Exxon-Valdez
The Tu-144 seems to be one of those aeroplanes that has acquired an above average number of half truths and myths as I am sure you are aware. Tartan has given you a pretty typical rundown on some of them but my take would be rather different. This may get a bit long, but without some background you will not be able to calibrate my views.
I was fortunate to meet the crew of an early Tu-144 (no canards) at the Hanover airshow in 1972. The skipper Edward Elyan thrashed me at a pistol target shooting competition down town one evening (as did Adolph Galland who was also in the party – but arguably he was one of the best shots in the Luftwaffe, so there was limited disgrace there) and in the way of aircrew the world over we ignored the reality of our political masters and talked aeroplanes at some length.
In fact Elyan’s copilot, Valezi Moltchenov and I really hit it off as his English was better than mine and he had a very dry sense of humour. Indeed after several days of talking aeroplanes during which time we gave each other a full guided tour of or respective mounts, I asked him if he was married. He said yes and with five kids. I suggested that did not leave much time for hobbies. He strongly disagreed and when I asked him what they were then he replied with a grin from ear to rear “Reading Flight and Aviation Week” My sort of guy. Sadly he was in the right hand seat for the Paris crash the following June.
There was no doubt in my mind that the Soviets hoped to sell the Tu-144 around the world and I do not doubt the importance they attached to obtaining any information, by whatever means, on the Concorde. However I believe they wanted this in order to compete effectively in the market place (know thy enemy) and not to copy the thing. We certainly wanted to find out what we could about the Alpha-jet when we were selling the Hawk for example.
If the Tu-144 was a general copy of the Concorde then they went about in a very funny way. The Russian design had a 13% greater span for example, a totally different type of intake system and engine layout plus a double delta plan form rather than an Ogee wing as on Concorde. (Ogee being an architectural term for a very stretched S shape which I had the fun of flying on the Concorde programme back in the 1960’s when an Ogee wing was fitted to one of the FD-2 aircraft and then became the BAC T221 - I really had did smile at the OG Optimum Geometry version – very original!)
At Paris 73 when they pitched up with the clearly more definitive version fitted with canards, we realised they had come up with a masterstroke so far as field performance was concerned. Deploying the very high lift canards (which were fitted with both leading and trailing edged flaps) allowed them to exploit a huge nose up pitching moment by depressing all the normal delta trailing edged surfaces downwards. Thus in the circuit they were flying a flapped delta on which all the aerodynamic forces were upwards. This being in contrast to a plain delta where the trailing edge surfaces are necessarily upwards on finals and so produce a downforce. This latter configuration is essentially a flapped delta flying inverted and one which wastes considerable lift at the limited pitch attitude that is possible with gear restraints.
Their reduction in speed on finals was very obvious, indeed they were landing on the short display runway 03 and turning off at the second exit unlike the Concorde that had to use the long main westerly runway. On their initial arrival on 03 the main wheels hit only a few feet into the runway. Andy Jones (later Mr Hawk) and I were astonished at this performance with such a huge aircraft and we agreed they must have had some form of sensor to tell them the height of the wheels. If not then the next arrival was either going to be shorter in the mud or longer, in which case they would not make the turnoff. Either way it had to be worth watching!
So watch we did very intently on all their flights that week. They always got it just right and to this day I don’t know how.
On the accident flight they repeated their previous display sequence up to and including a touch and go on 03. During the week this touch and go was followed by a steep climb with immediate turn onto the downwind for landing, rather in the form of a semi wing over onto the downwind leg with maximum height restricted by the cloud base at below 2000ft. On the Sunday there was not a cloud in the sky and a very steep climb was continued on the runway heading to perhaps 4000ft. Then suddenly the aircraft violently bunted to level. Both Andy and I said ouch at the thought of such a push in that class of aircraft. As we watched, now looking up the stern of the retreating aeroplane, we had time to say to each other that we thought they may have been heading home (and we were going to be denied watching another full stop). Then down went the nose and it made as if to descend and turn back to the downwind leg. When it was about half way to the ground and having rolled left through 90 giving us a side view of the dive, something made me say to Andy “He’s going in".
(That something which made me realise the crew had lost it was a mixture of height, although it was still well up, unchanging steep nose down attitude, and rate of descent. Suddenly the picture looked wrong. Sadly I have seen 10 aeroplanes hit the ground doing air displays, my first being John Derry. If you are a display pilot yourself and also actually watch the flying at air shows, which a lot of people do not, you do get a feel for when the picture is wrong).
As I said that to Andy, the aircraft started to pull out of the dive. As we watched we had time to say that he might just miss the ground, followed by if those pylons don’t get him. Then at about 1000 ft or more the disintegration happened.
This has gone on too long. My belief is that whatever caused the bunt caused the accident. I don’t believe the engines could have swallowed the appalling flow into the intakes produced by that much negative alpha without surging. I did not see the Mirage, but others did. If the engines did all surge then they would have had to be shut down and relit. This would require a fair bit of speed to obtain the necessary windmilling rpm. Busy trying to get some donks running they suddenly saw the ground coming up and overcooked it, possibly due to the very nasty view of all those 230ft pylons that were out there right across their flight path.
Back to the aeroplane. In my view they aced it with the canards but could never get the efficiency out of their intakes that the Concorde achieved. Thus they needed a single stage of reheat for the supersonic cruise and that did for their specific fuel consumption. A pity. They were good aeroplane men and tried hard. As individual engineers they had no more control over their political system than we have over ours.
Apologies for the length of this post but it is the nostalgia forum!