Thursday, January 21, 2010

A big Russki Flying Machine

Came in an e-mail from Grog Watkins:


In the 1930s the Russian army was  obsessed by the idea of creating huge planes. At that time, they were proposed to  have as many propellers as possible to help carrying those huge flying  fortresses into the air;  jet propulsion had not been implemented yet.  Not many photos were  saved from those times because of the high secrecy levels of such projects  and because a lot of time has already passed. Still, in the photos below you  can see  one such plane - a heavy bomber K-7. Built in Russia during the 1930s, it  flew 11 times before crashing and killing 15 people.
The designer,  Konstantin  Kalinin, wanted to build two more planes but the project was scrapped. Later, Stalin had  Kalinin executed. Evidently, it was not  good to fail on an expensive project  under Stalin . It's  got propellers on the back of the wings, too. You can count 12 engines  facing front. The  size  would be equivalent to the Empire State Building on  its  side, with  cannons. And you think the 747 was big... not only a bunch of engines but  check out the cannons the thing was carrying.

(Amazing how quickly those cannons got added while the "passengers" waited patiently with their modern-looking luggage. You can see more about this giant here Ed.  ;-)








best regards,
Webmaster Ted

2 comments:

  1. Is this for real or a mock-up or an artist's fancy? The fact that the passengers had wheely bags in the late 1930s in Russia makes me wonder...

    OTOH, paratroopers leaping out of slow and low flying aircraft was a fact. The snow may have helped some.

    Dinger

    ReplyDelete
  2. There's a lot artistic license in them pics, I reckon, which is why I posted a link to an actual flying K-7.

    ReplyDelete