was a hole that was drilled into once of the aluminium pieces that wasn't meant to be drilled, which caused no real structural problem. However, the Soviets even copied that, so that ALL TU-4's had that extra drill hole, despite not being necessary :D. I'm not sure if it's an urban myth or real, but it sounds real.
Stalin requested that the Soviet aeronautical industry produce a copy of the B-29. When Stalin made a "request" such as that, it was an "order", which had to be done or else. The remarkable thing was that Andrei Tupolev actually was able to accomplish it in such a short time, and actually get it to work. It was not as simple as it sounds because every single part had to be adapted to metric units of measurement.
Only thing I heard was that the B-29 was prone to engine fires because the cowling was defective from the get go. That cowling was supposedly replicated and continued to cause engine fires on the B-29 copies. I see here Russian Engines were used instead of Pratt & Whitneys. So then, what? I've always wondered how good the remote control guns on the B-29 were.
the old tale about the Russians replicating a battle damage patch is an urban myth, created by the US to belittle Russia's enormous achievement in duplicating the B-29. They had three aircraft to inspect, do you really believe they would not see that the other two did not have that patch? I would like to see a survivor to see if the story of them copying the rudder pedals complete with the Boeing emblem is true or not. How did real world performance and reliability compare with the Russian Shvetsov ASh-73 engines? We were taught that they were a pound for pound copy of the Wright R-3350-23 Duplex-Cyclone, and the Wright's were troublesome to say the least
Except they did to a extent. They thought the Deicing boots on the wings were standard on B29's, and equipped them on the TU-4s. Theres many more examples. The captain had left his personal camera for the day. Every single bomber had a camera on it's dash on the pilots side
@@honkhonk8009 i mean, even if the Russians knew the de-icing boots were not standards it still makes sense to put them on all Tu-4's seeing how ice cold it can be over there
A total of 847 Tu-4s were built by the USSR. Eleven of these were provided to China. Of the USSR planes, only one is known to remain in the Monino Air Museum. Of the Chinese planes, ten had been re-engined with turboprop engines with only two now remaining in Beijing.
US Army Air Corp: Sure, we can lend you a few bombers to fight the Nazis. Stalin: Thanks, comrade. US Army Air Corp once Stalin showed off his nuke capable Soviet B-29s: I shouldn’t have said that. I should not have said that.
The USA made a tragic mistake supporting the Soviets. We have been paying for it ever siince. Churchill tried to warn Roosevelt how dangerous they were but FDR wouldn't listen.
At the same time, the US decided not to beet the Soviets to Berlin (which was well within the ability of the combined western forces) and gave the Soviets the massive 'honor' (and casualties) to take the German capital
"In reality, the Soviets had successfully replicated the B-29 bomber and developed the Tu-4 Bull, and Stalin now had a fleet of long-range bombers capable of dropping nuclear bombs over all of Western Europe and the United States" - The USSR only had their first nuclear test in 1949, that's after the Aviation Day in 1947
Compliment them for stealing an idea and sitting around like the baboons they are trying to reverse engineer it? Third worlder doesn’t understand the concept of intellectual property.
They copied one of the most troublesome aircraft the US built. Engine failures and fuselage problems plagued the B-29 through its life span. They had to capture islands from the Japanese to have enough emergency landind strips for all the B29's that had non combat failures on the way to and from Japan.
don’t worry the CIA gotten back w underwater listening stations lifting their subs off the ocean floor and airlifting a helicopter outa Afghanistan in the 70s
One must think of Tupolev. He must have been chagrined to put his name on this as he probably surmised that later on it would be proved that he had zero to do with the original design concept and just used tracing paper. So as to why attach his name to this aircraft? most likely the use of the Tupolev name was for the Soviet people to associate a homegrown design and even more trust in the communist formula.
It's naive to assume they had technical drawings and assembly plans. Even if they had paper plans, they wouldn't have drawings for the dies and tooling required to build it. It's very hard to take a prototype and build a factory to make it. I think Tupolev would have been proud to have his name on this aircraft. WWII has demonstrated to the world that engineers and machinists can do amazing work when under threat of death.
as a brit I shudder at the naivety of the government of the day doing this. soviet mig 15's powered by British designed engines fighting united nations airforces in Korea 🤬
People like to talk about countries copying other countries' vehicles like it's something bad, dumb or laughable. In reality it doesn't matter if the plane about to bust your ass is a copy of another country's design or even your own country's
Real story is probably more treasonous & less accidental I'd imagine. Who knows, though? Still, if somebody wanted to slip someone else a chance to reverse engineer our most secret designs... 🤔
Something wrong with your ending. The original US B-29 bomber was incapable of dropping the first A-bombs because of the bisected bomb-bay. These had to be specially modified. The Soviet first A-bomb was every bit as big as the American one so how could their Tu-4 drop their bomb without similar modification??
Since FDR was a Socialist it was no surprise that he helped the USSR and gave them war materials . To trust the USSR was foolish . Patton was right . We fought the wrong country .
The allies needed a land front against Germany so as to draw Nazi troops away from Europe and Britain. The US supplied the weapons, Stalin supplied the cannon fodder and Hitler supplied the arrogance and stupidity to fight a 2-front war. If Russia had been quickly overrun, the Nazis would have landed in England by 1942, before America was ready. The Atlantic could have become a German no-sail zone. FDR chose the lesser of 2 evils given the situation. Could the US have continued the war against Russia after VE day? Militarily yes, but nobody really wanted to. And few Western leaders dreamed that USSR would become a nuclear power so quickly. In hindsight, it was a huge mistake to let that happen.
You have no idea what socialism, let alone communism, actually are. All you can do is parrot talking points taken off reddit and little charlie tuck-tuck.
You think we should have backed the Nazis? So it was alright to gas 6 million Jews, plus several million other civilians? I'm sure glad you, and those like you, weren't making the military decisions back then. Come on, where do you get ideas like that?
C'mon Hemi Head, aren't you going to explain yor defense of Patton? I don't know when he said we fought the wrong country, but he had a point. It's just that you don't always get a choice who you have to fight first. I hope you're not one of those holocaust denying types. If you are, there is help available to get you out of that cult. And thanks for listening.
I first heard much of this when I read a biography of Stalin's NKVD Head Lavrenty Beria. The author, Thaddeus Wittlin knew several B-29 crewman who had crash landed on Soviet territory in 1945. They knew the USSR was still neutral, but they expected internment under reasonable conditions. Instead they were treated like enemy combatants, roughly interrogated - including technical questions about their aircraft - and beaten. They were locked up in a Soviet POW Camp with Japanese who had been captured in various border incidents, and ironically a group of Japanese communists - apparently artists and film-makers who had sought to defect and were instead treated with paranoid savagery. The women in the Japanese group died very early. The US aircrew were not released until 1946......
Tu-4, all copies and paste but for engines (which still American in origin, they used their own variation of B-17 engine, which they bought license to build) and defensive armament (23 mm cannon instead of.50 cal). Radio sets were from lend-lease B-25 and the rest were duplicates (or as some said, buy out).
Zero credibility. Nothing on this channel is reliable. Please explain how and when the USMC lost the battle of Henderson Field. I'm still completely lost on how this channel's version of history adds up.
