[Note: For previous posts in this series, click here: 1 2 3]

Extending the length of the other side of long walkway, directly opposite the aircraft of the Great Patriotic War are more than one dozen craft representing the Sukhoi OKB.

Aircraft of the Sukhoi OKB

For whatever reason, the Sukhoi OKB collection is “book ended” by two aircraft that did not emerge from the design bureau’s drawing boards. However, as neither can possibly escape notice, both are worth mentioning.

The first of these (located on the immediate left as one enters the main gate) is a contraption so big and so ugly that only its inventor could love it. Constructed between 1965 and 1967 by the M. L. Milia OKB, the Mi-12 (NATO designation “Homer”) was a genuine hella copter. Designed to provide super-heavy airlift capacity to the Red Army, the Mi-12 was powered by two 6,500 h.p. gas turbine engines that were, in turn, used to rotate two massive (114 ft diameter!) propellers situated at the opposite ends of the copter’s “wings.” The result wasn’t pretty, but it did manage to fly. In fact, during test flights in 1969, an Mi-12 piloted by V. P. Koloshenko set a world record for helicopters by lifting just over 88,633 lbs. to an altitude of 7,381 ft. The model on display at the VVS Museum is one of only three Mi-12s ever built.

At the far opposite end of the Sukhoi row sits another of Soviet aviation’s qualified successes, the country’s supersonic passenger airplane, the Tu-144. Developed in response to America’s proposed (but never built) Boeing 2707 and the Anglo-French Concorde, the Tu-144 earned the distinction of becoming history’s first SST passenger plane when it took to the air on 31 December 1968 two months before the Concorde. Four and a half years later, the Tu-144 earned the distinction of becoming history’s first SST passenger plane to crash when one went down in a spectacularly public fashion during a demonstration flight at the 1973 Paris Air Show. A total of 17 Tu-144s were manufactured (including a prototype and two production test models). However, limited range, a series of technical problems, and a second deadly accident led to the airplane’s discontinued commercial use in 1978. By then, the 14 production aircraft had collectively managed a mere 102 passenger flights.

In between the Tu-144 and the mammoth Mi-12 are an array of airplanes properly belonging to the Sukhoi OKB.

Chief among these is the Su-35 that is parked near the entrance gate alongside the Mi-12. Designed in response to the development of the American F-15 Eagle and F-16 Fighting Falcon, the Su-35 was intended to give the USSR a lightweight multi-role fighter capable of matching the performance characteristics of US “fourth generation” aircraft. Unlike the F-15 and F-16 which represented significant departures from preceding planes such as the F-111 and F-4, the Su-35 was a highly modified outgrowth of an earlier Sukhoi model, the Su-27. (In fact, the plane was originally known as the Su-27M). Even then, the development of the Su-35 has taken considerably longer than might have been expected. The prototype of the plane only took to the air in 1988 (a full six years after F-15s and F-16s had decisively proven their combat worthiness in the hands of Israeli pilots over Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.) Subsequent modifications (including the development of the Su-37) further delayed the plane’s production. A final production variant of the Su-35 is slated to debut at the MAKS-2007 Air Show later this summer.

Of less recent vintage, though no less significance, is the Su-25 that sits in front of the Tu-144 [see above]. A heavily armed and armored subsonic aircraft, the Su-25 is what the Russians call a “штурмовик” (shturmovik) an airplane designed to provide close air support to ground operations (a role fulfilled in the US armed forces by the famed A-10 Warthog). Ironically, as Soviet officials had effectively abandoned frontal aviation in favor of developing strategic weapons such as ICBMs and intercontinental bombers from the late 1940s onward, the Su-25 was the first shturmovik to emerge from a Soviet design bureau in nearly three decades when its prototype (the “T-8-1”) debuted in February 1975.

The aircraft first flew combat missions in April 1980 when two Su-25s were dispatched to assist in the USSR’s unfolding Afghan operations. The planes performed brilliantly. Soon, full squadrons of Su-25s began operating out of the Soviet airbases located at Bagram and Khandar. Although the eventual arrival of American Stinger shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles seriously undermined the ability of the VVS to conduct aerial operations, the Su-25 proved its worth. According to official figures, by the time Soviet armed forces withdrew from Afghanistan, Su-25s had flown more than 60,000 combat missions with only 23 aircraft lost.

As you reach the end of the line for the Sukhoi aircraft, the path turns to the right (or, clockwise) around the main “quad.” Immediately, to the right as you round the corner is a small group of aircraft from the Lavochkin OKB.

Aircraft of the Lavochkin OKB

First established in September 1938, the Lavochkin OKB was one of the USSR’s leading suppliers of fighter aircraft during the Great Patriotic War. This success may well have surprised those pilots who had been forced to fly the OKB’s first airplane, the LaGG-1. Introduced in March 1940, the underpowered, plodding, and highly erratic LaGG-1 represented all of the worst elements of the Soviet Union’s pre-war aviation industry. Efforts to improve the basic design of the LaGG-1 by lightening the airframe, adding fixed slats, and supercharging the engine led to the development of the LaGG-3 in July of the same year. The results were hardly satisfactory. Although the LaGG-3 was more maneuverable than its predecessor, the plane remained underpowered and was very poorly built. Soviet pilots came to joke that the acronym “LaGG” (derived from the design team Lavochkin, Gorbunov, Gudkov) in fact stood for “лакированный гарантированный гроб (“lakirovannyi garantirovannyi grob” or, “varnished guaranteed coffin”).

Fortunately for Soviet airmen, the LaGG-3 was not the end of the line for the Lavochkin OKB. The development of a more powerful radial engine produced the highly effective La-5. Introduced in late 1942, the La-5 proved to be an excellent dogfighter capable of matching the best German aircraft at low altitudes. Further refinements to the La-5 led to the introduction in the summer of 1944 of the La-7, arguably the USSR’s best fighter of the War. Several of the country’s leading aces (including Ivan Kozhedub, Nikolai Skomorokhov, and Kirill Evstigneev) flew La-5s and La-7s. On 15 February 1945 Kozhedub (the Allies’ highest ranking ace with 62 “kills” and three-time “Hero of the Soviet Union”) was flying an La-7 when he became the only Soviet pilot to shoot down a German Me 262 jet fighter.

By the time hostilities had ended in May 1945, the Lavochkin OKB had supplied more than 22,000 aircraft to the VVS (6,500 LaGG-3s, 10,000 La-5s, and 5,753 La-7s).

Following the death of its founder Semion Alekseevich Lavochkin in 1960, the OKB stopped producing aircraft. Since then a successor company bearing the Lavochkin name has worked on developing space-based technologies.

[ For the next installment in this series of posts, click here: 5]