Tupolev Tu-104

50 SEATS ■ 770km/h (480mph)

Mikulin AM-3M (2 x 8,700kg st, 14,8901b st) ■ MTOW 76,000kg (167,5001b) ■ Normal Range 2,650km (l,650mi)

The Break-Out

Six months after the Ilyushin 11-14 had entered service with Aeroflot on 30 November 1954, a silver lining appeared behind the dampening clouds of modest piston-engined performance. On 17 June 1955, the Tupolev Tu-104 jet airliner made its first flight. A conversion from a bomber design, it was nevertheless commercially acceptable. Unusually for the Soviet manufac­turing industry, normally conservative in its approach to launching new airliners, the Tu-104 took the world by storm (see opposite page) and soon entered service with Aeroflot on 15 September 1956.

Not before time. Ominously, the British had gone back to the drawing boards and were pro­ducing a new line of Comets, which had previously done their own world-storming in 1952, but

had met with tragedy two years later. More ominously, the Boeing Company of Seattle, U. S.A., had, on 15 July 1954, demonstrated the Model 367-80 as a prototype for a future airlin­er, the 707, which was to conquer all before it. Curiously, the famous Boeing ‘Big Jet’ was also developed from a bomber design, the B-47.

Andrei N. Tupolev.

(photo: Boris Vdovienko)

The Tupolev Tu-104 design team (with a model of the Tu-124). Left to right: A. R. Bokin, S. M. Eger, A. N. Tupolev, A. A. Arkhangelski, B. M. Kondozski, and IT. Nezval. (photo: courtesy Vasily Karpy)

Tupolev Sets Tie Pace

Because of the debut of the Tupolev Tu-104, 1956 was a water­shed year. But the years that followed were no less significant in Soviet commercial aviation. The Ilyushin 11-18 Moskva four-engined turboprop airliner, reliable workhorse for Aeroflot (and other airlines) in the years to come, made its first flight on 4 July 1957. At about the same time, Tupolev developed the Tu-104A, which proceeded to break a number of official load­carrying and speed records for turbojets.

Then, to cap everything, the impressive Tupolev Tu-114 made its first flight on 3 November 1957. But this important news of the world’s largest airliner at the time (see pages 52­53) was eclipsed on the following day, when, to the astonish­ment and admiration of the world (and to the chagrin of complacent defense agencies in Washington, D. C.) the U. S.S. R. carved its name indelibly in the annals of world his­tory by launching, with complete success, the world’s first man-made satellite, Sputnik.

Consolidation

During 1958, Aeroflot concentrated on expanding its Tu-104 services (see page 44) and opened its first scheduled helicopter routes in the Crimea and on the Black Sea coast. Then, in 1959, the 100-seat Tupolev Tu-104B went into service on the busy Moscow-Leningrad route on 15 April. Five days later, the Ilyushin П-18В also started service, on the equally busy vacation route from Moscow to Adler (with helicopter con­nection to Sochi). Not yet ready for scheduled service, the Tu – 114 demonstrated its range with a non-stop flight from

Tu-104 No. 29 operated the first service of the type to Vladivostok on 19 January 1958. This was after a ceremonial circling of the city and being ‘talked down’ by photographer Boris Vdovienko.

Moscow to Khabarovsk on 21 May. The 90-seat Antonov An-10 Ukraina turbo-prop, which had first flown on 7 March 1957, went into service on 22 July 1959.

Dm ttie Front Pads

Within three years, with Aeroflot carrying the banner, the Soviet Union had rocketed from being an also-ran right into the front pack of runners in the highly-competitive techno­logical race. In almost every category of airliner, the design bureaux of Tupolev, Ilyushin, and Antonov were producing aircraft comparable in performance, if not in economics, with equivalent airliners in the West.

Tupolev Tu-104B SSSR-42431 at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport, (photo: Aeroflot)