I read years ago that all the TU4s had a small brass plate with “Hap Arnold Special” in the flight station because when Stalin said identical he meant identical.
@@Dewydidit They had a tendency to self destruct as it was. They used magnesium in the engins to keep the weight light. Ever see a magnesium flair? "Oh! So sorry tovarish!. Our number 4 engine got too hot and melted aircraft. Sorry Amerikanski engineering! We are sorry we can not give you plane." Nope, pull the switch and burn it down to the rubber tires.
I was told by a gentleman years ago who was a B-29 pilot that the fourth plane was in fact stolen by the Soviets, he told me that they were flying to Manchuria to pick up skinny Wainwright who was a pow after they conclusion of the war, on the way the formation of three planes were surrounded by several Soviet fighter planes who were motioning to follow them, unfortunately one of the planes broke formation and did follow, when they returned to base they were told not to talk about it, the plane is listed as missing, he was not sure if the crew ever was returned or not.
Reverse engineering was invented by the Soviet Union during Stalin days but the Chinese were expert. The Soviet's Tu16, MiG19,21 were provided by the Russians without a blueprint. The Chinese cloned these aircrafts for the use of their own.
Thats like saying an aircraft landed in the British commonwealth, which was india at the time. The soviet union was litterally just russia. Everything else was litterally controlled territory by Moscow. even today, most of the land around and within Russia is almost entirely different from the likes of Moscow and St Petersburg
@@honkhonk8009 Also, they literally did land on Russia. In the video it's mentioned that these B29s landed in Vladivostok, a city that's been part of Russia since before WW1, so the guy was being pedantic for no reason at all.
Correction @3:33 ~ Gen. H Hap Arnold did not land a B-29 in Vladivostok. A B-29 named after Gen H Hap Arnold ( Gen. H. H. Arnold Special ) landed on Vladivostok, piloted by my uncle Capt Weston Price.
The shot of the tail fin section of a TU95 Bear is very pertinent as this aircraft can trace it's lineage back to the TU4 Bull and thus the irony of an aircraft still in service today being a descendant of an American bomber is not lost on me!!
Like panzerschrek also
Spot, on was going to say that too.
@@davidvucina732 Who stole the idea from the American Bazooka.
Tu-95 is beatiful and amazing aircraft, just like its grandfather, B-29)
Never liked B-52 though. Engine placement is ugly.
They kinda copied the B-1 too, the TU-160 is basically just a larger version
The Soviets reverse engineered the B29. On the replicated aircraft the designers even copied a patch over a tear in the skin from the original plane. This patch was on every plane the Soviets built afterwards.
That was a “power patch” with magical unknown capitalist powers
Lol
@@HubertofLiege read it with a ruskie accent
The russians also copied the intake blades from the F4 Phantom. The F4 had steel blades to cut through emergency runway nets on aircraft carriers, otherwise the net would constrict around the fuselage and crush it. McDonnell-Douglass kept the blades on for the land-based Army variant, so when the russians noticed, they thought it was related to aerodynamics at Mach 2 and above. They put aluminum blades on the MiG-23, which scared everyone into thinking it was aircraft carrier deployable. The fact that they used flimsy aluminum blades only further confused NATO when they got a MiG-23 from a defector, as they would not survive an impact with a net, let alone cut anything.
EDIT: I got it wrong, it was apparently the MiG-23, not the 25 or 31. Either that, or the whole story's an urban legend.
Nice legend. The Soviets were not idiots. The very first TU-4 prototype apparently did have the patch, but none of the production versions did.
For anybody curious about to unusual engine configuration of the TU-4 in the thumbnail image, it's serving as a test bed for the massive NK-12 turboprop that would go on to to power the TU-95 Bear, a distant relative of the TU-4.
Wouldve been nice if he'd mentioned in the video
@@fearfulgrot agreed. I really love his voice and channel but I do believe his upload schedule between ALL of the dark series has left him kind of rushing through to keep uploads and I definitely feel his channels quality has suffered. I can remember when the dark channel didn't even have a voice and was just words typed over the pictures so its definitely come a long way lol.
The Chinese acquired around a dozen Tu-4 bombers from the Soviet Union, to extend their useful life some of them were re-engined with turbo-props, the last of these aircraft wasn’t retired until the late eighties.
@@fearfulgrot I think he chose that particular photo more for clickbait reasons.
@@ImpossiblyBlack DAMNN RIGHT HE DID!!!!!!!!!!!!;--PREHAPPS I WILL JUST CLICK;--PAUSE & READ THE COMMENTS NEXT TIME!!!;---YOU TUBE KNOWS WHEN YOU "QUIT WATCHING A VEDIO"!!!!!!!!!!!
I talked to one of the crew members one day. He told me the whole story. Over an hour. I paused him and got every detail out of him. It was a magnificent interview. My best one ever. Greatest story of all time.
Way back in the end 60s, I read a short novel about a Soviet nuclear attack on the US in Readers Digest. The front page had an illustration of a TU-4 flying over the city in the story. I always thought the author didn't have a clue. Seems he did.
The novel was named "Tomorrow!." And yes, the exclamation point was part of the title. It was written by Phillip Wylie. Hope that helps!
The Readers Digest was an obsessively anti Communist magazine. The US population was fed garbage by Readers Digest, Time magazine, Newsweek magazine and the US News and World Report. Not much has changed.
Kind of. The range of their bull was still rather short to hump over the North Pole and Canada\Northern Atlantic into US cities and unless the Sovie's had built a secret island airfield to hop through between the Union' and the Island over into the US and even then the fuel\payload range would have been a suicide run. A much better ranged one true but suicidal none the less.
@@michaelwhalen2442 I wonder if I could find a copy somewhere. I think I was about 12-13 when it read it in one of their condensed books. Thanks for providing the name.
@@dragonsword7370 Another sci fi novel from the 70s-80s had that scenario of a suicide run. Dark December about a guy trying to get to Menlo Park California from his former missile base at Dutch Island, up in Alaska. During his travels he ends up captured by a group of ex biker types, and tossed into a cage with a Soviet airman. The guy survived his flight from Russia to the US, One way, in a Tu-16.
I’m actually impressed by the amount of these planes that were built. When I first heard about the TU-4 I thought it was a one off plane reverse engineered from a B-29. Lo and behold there were 847 of these things built, some were even given to and built by China. In fact some were modified into an AWACS system by China and were in use by the PLAAF until the late 80s. Seeing the prototypes that were developed from this plane and you can see how it slowly evolved into the TU-95 which is still in use as Russia’s premier long range strategic bomber today. Such an impressive plane!
I'm convinced that when the soviet defector flew the Mig 25 to Japan and the Soviets demanded it back, the Americans should have told them they could have it back as soon as the 4- B29s were returned.
Unfortunately that would have required someone with either the guts (and balls) of ol' blood and guts himself, G.S. Patton, or someone with common sense who would've enjoyed calling the USSR's bluff on their capabilities inflicting any significant damage if they were to attempt an attack
Yeager himself was sent to Japan to test-fly that one.
@@danielbradley5255 So the USSR didnt have nukes?
