The TU-95 Bear Lives On

[tonytales]

I was working at Lockheed Air Service at KIDL in 1959 when the TU-114 arrived bearing Frol Kozlov who was, I think, the president of the Soviet Union under Stalin. Kozlov was to meet President Eisenhower. The TU-114 transport was to the TU-95 Bear bomber as the Stratocruiser was to the B-29/B-50.
The TU-114 was certainly impressive. It was parked across the ramp from our maintenance office in the IAB. I was on midnight shift and of course had gone over to gawk at it. It was cordoned off of course and guarded by Port Authority police. A group of men wearing suspiciously clean Pan American mechanic's coveralls appeared. Up drove a Port Authority van and all the police went into it and drove away. One of the Pan Am dressed people pulled the boarding stand which, even at its maximum extension had required an extension ladder to reach the pax door. The Russians on board were not amused and were yelling loudly but stranded way up there.
Having implicated Pan Am enough the men pulled a quick change and now wore TWA coveralls. Their leader approached our little Lockheed group who had retreated to our line office. He produced a letter from a person who sat atop the entire Lockheed Aircraft Company requiring us to assist these gentlemen in any way they wanted.
What followed then was sheer joy for me, carrying a ladder and assisting a structural expert. He had a hand-held hardness tester which he applied to struts, prop blades, skin and other parts. A small camera took a rapid succession of shots of the very impressive welds the Russians used to put the gear together. Some were huge in size. obviously had done but of excellent quality. He applied a gauge made of thin steel sections and locked it and got the airfoil profile of the props blade. Another of these men, I think by then he was wearing a Northwest coverall was atop our van behind an engine and was shooting pictures up the tailpipe.We finally all cleared off, the Police returned and eventually the boarding steps were driven back up.
Meanwhile, during the time that followed, Pan American was busy pilot training with the first B.707 deliveries. Also very impressive, thundering down the runway and then rotating and- climbing away quite steeply on a pillar of dense black smoke. They wee of course all JT3C powered water wagons but they only had training fuel on board and an empty cabin and so were quite light. The Russians must have noted these
Finally the TU-114 was to go home, nonstop to Moscow no less. It was night and I don't think the neighborhood around Idlewile (now JFK) got any sleep for, even at idle, the noise from those engines and contra-props was thunderous. It taxied out and every airline employee around was out on the IAB ramp to see it go. It had a large orangy-red anti-collision light atop the towering fin which was distinctive. She lined up and the power went up. Even across more than a mile of airfield your very gut pulsed in time with the roar. He rolled and rolled and finally way out there we saw it lift. It went up a bit and then the nose lifted some more as if the pilot was trying to imitate thise B.707 trainer takeoffs. I swear the aircraft appeared to sink and there were cries and gasps from the crowd. Down went the nose and we all watched that orangy-red light slowly climb up and away.
The US Air Force folks we had assisted that first night had advised us not to discuss this. However I think 59 years is long enough and I suspect their tech report has been stamped de-classified by now..