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With the beginning of the Cold War in 1947, Soviet dictator Josef
Stalin began a conventional arms buildup to counter America’s
superiority in nuclear weapons.
Though Soviet land forces were large and well equipped, the Soviet navy was anemic.
The main problem was the Soviets had no aircraft carriers. At the end of the war they captured the incomplete German aircraft carrier “Graf Zeppelin,” but its engines were not installed and the Soviets towed it back into Soviet waters where they used it as a target ship to practice attacks on aircraft carriers.
The Soviet navy began designing a pair of relatively small aircraft carriers, known as Project 72, with a displacement of 23,700 tons. The carriers required a brand new class of aircraft: a long-range multi-role strike aircraft capable of carrying bombs, torpedoes, and/or rockets.
On June 1, 1953, Soviet Navy Aviation Command issued a requirement to the Tupolev OKB (Opytnoe Konstructorskoe Byuro — Experimental Design Bureau) to develop a single-engine turboprop carrier-based attack aircraft named the Tu-91.
The Tupelov OKB was famous for its large aircraft, and the prospect of a smaller aircraft was daunting, so Soviet agents in the U.S. provided the OKB with information about the prototype of a similar U.S. aircraft — the turboprop Douglas XA2D Skyshark.
The Tu-91 proved to be similar to the Skyshark, but while the Douglas aircraft floundered for lack of a suitable turboprop engine, the Tu-91 did not. The Soviets had spent a great deal of time and effort on turboprop engines, unlike the U.S., and the Tu-91 was powered by the reliable Isotov TV2 turboprop that developed an amazing 7,650 horsepower.
The Tu-91 was a Duralumin monoplane with a low mounted straight wing and slightly swept tail surfaces above a tail mounted tail turret with two 23 millimeter cannons aimed with a large periscope above the cockpit. It was fitted with tricycle landing gear, and the crew of two sat side by side in a cockpit far forward in the aircraft’s nose, a location that provided excellent visibility for carrier landings.
The turboprop engine was mounted on anti-vibration mounts resting directly on the wing spars and had three prominent chin air intakes. The long drive-shaft passed above the nose-gear bay, between the seats, to the nose gearbox where concentric shafts drove the 19-foot, six-blade contra-rotating propeller, which was also used as a dive brake. The exhausts for the turboprop were behind the wing roots.
The Tu-91 was large — 58 feet long with a wingspan of 54 feet and a maximum takeoff weight of 32,000 pounds — and was intended to carry a heavy load of torpedoes or bombs on pylons under the fuselage and the wings. It also carried two 23 millimeter cannons in the wing roots.
However, as the aircraft was nearing completion in 1953, Stalin died, and within a month of his death the Kremlin cut the naval building program and cancelled the carriers. Tupolev then led a delegation to successfully plead the case of the Tu-91 as a land- based aircraft to equip Naval Aviation for attacks on enemy ships and for antisubmarine warfare, as well as a ground attack aircraft for the Soviet Air Force.
The revised design eliminated wing-folding and the arresting gear and the main landing gear was fitted with larger low pressure tires inflated for rough fields. The cockpit was redesigned so each crew member had an ejection seat mounted so that even if fired simultaneously, the seats and occupants would not interfere with each other, and the cockpit was placed in a “bathtub” of light alloy armor.
The prototype 91 was rolled out in spring 1955 and the flight test program began on May 17, 1955. The test crews had few problems, finding it maneuverable and with the projected excellent performance. Because of the appearance of the wide, side-by-side cockpit tapering to the slim tail, it was dubbed informally the “Golavi” (club).
The Tu-91 made its first public appearance for a U.S. Air Force delegation, including Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Nathan Twining, visiting the Soviet’s Tushino air show from June to July 1956.
But circumstances were unkind to the Tu-91. After Communist Party General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev was elected to his position, he made it clear he was more inclined to missiles and nuclear weapons than to the maintenance of large conventional forces. On a tour of the Soviet Air Force test center at Ramenskoye, the escort officer showed him Tu-91 aircraft and said, “This aircraft has the firepower of a heavy cruiser.”
Khrushchev replied, “But nobody needs heavy cruisers anymore” and remarked what a ridiculous machine it was. His entourage smiled, nodded and a few minutes later the Tu-91 was cancelled.
(For questions or comments, contact Dr. Michel at marshall.michel@ramstein.af.mil.)