@@davidb2206 Yeager flew the defector's Mig-15 in Japan, during the Korean war, along with Albert Boyd and Tom Collins. I don't think he was involved with the Mig-25. I can't find any record saying the Mig--25 was flown at all. If you know of one, please post a link.
@@fantabuloussnuffaluffagus I think you are right. My mistake. I don't have Yeager's book handy anymore.
Should be noted, Hap did not pilot the B-29 which force landed in Russia [3:35], it was named after him. He was approaching 60 at this time and was in bad health, having multiple heart attacks in recent years, so would not have been able to fly grueling long range combat missions even if he wanted to.
He puts minor errors in every video, you caught this one, the plane itself was named after Hap, that's explained later in the video
@@DragonSt3alth Understand it may not be feasible to edit videos like this once they are published, but Hap Arnold flying a combat mission, forced to land in Russia and becoming a prisoner for months is not minor
That makes sense. I had never heard of Hap flying a combat mission. It would have been both dangerous and foolhardy.
That's the saddest thing about this. The aircraft named after him help the Soviets catch up with us..
@@Paladin1873 There were a number of high profile aviators in WW2, probably the most obvious was Lindbergh who flew dozens of combat missions in the PTO, even had a kill, and all as a civilian. Lemay too was a combat vet having flown a lead position on the disastrous Schweinfurt raid, and went on [largely because of Hap] to shape US strategic bombing doctrine for the next couple decades ,, But those guys were in their prime or close to it, didn't rank that high and were in good health, none of which could be said about Hap, great tactician though he was.
The Russians even copied part serial numbers and missed rivet holes thinking that they were put there by Boeing for a reason.
One thing the Russians didnt copy though was the metal thickness. They went with thicker, poorer quality sheets.
I talked to an old soviet metallurgical engineer who was a professor at my university. He mentioned this how they had to use a different thickness of aluminum sheet because the factories had no way of making imperial thickness sheets with building new plants. Very cool old professor had many great stories about soviet military engineering
And so it was the case with almost every attempt from the USSR in trying to back engineer technology or whatever..
@@bodamian_bg Lucky it is now turn around. F35 is based on Russian design but poorly executed....
@@Triggernlfrl , more info, plz!
More jingoism please
Some years ago I read a article about the TU4. There was a major change from the B29 in regard to the thickness of the aluminium sheets. The USSR could not produce the same sheets as used on B29. Tupolev had to use thicker and thiner sheets depending on stress within the area. This was a major redesign causing major work.
That's true. The American Standard was 1/16". The Soviets and to use 2mm. 3mm would have been too thick.
The first three Bulls (the actual ones built by the Soviets NOT salvaged) were such close copies that until news reports showed the control columns clearly they had the BOEING flying b symbol in the middle of them. I know that Boeing attempted to sue, but I do NOT know what happened to that case!
I think you do know what happened in that case.... Boeing would have spent their time more wisely trying to sue big foot
Was this the first time the Soviets started reverse engineering aircraft to this degree? Seems like they got pretty good at it, all the way up to the Concordski.
@@toddsmith8608 Not sure, I know Aero engines seem to have remarkably similar layouts and engineering. I know that nearly EVERY engine manufacturer in the United States has sued them or tried to, the thing that amuses them all (and has caused them to lose the suits), is that the Russians/Soviets cannot replicate that level of metallurgy, and fine control machining so nearly all those engines have significantly WORSE FUEL ECONOMY! GE laughs at the Russian knock of their TF-101 (which get 30% less fuel economy (and SMOKES)) The USAF does too!
@@toddsmith8608 In the case of Concordski, I think you mean they were pretty BAD at it.
Sue what?
LoL
Mother russia dont give a shit
Plus third reich would sue USA for almost everything
LoL
They went to great lengths in order to copy the B-29. But it took them quite a while.
Whether or not it was worth it, they gained a LOT of insight in then modern aircraft design and technology.
Metalurgy, Electrotechnics and so on, they had to take apart literally every little piece down to its nuts and bolt.
An amazing feat, but in the end, just a copycat. It took them way longer to improve upon it.
Remember, the B-29 was the single most expensive war program of WWII. Most expensive than the Manhattan Project! All because of know mechanical failures of the early aircraft so the Soviets got the cost for next to nothing. They should have had orders to destroy the aircraft to keep them from falling into enemy hands.. From what I've read, they damn near did that on their own much of the time
@@OldGeezer55 From what I've read about these forced landings most crews thought the aircraft would be refueled and they'd be allowed to continue back to base after ad hoc repairs had been made. Most of these were rather dismayed when they were rudely loaded onto trucks bound for internment camps by angry-faced Soviet troops carrying submachine guns...
@@OldGeezer55 Back then the Sovjets weren´t the enemy, that only came later, at least if i understood the time line.
The Sovjets argued that they needed the bombers against the then-still fighting Japanese.
@@sim.frischh9781 False. The Soviets we're very much the enemy and the whole West knew it right from the start. The West tolerated the USSR as an alliance of convenience. As soon as it became clear that Fascism in Europe was on its way out, the British and Americans began immediately discussing how to deal with the Soviet problem.
@@sim.frischh9781 quiet kid
I have a flight log with a flight engineer with TU-4 time logged.
I also got a load balancer slide rule for the TU-4. It is so identical to the balancer for the B-29 of which I have 3 varients.
These are used to calculate how and where to place cargo, personnel, and fuel loads fir the load masters.
Having studied aircraft engines in-depth for decades as part of my Military History Degree I was always curious about the reverse engineering of the B 29. I noted the segment here where the Soviets used their own radial engines. This is common knowledge. But not why.
The R 3350 tread so much new ground. It was complex, problematic, and almost doomed the B 29 program. This was not acceptable to the AAF.
Both overheating during taxiing and full load climb out including the loss of the X B 29 due to an engine fire that spread to one of the fuel tanks delayed the program so badly that Boeing resorted to having Allison install V 3420 liquid cooled 24 cylinder engines, a doubled Allison V 1710, as a possible solution. The V3420 was one of the very few successful "doubled" engines ever built but never saw full production or use in WW2. A legendary "might have been".
The result was better performance & reliability but liquid cooling's vulnerability to battle damage(American heavy bombers used air cooled engines for good reason) & more delays for extensive redesign work (not to mention whether Allison could produce enough engines...) coupled with the resolution of some of the R 3350 issues (& political pressure too...) Resulted in the retention of the R 3350. Few were happy with this.
This AAF decision resulted in the loss of many overloaded & over heated aircraft and their crews. Redesigned propeller cuffs & frequent inspection/replacements of upper cylinders, & Bendix fuel injection, among other "fixes" brought reliability up to Command acceptability but never created full aircrew confidence. Pre takeoff proceedures involved shutting down different engines to cool them. Cylinder head temps were a tricky story in many long over water return fights. Engine failures on return lead to flight engineers to shut down questionable engines.
The costly takeover of Saipan for P 51 escorts and more importantly emergency B 29 landings was an explicit admission that B29s had unresolved issues not related to battle damage that the bombing effort could not be delayed for.
