Cold war prototypes that didn't make it

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18 years 5 months

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Inspired by some great pictures from "Century Fighters" thread, I decided to make this post and cover designs from same era from all over.
Technology, pushed by cold war fear and enormous amounts of money invested in new projects, made this period most interesting specially in aviation.

I'll start with couple of Soviet prototypes that never made it to production.
These are pretty rare so if you have more shots of the same please post too.
Mikoyan Ye-8
Sukhoi P--1

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and more of Sukhoi P-1

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Lavochkin La-250

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sukhoi T-4 : http://www2.interceptor.com/~thumper/xb2/su-100_front.jpg,
il-102 : http://airwar.ru/image/i/attack/il102-i.jpg,
Myasishchev M-50: http://www.aerospaceweb.org/aircraft/bomber/m50/m50_02.jpg

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Some more of my favorites:
Sukhoi T-49, YF-93, XF-90

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ah the lovely T-4 lovely little bird

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i have always liked the bounder, it just looks so impressive. i think if the soviets had a decent enough engine for it, it would have enterd production. but apparently it was so underpowered it could hardly get off the ground. what a shame.....another great soviet aircraft that never was, the tu-85 barge...

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I've always liked the looks of the XF-90. I bet it would have been a good competitor to the Sabre.

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I always loved the bounder as well.Also love the Ye-8 looks almost like the Eurofighter in some ways.Too bad a production model never came about.

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I've always liked the looks of the XF-90. I bet it would have been a good competitor to the Sabre.

Big, heavy and slow. It weighed 27,200 lbs. The highest speed it ever achieved was 665 mph. Its two J-34 engines provided only 6,200 lbs of thrust. Afterburners were added, raising the thrust to 8,000 lbs, all that did was reduce the range. Its service ceiling was only 39,000 feet. It looked good but thats about it.

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Big, heavy and slow. It weighed 27,200 lbs. The highest speed it ever achieved was 665 mph. Its two J-34 engines provided only 6,200 lbs of thrust. Afterburners were added, raising the thrust to 8,000 lbs, all that did was reduce the range. Its service ceiling was only 39,000 feet. It looked good but thats about it.

Even Ben Rich said it was a dog.

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ah the lovely T-4 lovely little bird

'Little' ??????

At 100 tonnes ?? :eek:

Ken

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yeah i know it was 100 tonnes but it always looks small compared to its rival the XB-70, hence i think of it a little but that's just me

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And nobody's suggested TSR2 yet!

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Consider it suggested!!!.

Regards,

John.

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I bet if they had found some more powerful engines for it, then it would have been a better airplane.

Lots of great planes were underpowered at first.

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Also love the Ye-8 looks almost like the Eurofighter in some ways.Too bad a production model never came about.

Completely agree. Cant believe it didn't go into production. First prototype Ye-8/1 crashed due to engine failure. Second Ye-8/2 had too many engine problems and they decided to scrap the whole project in 1962.

Design was so ahead of its time. Reminds me mostly of Chinese J-10.

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I bet if they had found some more powerful engines for it, then it would have been a better airplane.

Lots of great planes were underpowered at first.

Definitely. I wonder if some RB-199s would fit in the X-3. Or maybe EJ200s :eek:

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Underpowered monster scraped in 1974 yet still supercool in 2006!

By the way, does anyone have any inf/pics of T-4 competition from Tupolev and Yak?

here is biggger color pic of T-4

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Here are few that were certainly not underpowered.!

Mikojan Ye-152/1, Ye-152A, Ye-152M

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18 years 2 months

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Well, if TSR.2 can join so can the CF-105 - nuf said.

Anybody have more pics or drawings of the Il-102?? - the Russian equivalent to the Northrop A-9 wasn't it - as in losing out to Su-25