Scrolling through the pictures I saw that the FE's panel looked almost identical to a B-29. I wish that I had known about this earlier, I just spent my last million at the dentist.
Well, Bob, you know that the Tu-95 is the B-29's great-great grandson, or rather that of the Tu-4, the copy the Soviets made of the B-29s that landed there during the war. The Tu-4 was developed into the larger Tu-80 and Tu-85 piston-engined prototypes, and the latter was the basis of the Tu-95, which mated the same fuselage (with the wing moved forward) with a new swept wing and tail and those monstrous turboprops. The Tu-95 has the same fuselage diameter as the B-29, and I'm sure that a lot of the systems are very similar.
Thanks, Jim, for all that history. I'm not up on all that so I appreciate it. All I know about the Bear is that the engine/gearbox design was the product of German engineers "moved" to Russia. The Bear with turbo-props had almost the same performance as the B-52, amazing.
Back in the day I intercepted a few of these guys when they used to over-fly our U.S. Navy aircraft carrier. The Bear is a very impressive aircraft. The routine was to move in close and, using a hand-held camera, photograph any kind of new antenna, bump, bulge, or what-have-you. You couldn't safely get very close to the cockpit, but you could get right up next to the tail gunner. On one such occasion the tail gunner held up a Playboy centerfold from the current month's issue so that I could photograph him. On the ship, we would be waiting an additional month for our mail. I still wonder how this fellow, flying out of Vladivostok got hold of this magazine so quickly. One of the spy types onboard the carrier helped me prepare a small sign in Cyrillic script for this mission since we knew they were coming. It said something rude about Russian tail gunners, but I won't repeat it since it's no longer politically correct. However, anyone with a twisted mind can guess what it said. He laughed when I showed it to him. By the way, we were quite certain we could never shoot down a Bear. The best I figured I could do was damage it to the point that it couldn't make it back home, but there was no way our Sidewinders and 20mm cannons would prevent them from completing an attack on the carrier. Ramming was the only tactic considered to be effective.
Just as a side point of interest, the data I have says that those big props were the slowest-turning ones in all aviation (at least since WW1 or before) - only about 750 RPM.
I think that the B-29 at max cruise had prop speeds at that and below. You flick your eyes just right and you can pick up a blade going by.
But with a diameter of more than five meters.... Even 750 RPM is enough to get the tips moving at supersonic speeds at cruise.
Awesome stuff!! What were you flying? F-16? Why would you believe that a Sidewinder could not down the Bear?
And the loudest... unbelievably loud... the tips were probably supersonic. The counterotating added to it made them even louder... 8 props. Look for a youtube video of one... get an idea of the noise. Not a pleasant sound. And Jim's correct; a turboprop swept-wing B-29 with almost B-52 performance.
Just for the sake of argument - here are the stats I have on these two: B-52G StratoFortress: Wingspan - 185' Length - 157'66 Height - 40' Max Speed - 660mph Weight - 488,000lb Ceiling - 55,000' Range - 8,500 miles Bomb load - 66,000lbs Bear TU-95 (TU-20 back in the day) Wingspan - 159' Length - 155' Height - 39' Weight - 340.000lbs Max speed - 500mph Ceiling - 44,000' Range - 7,800 miles Bomb load - 25,000lbs
Prop diameter by my data was 18',4" - or 5.6 meters. (The engines were 15,000 shaft HP each.) So prop circumference at the tips was about 58'. 58' x 750rpm is about 43,500' per minute, or 725' per second. So, nearly 500 mph. Not supersonic, but fast enough to make some ear-splitting noise. Not to mention that contra-props have interference sound effects as the tips pass each other in opposite directions. Film footage allows you to actually see the individual blades moving at cruise.
Speaking of loud turboprop planes - remember the Republic XF-84H (1955)? It was like an F-84 jet fighter but with a 5,850 hp turboprop and a conventional 3-blade prop. It was so loud that it was nicknamed the "Thunderscreech", and resonance off the ground made the groundcrew physically ill. Still slower than mid-50s jets by at least 100mph at 520mph and the whole thing ended after two prototypes.
The USAF tried that on the XB-47J with predicted lack of performance and high failure risk. An engine failure with a dead prop that had blades over two feet wide would have been a barn door on one side and the pilots were really antsy about it. The brass insisted that there MUST BE a transition from props to jets. Yes, there was. But it was real short.
I was involved with many Bear intercept missions. We never got closer than a few miles but it was cool stuff.
Those turboprops are amazing. To think that the Soviets could create such an engine, way back in the 1950s, which is still the most powerful turboprop ever built in quantity, and with apparently a decent reliability record, is a remarkable achievement. The engine was originally rated at 15,000 SHP but is generally derated to 12,000 SHP, which is still amazing. It seems that all U.S. attempts to build a similarly powerful turboprop have been failures; the T57 (based on the J57 turbojet) which was supposed to power the C-132 came closest.
Here's a YouTube video of a Tu-95 on final approach to an air force base: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9S3h37GW2g]Tu-95 Bear 300 ft above - YouTube[/ame]
Seriously, this is an interesting question: Would cruise speed make a difference in the amount of sound? The vector would be 90 degrees to the line of flight (approximately) and I thought that the sound disturbance came from an axial disturbance around the prop circumference. Anyway, when this thing was going 500 mph, it would be so high that it would be pretty hard to hear from the ground.