Undoubtedly the Soviets were aware of these issues. Substituting Soviet engines sidestepped the R 3350 issues but the soviet engines were of lower performance. Since the TU 4 platform did not usually have to cover the distances and altitudes of the B29s it would appear an acceptable compromise but never publicised.
The development of jet & turboprop powerplants side stepped the touchy nature of the last of the Western piston engines for the Soviets.
Thank you!
Nice comment! Do you have any info on r4360 power in the b29?
The loss of B29 prototype #2 was not due to an engine fire, the Truman commission blamed it in that but further investigation found out that a faulty fuel filler cap leaked fuel all over the engine causing the fire, it not only wasn't the engine's fault but it also led to many myths about the engine's and the problems related to them, as it turns out most weren't the fault of the engine's, later on it was discovered that the company that got the contract to produce the cylinder head temperature guages for the B29 production plants hadn't ever made them before and wasn't calibrating them properly, they were all showing colder than the actual temperatures some as much as 100°F cold, this caused flight engineers to open the cowl flaps too late to prevent engine's from suffering extensive heat damage.
Soviet engine choice has more to do with the fact they had already developed a very similar engine for the I-185 fighter. That engine was incredibly advanced for its time but had major teething issues in 1941 when it was abandoned in favor of proven designs because the situation on the ground was dire. In the post-war period they had all the resources and time they needed to improve its reliability which was a lot easier than reverse-engineering a whole new engine
By the time the TU4 was mass produced it was already out of date, although the amount produced was impressive. Later a TU4 that was given to china and converted to an AWACS; with turbo prop engines and a radar dish.
At the same time, the US was scrapping B-29 bombers while purchasing the B-50, which originally listed as a B-29 variant, (with the Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major engine) but was changed to the B-50 so that Congress wouldn't complain about replacing old B-29s with newer B-29s. Most of the B-50s were converted to become the first aerial tanker aircraft
Thats BS, they were hardly obsolete just cause the us had a higher power version of the b29 (the b50).
The tu4 and b50 were produced during the same years.
A bomber that outclassed everything else out there except for the b50, is hardly what you would call outdated.
@@Coyote27981 The B-29 was superseded by the B-36 in 1948 and the B-47 in 1951, though they were assigned to carrying nuclear weapons. The B-29 remained the primary heavy bomber used during the Korean War (1951-1953).
..so if they built a whole bunch of them, how did they avoid getting exported to the U.S. in the 1990's when so many warbirds and warbird wrecks were coming out of Russia?...since there are only a couple flyable B-29's, and few survivors, I would have thought the warbird scene would have been all over any surviving TU-4's(since they were basically B-29's)...
All Soviet technology is outdated….even today they are still stuck in 1977
Funfact: The tu95 earlier was a modified tu4, overtime however it’s characteristics totally changed and eventually now has almost no part that resembles the tu-4
The tail section is still similar in looks and most likely comparable in structure.
Not true, sonny. Not true. Good try, though.
@@caribman10
Alright then, let's prove it, proof is what matters after all
Yes it is true, the tu95 was a heavily modified tu-4, derivations from fuselage, that's the best it was derived, hence people claiming its a modified tu-4, though the dimensions have change , however the old original tu95 was soon upgraded and not too long after even its fuselage had changes, like the current one, the nose also completely changed, now we have this tu95 resembling nothing of the tu-4,.can we really even call it a tu-4 derived plane anymore? Nope, we really can't, and good sir, for that matter if I cannot appease you in this matter you can search up the internet on this matter
They also had battle damage repairs and the captain had left his personal camera an expensive 35 mm for the day. Every single bomber had a camera on it's dash on the pilots side. I was at the Central Airforce museum of Soviet Union in Dec of 2017.
Stalin told to the engineer in charge with the reverse engineering that he wants an indentical plane. He got his copy including the bullets holes and patches.
I like how you added the last part as if you were at Normandy Beach or something
@@A7exandersca7es I bet you are a trump.lover.
@@ARO10-3 Engineer: It is done. Engineer 2: Almost. *pulls out a large gun and carefully shoots large caliber guns in precise spots.* Ok NOW it's done, comrade.
@@bon7029 Smart.
It was said that the B-29 that was disassembled, the General H H Arnold Special, had a quick fix applied to it. And since Stalin ordered an exact replica, that quick fix was present on every single Tu-4.
It was also said that Tupolev was against the idea of replicating the B-29, he believed that for the same amount of time and resources, he could have produced 3 new designs, and by the time the B-29 was successfully replicated, the west would have likely produced more modern designs that would have rendered the B-29 obsolete. But then again, nobody disobeys orders from Stalin.
Later on China used the Tu-4 to create their first ever AWACS, the KJ-1 (literally meaning Airborne Warning-1). But it was made in the 1970s, when the first AEW B-29 models were made in 1951.
Tupolev didn't want to copy the B-29 because they were already working on the ANT-64 that had very similar characteristics. Probably Stalin was right with his idea of copying the B-29 because the ANT-64 still needed at least 3 more years of developing and testing before entering service while just copying the B-29 was way faster and they needed to catch up quickly.
@@Krolmir96 but no designer with an ounce of pride will ever want to copy another’s work. I'm sure Tupolev would have preferred to build his own product.
The quick fix you are talking about was patches covering bullet holes. The engineers debated on not replicating the patches but decided to do so out of fear that Stalin would be upset that they didn't exactly replicate it.
Ah, the power of postwar propaganda... They had three complete B29s, plus one damaged one. Any repair patches would have been different on each one... it's a story that is often repeated, but isn't actually true. If you give it a second of thought, you will realise how nonsensical it is.
@@CaptHollister it is a weird story. And somehow I doubt anyone got a close enough look to confirm it. But it's close enough to other Soviet bizarro-world weirdness to be almost believable.
It's said that the replica's were so literal they even had the name Boeing cast into the rudder pedals like the original.
Russians can be sarcastic - maybe their way of mocking Stalin.
They also had battle damage repairs and the captain had left his personal camera an expensive 35 mm for the day. Every single bomber had a camera on it's dash on the pilots side. I was at the Central Airforce museum of Soviet Union in Dec of 2017.
@@faranger wait so everything inside was copied even a random camera?
@@symphinitystugiii3476 It was not a "random" camera. It was an expensive Lika 35mm that was left by the pilot.
But yes every single Airframe has Boeing on the rudder peddles and the battle damage and repairs. A dictator like Stalin will have you killed,
If you do not follow orders. "Watch Enemy at the gates" movie for the Soviet mindset.
Stalin did not have the capability to drop nuclear weapons on anyone in 1947. The first Soviet nuclear test wasn't until 1949.
America didn't have a nuclear bomb ready either when the B-29 entered service.
IT was still nuclear capable .
@@dootthedooter Actually no it wasn't. It only became capable of dropping the atomic (not nuclear) bomb in 1945 and then only because of large modifications to bomb doors, adding fuel tanks and the use of the Avro Lancaster bomb racks and release systems.
@@1chish and what is the difference between a nuclear bomb and an atomic bomb?
@@neiloflongbeck5705 Was that a serious question?
If it was then a nuclear (aka a hydrogen) bomb a fusion reaction making it more powerful and destructive. It works by the fusion of light nuclei into a heavier one, taking its energy and power from the nuclear fusion of hydrogen isotopes. It requires very high temperatures to launch a fusion reaction; thus, it is also known as a thermonuclear bomb. That fusion reaction is triggered by:
An atomic bomb which is another kind of nuclear bomb that uses nuclear fission alone and is triggered by TNT causing plutonium to compress and become dense which in turn causes atoms to bump into each other and break down causing the bomb to explode.
I seem to remember reading an extensive article on the Tu-4 and the massive reverse engineering project. Dark Skies mentioned the differences engendered by reverse engineering an imperial measured aeroplane on metric machine tools. This proved so difficult and fraught with failure, that the Soviets bought or acquired imperial machine tools just for the Tu-4.
I learned from the article I read that the aeroplane actually disassembled for copying (The Hap' Arnold?) had, at some time, been struck by lightning. This fairly common occurrence had apparently left a pattern of three, tiny holes. Not knowing the purpose of these holes and unable to make decisions themselves, Tupolev faithfully recreated these holes in every subsequent Tu-4. Is that dedication or desperation?
Fear
Not knowing better.
They didn't. They used metric measurements throughout the planes.
Tupolev didn't want to get "canceled."
@@rconger24 Damned Soviet wokeism.
I understand the one asssembly that couldn't be duplicated was the wheel/tire for the landing gear-Russia just went and bought them in the post-WWII surplus market!!!
This is also what I once read. Perhaps not for the rims but the tyres. They were unable to replicate the rubber compound and had to source the tyres via alternative ways.
What the video didn't mention was that China then took the Tu-4 and further developed it into the KJ-1 airborne radar plane, a sort of early AWACS.
Some people say the Germans got off easy after WWII and that a lot of their high ranking officials should've stayed in prison. Others say the Japanese got off easy after WWII, what with no war crime charges being levied against the Emperor. But in reality, it was the Soviets who got off easy during and after WWII. Both Germany and the USSR invaded Poland at the same time, yet war was only declared on Germany. Then tons of supplies were shipped to the Soviets in food, ammunition, vehicles and raw materials to help them -without which they would've surely lost WWII. Then there are incidents like those featured in this video, which went unpunished.
🇺🇸
The objective of ww2 was to get rid off Germany once and for all, and take Italy and Japan out of the table, leaving France, UK, URSS and USA as the sole stockholders. Even if they achieved the destruction of Germany they ended up with the implosion of France and UK as global superpowers. On the top of that they paved the way for the inevitable rise of China as the main superpower in the long term.
@@steveshoemaker6347 the military country
They did not declare war on the USSR because they knew that Poland didn't had any right to own those zones. The Polish government treated them like colonies during the 20 years they owned them and everyone knew it. Even today they still belong to Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine, Poland never claimed them again.
@@Krolmir96 lmao, like they cared about something like this. They saw an opportunity to get rid off from a possible competitor and opted for Germany, Italy, and Japan. They didn't care for civilians of other cultures they could not care less.
3:30 I believe you have made an error! The General Hap Arnold you referred to was a B-29 named after him. He didn’t fly combat missions during the War. This Aircraft was disassembled and it’s components studied for reproduction. The Dedication Plaque bearing his name was saved and is to the best of my knowledge still in Russia.
Thank you! He must not be very familiar with American generals during WW2. There’s no way someone like Henry “Hap” Arnold, one of a handful of 5-star generals from that era, would have been put in any situation where he would be in danger. He was far too valuable ✌🏻🇺🇸
Hap being captured would have been a huge deal, like capturing MacArthur. Never heard any mention of that.
@@Pretermit_Sound American general weak anyway you keep him.
@@avtomat6471 Yeah, ok buddy 🙄
Does Russia even have any generals anymore? You’ve had at least a dozen, if not more, killed in less than 6 months 😂
The crews were all under strict orders to not make an emergency landing in Soviet territory. The only other option was to surrender to the Japanese and be killed in medical experiments, and if you were particularly unlucky have your body parts eaten afterwards. The interned aircrews were eventually allowed to escape from Soviet internment. Not a fun experience but preferable to the other option.
Thanks Tim: I'd long understood that some were never released.
I'd never trust any communist SOB.
At one point during the war Soviets had 60 American pilots as prisoner s of war even when they were allies
@@thomasklimchuk441 patton was right and it angers me that the west had anything to do eith the Soviet scum
@@thomasklimchuk441 At one point the British calmly stood by and looked the other way as Germans which they supposedly disarmed and controlled were killing Soviet PoWs. That happened near Tromsø, Norway, roughly from 10 to 31 May 1945.
Remember reading this story somewhere years ago. It also said that some parts, like the tires, were actual USAAC surplus purchased after the war. Also, soviet engineers wore special soft soled shoes when touring american factories so they could collect machining chips to reverse engineer the metalurgy.
Nope, not the USA. England invited Soviet aircraft personnel to review the Rolls Royce jet engine plant where the Nene engine was made. Hot section blades are the most critical part of a gas turbine, and the Soviets had problems with their knock-offs of the German BMW and Junkers axial-flow turbines. The same problems that the Germans had, less advanced metallurgy. Hence the Soviet delegation wearing the soft soled shoes.
@@stevenstoll2016 cool, thanks. Remember that story from long ago.
Patton was 100% correct.
There's a supposedly apocryphal story that Tupolev dared to ask Stalin if they also had to copy the US markings when it came time to paint the first TU-4, and Stalin actually laughed and said "no, put our markings".
The same idea popped into my head right when they were told to make the "exact copy". Wouldn't have been surprised if they copied US markings first...
I think the tensions around American b29s grounded in russia and the negotiations to get hem back could make a pretty interesting and engaging movie
I've lived in Bangkok 22 years where the first B 29 raid took place. They are still finding WW 2 bombs in Thailand.
Death Railway.
Gen. H. Hap Arnold did NOT land a B-29 in Vladivostok. The NAME of the bomber was 'The General H. H. Arnold Special' - a name given to it due to Gen. Arnold's special interest and support of the B-29 program. That was a pretty bad oversight.
Previously it was determined that many such errors were probably made intentionally, to stimulate the comment section. The algorithm. Is this the only significant error in this video? That's progress.
@@johnparnell9488 The error is pretty egregious - got a vibe it was a young researcher who couldn't tell the difference. For history buffs, Gen. Hap Arnold is a unique man. Only 9 men in US history have held the title of 5 Star Rank - (or General of the Army, Fleet Admiral, or General of the Air Force) - and only one - Henry 'Hap' Arnold - the father of US Air Force, held that rank in two services (army and air force).
@@Mike-hp2dd Thank you. I learned something!
Honestly, that was an honestly embarrassingly bad oversight. Dark Skies isn't actually at the scholarly level, and "humdingers" like this one happen often enough that they need to be better.
considering how troublesome the B-29 was, it probably made the Soviets waste a lot of effort replicating the B-29. However, they probably learned a lot too. What was worse was when the Brits sold Rolls Royce jet engines to the USSR. The Soviets promised they would only use the engines for civilian aircraft. They lied. They put the engines in the MIG-15. A lot of allied pilots died because of that idiotic mistake. Stalin stole everything he could…no matter how much it hurt his country’s reputation.
Well not true as always when a Yank gobs off. An 'idiotic mistake'?
Really?
The Nene was sold to Russia in 1946 and early 1947 when there was no 'Cold War' and they were still notional allies on that condition. After all the UK had supplied thousands of aircraft, tanks and billions of pounds worth of equipment to Russia from 1941 to 1946. Unlike the USA we supplied it all FoC.
However those engines were not used in the MiG-15 as the Soviets reverse engineered THAT without the UK knowing as they had the B-29 and it was the Klimov RD-45 that went into the MiG-15.
So was it also a mistake for that same Rolls Royce to export the same Nene to the USA where it was built as the Pratt & Whitney J-42 and fitted to the Panther and Starfire?
Oh wait you Yanks are the good guys right?
@@1chish We knew that Stalin was an absolute authoritarian with murderous tendencies. He was orders of magnitude worse than any British or American leader. The Allies sold major amounts of war material to the USSR, but we did it balancing the need to aid the USSR in the war against the Axis versus the potential harm that could exist after the Axis was defeated. The inability to recognize the difference between the USSR under Stalin's rule and the other Allied countries was a big mistake.
@@hughgreentree What?
1. The USSR under Stalin was the same before as it was after the war and no country knew this better than the UK as close relatives of our Monarch had been slaughtered by the Trots in July 1918.
2. The UK's supplying them with the Nene started in 1946 while we were still supplying military aid as we had since July 1941.
3. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. It is 20/20 vision. Now which US President was predicting the 1950 Korean war in 1946/47? None. Had China not instigated that war then who supplied those Nenes would have been totally academic. You are conveniently relating two unrelated events to suit your confirmation bias. Of course had the US not used antiquated B-29s in Korea and had used jet bombers as the RAF then had then maybe the outcome would not have been so bad. The USA totally misjudged the abilities of both the Chinese and Russians.
Selling jet engines in 1946 to both the USA and USSR was actually being even handed (in 1946 terms).
4. Again you are not accurate. Only ONE of the allies "sold major amounts of war material to the USSR" and that was the USA. The UK never charged the USSR for any of the millions of pounds worth of aircraft, tanks, machine tools and other equipment we sent from 2 weeks after the Nazis launched Barbarossa which was months before the first US sales arrived. Indeed we supplied aircraft to the USA so they could ship aircraft direct to the USSR. So we were also underwriting US supplies.
Every country steals ideas and technology, whatever it takes to gain an advantage.
Well, we've gotten an Mi 24 Hind, a look at the Mig 25 and numerous other aircraft as pilots defected and the iron curtain collapsed , so I guess that balances things out.
We even got a nuclear sub from them, lol
A Soviet spy was stealing Americas nuclear secrets, a British Labour government sold the Soviets the jet engine but I'm sure the west acquired a few items themselves over time.
@@jelkel25 I think Russia got the last laugh when they managed to install Donald Trump as a president, to be fair.
@@_Yep_Yep_ It was China who had the last laugh after they managed to cheat a senile kids hair sniffer who had boundary issues with his daughter into the White House, but you people love all that don't you?
And a Mig 29
What's the latest on the B-29 crewmen who were never released by the Russians after crash-landing in the east ( near Vladivostock, I think) ?
Something that I say that always annoys people is that the Soviet Union would not exist without America's help
Parasites never exist without a host
because it arrogant BS
Of course, God created the universe so that the USA could exist and rule the world with their pals, the Saudis, the Israelis and the other empire builders because God only loves America. But not South America or latin parts of North America or any 'darker' parts of North America especially those islands and especially that island where they overthrew their masters and refused to be good slaves because they thought they were as good as white people and deserved freedom. How dare they!
Ussr came about circa 1920, us and others failed in aid to white Russians and soviets won. That's not helping create the ussr. If you mean lend lease in ww ii it helped, but the reds did preþy well on their own. The nazis were marching backwards in ussr before normandy.
Our allies......
What's strange about this? When the B-29s landed in USSR, and please DO learn to remember that Russia and Soviet Union are two completely different things, or should we start calling USA the confederate states perhaps, because that would be the exact same kind of idiocy?
When the B-29s landed in USSR, the Soviet union was still under a peacetreaty with Japan since the pre-WWII clashes, despite being allied with USA in Europe, they were effectively neutral in Asia, meaning that anything from EITHER of the warring sides that landed was to be interned.
Do look up the Soviet-Japanese neutrality pact.
And while they had the planes present, why shouldn't they see if they could reverse engineer them?
It's not like they couldn't have designed something equal on their own, it would just have cost much more and taken a year or two extra, USSR did have the worlds largest heavy bomber just a decade earlier after all(they even bombed Berlin), but the extra cost during the war, of course they wouldn't waste resources like that.
They already had comparable engines in the form of the Shvetsov ASh-73, which were derived from the same engine that the B-29 engines were derived from, even if it was 3 generations in between, although they were slightly more powerful due to having a bit larger cylinder volume, as their generation jumps did not exactly copy that .
The average person does not know their history they only know what they're told by their friends or what nonsense they see on social media unfortunately
@@Mr.Robert1 Sadly oh so true indeed.
The legacy...the Tu-80, Tu-85 and the final iteration the Tu-95!. They made it all in a row in 5 years!
It looks like the TU-80 airframe gave birth to the TU-16 Jet powered bomber - now with Chinese Aviation as the Xian-H6!
@@ArrowBast those early Tu bombers share common design features reminiscent from Boeing B-29
At 3:56 we see how small these bombers actually were. The plane looks like a scale model, it looks like you couldn't stand up in it. But those sleek jet bombers in the opening scene at 0:03 were very impressive, fantastic 1947 technology.
The film used showing those jet bombers was not from 1947 and I suspect mid '60s. The Russians didn't have jet engines until the Rolls Royce Nene was sold to them in 1947 and their first jet aircraft was the Mig-15 using a reverse engineered Nene engine which first flew in December 1947.
The RB.41 Nene was the engine licence built by Pratt & Whitney as the 'J-42' specifically to power the new Grumman Panther F9F-2 as Grumman planned to use the centrifugal-flow turbojet engine with 5,000 pounds rated thrust at 12,400 r.p.m. The Nene being more powerful (and more reliable) than any engine manufactured by an American company.
The irony is that both the Mig-15 and the Panther came face to face in the Korean War.
B-29s are a lot smaller than most people think, and definitely smaller inside, having flown on one.
This could make a fascinating movie
Americans do not use ''Imperial '' measures. [9:05] We use the US Customary Measures system. Before Britain changed to metric, they used Imperial measures. They are different.
Lost must've been shocking to see the big ass aircraft (the Fourth one) without expecting it to exist in the first place
Does anyone know or able to explain what the narrator meant towards the end of this video when stating:
"...by 1947, with months to go before Stains two year limit ended" ?
The B29 had over heating issues apparently they copied it so closely their version had the same problem.
Allied forces bombed Bangkok near the end of WWII. I'm surprised to learn of this. Strange how this fact has remained unknown to me for most of my life.
Given the Soviet espionage, I wonder if it was sabotage that caused the B-29s to land in Russia.
Additionally, if not for the espionage and reverse-engineering, it's likely the Soviets would never have been the threat they became.
You think we could have learned from this, but no, and, 55 years later, we did the same thing with China and a US Navy EP-3. We're our own worst enemy when it comes to making our adversaries more of a threat.
@@gracchus7782 True, but is is suspicious that Stalin wanted these things badly, then in short succession, 4 landed on his proverbial lap. Coincident is pushing it.
There were alot of people who thought that the American system had failed and that communism was the answer. We even had traitors in the Roosevelt administration, indeed , there is strong evidence that Roosevelt himself was a traitor.
The State Department was infested with communists and socialists and Roosevelt even had at least one suspicious advisor. The decision to risk running out of gas over Russia was a political as well as a military decision. The communists in the State Department would do anything they could to steer the decision in Russia's favour. There were many patriots in the US air force who were opposed to even flying over Russian Territory. They knew what would happen if Stalin got his hands on this plane.
@@w.g.whitney7350 Virgin Mary appeared in Necedah, Wisconsin in 1950 to 1975 and told the names of many of the traitors in the Roosevelt administration.
The Soviet/Russian list is long and a bit shameless. The Space Shuttle and the Biron, the Concordsky, the atomic bomb, gas pipeline distribution technology, the B 29.......
I love that they even copied a missdrilled #40 hole.
Even back then all the records of one time approved deviations from the drawings were kept.
I love your video's and thank you for them but the music overlay is terribly distracting and way too loud.
I bet it was a lot more work to re-create that bomber than it would have been to design and build one from scratch.
It was an exercise to develop the Soviet capability to build an entire aircraft in a style they never had. The remit was "100 % CCCP components", no exceptions, including nuts, bolts, rivets Substitution of heavier and thicker metal was needed as they didn't have the equivalent alloys.
Does anyone know where the intro part (0:00 - 0:45) came from, i.e. original film of opening scenes from "Tushino Aviation Day 1947"?
Many thanks in advance!
I'm not sure if it's true, but I heard that there was a manufacturing error in the dismantled B-29... if memory serves it was a hole that was drilled into once of the aluminium pieces that wasn't meant to be drilled, which caused no real structural problem. However, the Soviets even copied that, so that ALL TU-4's had that extra drill hole, despite not being necessary :D.
I'm not sure if it's an urban myth or real, but it sounds real.
Stalin requested that the Soviet aeronautical industry produce a copy of the B-29. When Stalin made a "request" such as that, it was an "order", which had to be done or else. The remarkable thing was that Andrei Tupolev actually was able to accomplish it in such a short time, and actually get it to work. It was not as simple as it sounds because every single part had to be adapted to metric units of measurement.
Could Russia be a source for replacement B-29 warbird parts?
You gotta admit that showing first 3 of them to make the Americans think it was theirs then throwing a fourth is a nice touch of "eheheh gotcha!"
Good video
Do a documentary on what the Soviet Union did with 848 TU-4 Bull bombers? They never saw combat but how and where were they used in Russia.
I often wondered if Tupolev was pissed that he couldn’t be allowed to use his own design instead of making a copy of the B29.
Better off pissed than executed🤣
Yes he was pissed, he told me
better believe he went bk to the drawing board...afterwards
@@peoasdosdsdas😂😂😂
Only thing I heard was that the B-29 was prone to engine fires because the cowling was defective from the get go. That cowling was supposedly replicated and continued to cause engine fires on the B-29 copies. I see here Russian Engines were used instead of Pratt & Whitneys. So then, what? I've always wondered how good the remote control guns on the B-29 were.
the old tale about the Russians replicating a battle damage patch is an urban myth, created by the US to belittle Russia's enormous achievement in duplicating the B-29. They had three aircraft to inspect, do you really believe they would not see that the other two did not have that patch? I would like to see a survivor to see if the story of them copying the rudder pedals complete with the Boeing emblem is true or not. How did real world performance and reliability compare with the Russian Shvetsov ASh-73 engines? We were taught that they were a pound for pound copy of the Wright R-3350-23 Duplex-Cyclone, and the Wright's were troublesome to say the least
Great point
what about the enormous achievement of creating such an aircraft? copying isn't a virtue
Except they did to a extent.
They thought the Deicing boots on the wings were standard on B29's, and equipped them on the TU-4s.
Theres many more examples.
The captain had left his personal camera for the day. Every single bomber had a camera on it's dash on the pilots side
The medical cabinet was duplicated as well.
@@honkhonk8009 i mean, even if the Russians knew the de-icing boots were not standards it still makes sense to put them on all Tu-4's seeing how ice cold it can be over there
A total of 847 Tu-4s were built by the USSR. Eleven of these were provided to China. Of the USSR planes, only one is known to remain in the Monino Air Museum. Of the Chinese planes, ten had been re-engined with turboprop engines with only two now remaining in Beijing.
US Army Air Corp: Sure, we can lend you a few bombers to fight the Nazis.
Stalin: Thanks, comrade.
US Army Air Corp once Stalin showed off his nuke capable Soviet B-29s: I shouldn’t have said that. I should not have said that.
You're videos are top notch. Research is on point, narration, video footage. Just brilliant and thank you for making these.
The USA made a tragic mistake supporting the Soviets. We have been paying for it ever siince. Churchill tried to warn Roosevelt how dangerous they were but FDR wouldn't listen.
At the same time, the US decided not to beet the Soviets to Berlin (which was well within the ability of the combined western forces) and gave the Soviets the massive 'honor' (and casualties) to take the German capital
Anyone notice that Soviet women were building the TU-4 while American women were building the B-29. Rosie the Riveter v. Tanya the Riveter.
the Chinese acquired a number of the mass produced version and even dabbled with airborne radar variant to varying success
"In reality, the Soviets had successfully replicated the B-29 bomber and developed the Tu-4 Bull, and Stalin now had a fleet of long-range bombers capable of dropping nuclear bombs over all of Western Europe and the United States" - The USSR only had their first nuclear test in 1949, that's after the Aviation Day in 1947
Love your videos, the Soviet should be complemented for being able to build the dam thing,at the time it was the most complex machine ever built.
Compliment them for stealing an idea and sitting around like the baboons they are trying to reverse engineer it? Third worlder doesn’t understand the concept of intellectual property.
Cost more than the atomic bomb
The standard measurement system came in handy for a minute!
They copied one of the most troublesome aircraft the US built. Engine failures and fuselage problems plagued the B-29 through its life span. They had to capture islands from the Japanese to have enough emergency landind strips for all the B29's that had non combat failures on the way to and from Japan.
I'd like to know where you got that information from
Tupalev was a miracle worker. That everybody could die for a screw up ("These rivets are not flush!") might have helped.
Interesting story. We underestimated the Russians. Bad idea.
don’t worry the CIA gotten back w underwater listening stations lifting their subs off the ocean floor and airlifting a helicopter outa Afghanistan in the 70s
Lmfao how’d you gather that from this video? If anything it shows the desperation and lack of technology/industry the USSR had
Patton was right should have went right into Russia after Germany
Didn't they also reverse engineer the Rolls-Royce Nene jet engine?
Well done. I'll spare commentary. Good work! 👍 Also learned something. You're quality of postings has improved. Kudos! 👌👍
One must think of Tupolev. He must have been chagrined to put his name on this as he probably surmised that later on it would be proved that he had zero to do with the original design concept and just used tracing paper. So as to why attach his name to this aircraft? most likely the use of the Tupolev name was for the Soviet people to associate a homegrown design and even more trust in the communist formula.
It's naive to assume they had technical drawings and assembly plans. Even if they had paper plans, they wouldn't have drawings for the dies and tooling required to build it. It's very hard to take a prototype and build a factory to make it. I think Tupolev would have been proud to have his name on this aircraft. WWII has demonstrated to the world that engineers and machinists can do amazing work when under threat of death.
your aircraft videos are outstanding, thanks also for slowing down the pace of your otherwise-excellent and informative narration
At least our Faux Pa was not intentional unlike the Brits gift of Jet Engines
as a brit I shudder at the naivety of the government of the day doing this. soviet mig 15's powered by British designed engines fighting united nations airforces in Korea 🤬
US got the engine too. That worked out great for commonwealth.
People like to talk about countries copying other countries' vehicles like it's something bad, dumb or laughable. In reality it doesn't matter if the plane about to bust your ass is a copy of another country's design or even your own country's
Real story is probably more treasonous & less accidental I'd imagine. Who knows, though? Still, if somebody wanted to slip someone else a chance to reverse engineer our most secret designs... 🤔
Something wrong with your ending. The original US B-29 bomber was incapable of dropping the first A-bombs because of the bisected bomb-bay. These had to be specially modified. The Soviet first A-bomb was every bit as big as the American one so how could their Tu-4 drop their bomb without similar modification??
It would've been hilarious if they'd re-created the B-2 right down to the damage that made them emergency land in Russia-controlled territory.
Excellent Video Presentation as always. Well Done Sir.
Did the Soviets ever return the planes, or did the end up in a Russian museum or scrap pile?
This is true. In fact, the workers were told, "you have time X. If you do not do so, you will be dead.".
30 years from now this first trend will still be a thing...... Anyways thank you for the interesting content
Excellent presentation, thank you !
Since FDR was a Socialist it was no surprise that he helped the USSR and gave them war materials . To trust the USSR was foolish . Patton was right . We fought the wrong country .
The allies needed a land front against Germany so as to draw Nazi troops away from Europe and Britain. The US supplied the weapons, Stalin supplied the cannon fodder and Hitler supplied the arrogance and stupidity to fight a 2-front war. If Russia had been quickly overrun, the Nazis would have landed in England by 1942, before America was ready. The Atlantic could have become a German no-sail zone. FDR chose the lesser of 2 evils given the situation. Could the US have continued the war against Russia after VE day? Militarily yes, but nobody really wanted to. And few Western leaders dreamed that USSR would become a nuclear power so quickly. In hindsight, it was a huge mistake to let that happen.
must be hard being a nazi and knowing the nazis got their asses kicked
You have no idea what socialism, let alone communism, actually are. All you can do is parrot talking points taken off reddit and little charlie tuck-tuck.
You think we should have backed the Nazis? So it was alright to gas 6 million Jews, plus several million other civilians? I'm sure glad you, and those like you, weren't making the military decisions back then. Come on, where do you get ideas like that?
C'mon Hemi Head, aren't you going to explain yor defense of Patton? I don't know when he said we fought the wrong country, but he had a point. It's just that you don't always get a choice who you have to fight first. I hope you're not one of those holocaust denying types. If you are, there is help available to get you out of that cult. And thanks for listening.
I first heard much of this when I read a biography of Stalin's NKVD Head Lavrenty Beria. The author, Thaddeus Wittlin knew several B-29 crewman who had crash landed on Soviet territory in 1945. They knew the USSR was still neutral, but they expected internment under reasonable conditions. Instead they were treated like enemy combatants, roughly interrogated - including technical questions about their aircraft - and beaten.
They were locked up in a Soviet POW Camp with Japanese who had been captured in various border incidents, and ironically a group of Japanese communists - apparently artists and film-makers who had sought to defect and were instead treated with paranoid savagery. The women in the Japanese group died very early.
The US aircrew were not released until 1946......
Oh gee, communist artists wanting to be fed by the masses so they can pursue their art got arrested. Big shock.
Really? I don't think Americans where that surprised. At least not those in the military.
Tu-4, all copies and paste but for engines (which still American in origin, they used their own variation of B-17 engine, which they bought license to build) and defensive armament (23 mm cannon instead of.50 cal). Radio sets were from lend-lease B-25 and the rest were duplicates (or as some said, buy out).
Zero credibility. Nothing on this channel is reliable.
Please explain how and when the USMC lost the battle of Henderson Field. I'm still completely lost on how this channel's version of history adds up.
I read years ago that all the TU4s had a small brass plate with “Hap Arnold Special” in the flight station because when Stalin said identical he meant identical.
The pilots should of been ordered to destroy the aircraft and manuals should they be forced to land in Russia.
At the time Russia was a crucial ally against Nazi Germany. Destroying a bomber on their runway might have been taken as an act of aggression.
@@Dewydidit They had a tendency to self destruct as it was. They used magnesium in the engins to keep the weight light. Ever see a magnesium flair? "Oh! So sorry tovarish!. Our number 4 engine got too hot and melted aircraft. Sorry Amerikanski engineering! We are sorry we can not give you plane." Nope, pull the switch and burn it down to the rubber tires.
I was told by a gentleman years ago who was a B-29 pilot that the fourth plane was in fact stolen by the Soviets, he told me that they were flying to Manchuria to pick up skinny Wainwright who was a pow after they conclusion of the war, on the way the formation of three planes were surrounded by several Soviet fighter planes who were motioning to follow them, unfortunately one of the planes broke formation and did follow, when they returned to base they were told not to talk about it, the plane is listed as missing, he was not sure if the crew ever was returned or not.
TU-4 Bull: *Exist.*
United States: *"That B-29 looks a bit...........*
*SUS".*
Reverse engineering was invented by the Soviet Union during Stalin days but the Chinese were expert. The Soviet's Tu16, MiG19,21 were provided by the Russians without a blueprint. The Chinese cloned these aircrafts for the use of their own.
The B29 landed in the Soviet Union, of which Russia was a part of at the time.
Thats like saying an aircraft landed in the British commonwealth, which was india at the time.
The soviet union was litterally just russia. Everything else was litterally controlled territory by Moscow.
even today, most of the land around and within Russia is almost entirely different from the likes of Moscow and St Petersburg
@@honkhonk8009 Also, they literally did land on Russia. In the video it's mentioned that these B29s landed in Vladivostok, a city that's been part of Russia since before WW1, so the guy was being pedantic for no reason at all.
@@honkhonk8009 It was controlled from Moscow, but not by Russians.
Correction @3:33 ~ Gen. H Hap Arnold did not land a B-29 in Vladivostok. A B-29 named after Gen H Hap Arnold ( Gen. H. H. Arnold Special ) landed on Vladivostok,
piloted by my uncle Capt Weston Price.