VM-T/Atlant

Yet another proposal came from Vladimir Myasishchev, whose Experimental Machine Building Factory was heavily involved in the Buran program after its incorporation into NPO Molniya in 1976. Myasishchev’s idea was to convert his old 3M long-range strategic bomber into a transport plane. Also known as the 201M, 103M, or M6 (with NATO designation Bison-B), the 3M had made its debut back in 1956 and was a modification of the original 2M or M4 (“Bison-A”). With a cargo capacity of just about 50 tons, the converted strategic bomber would not be able to transport a fully outfitted Buran or carry a complete Energiya core stage, leaving much of the final assembly work to be done at the cosmodrome itself. It was therefore only seen as an interim solution until a more capable aircraft came along. Many felt that Myasishchev’s plan was outrageous, especially given the fact that the 3.5 m wide 3M would be dwarfed by Energiya’s 8 m diameter core stage. Among the skeptics was none less than Minister of the Aviation Industry Pyotr Dementyev himself, but with no better solutions available in the short run, he eventually agreed, reportedly under pressure from Ustinov. Approval for the use of the 3M came in the party and government decree on Buran of 21 November 1977, which was followed by an official order from the Ministry of the Aviation Industry on 30 December 1977.

Even before this, several ways had been studied of adapting the 3M for its new role. The most radical was to widen the fuselage from 3.5 m to 10 m and only retain the 3M cockpit, wings, and engines, giving the plane an appearance reminiscent of a C-5 Galaxy. It would have to be outfitted with a twin-fin tail and unlike the basic 3M would have required a tricycle rather than a bicycle landing gear. Another idea was to transform the 3M into something that more or less resembled a Boeing 377 “Guppy”. In this configuration the nose section, mid fuselage, wings, engines, and landing gear of the 3M remained unchanged. Bolted on top of the mid fuselage would have been a cylindrical container that would be an integral part of the aircraft, with the aft section serving as the plane’s tail (with two fins). Cargo would have been loaded via the nose section of the container. Both versions were turned down because they essentially turned the 3M into a new airplane, taking many years to develop. Moreover, the orbiter could only be transported by these planes if its wings and vertical stabilizer were removed.

The next idea was to mount a 37.5 m long and 9 m wide removable container on top of the 3M. The big advantages of this approach were that the 3M itself required only minimal modifications (only the double fin) and that the cargo could be loaded into the container on the factory floor and off-loaded inside the assembly buildings at Baykonur. This is the configuration that was approved by the government decree on Energiya-Buran of 21 November 1977. A drawback of the design was that the container alone weighed 17.8 tons. Although by this time the core stage had been changed to a dual-section design with four propellant tanks, it would still take three ferry flights to transport all elements to the cosmodrome.

The following year, as the core stage returned to its original single-element configuration, engineers of the Myasishchev bureau decided to do away with the container and transport both Buran and elements of the core stage exposed to the open air on top of the 3M. Buran would have to be flown to the launch site in a stripped-down state and it would still take two flights to transport all the elements of the core stage, but it was the best solution at hand until a more capable aircraft came along. On 16 November 1978, MOM and MAP put forward a plan calling for the 3M to carry four types of payloads:

– OGT (mass 45.3 tons, later increased to 50.5 tons, length 38.45 m): a stripped-down Buran (among other things without the vertical stabilizer and ODU propulsion system).

– 1GT (mass 31.5 tons, length 44.46m ): the liquid hydrogen tank with forward and aft protective covers.

– 2GT (mass 30.0 tons, length 26.41 m): the liquid oxygen tank, the RD-0120 engine section, the instrument section, and a forward protective cover, with the tip of the LOX tank acting as the aft protective cover.

– 3GT (mass 15.0 tons, length 15.67 m): the protective covers for 1GT and 2GT. After the liquid hydrogen tank had been delivered to Baykonur, the forward and aft covers were taken off, joined together, and flown back to the manufacturer. Installed inside the two covers was the disassembled forward cover used to transport the liquid oxygen tank. The 3GT configuration could also have been used to transport Buran’s crew compartment.

After extensive wind tunnel tests of each configuration at TsAGI, the final go – ahead for modifying the 3M for its new role came in mid-1979. Selected for the job were three 3M aircraft that had earlier been modified as tanker aircraft (3MN-2). One (tail number 01504) was to be used only for static tests at TsAGI, while the other two (tail numbers 01402 and 01502) would enter service. Among the modifications were the replacement of the four VD-7B engines by the more powerful VD-7MD (with an afterburner for higher take-off thrust), the installation of a new, longer aft section with two horizontal and two vertical tails, and the use of improved flight control, navigation, and radio systems. Maximum crew size was reduced from eight to six. The refueling hardware was removed from the aircraft, but re-installed on 01402 in 1984 with the aim of canceling the refueling stop required during the long flights with the OGT payload from Zhukovskiy to Baykonur. Although some in-flight “dry” hook-up tests were performed in conjunction with a 3MN-2 tanker aircraft, it appears that the refueling system was never actually used. With a total length of 51.2m and a wingspan of 53.14 m, the aircraft weighed 139 tons at take-off (minus the payload). Maximum take-off weight (with the OGT payload) was 187 tons. The payloads were hoisted onto the aircraft and off-loaded with a mate-demate device known as PKU-50, which was available in Zhukovskiy, Kuybyshev, and at the Baykonur cosmodrome.

VM-T/Atlant with Buran mock-up (source: www. buran. ru).

VM-T/Atlant with 1GT payload (source: Boris Gubanov).

YM-T/Atlant with 2GT payload (source: Boris Gubanov).

VM-T/Atlant with 3GT payload (source: Sergey Grachov).

The name originally painted on the planes was 3M-T (“T” standing for trans­port), but since 3M was a secret designator, the name was changed shortly before one of the planes was demonstrated at a Moscow air show. The most straightforward change was to repaint the 3 as the Cyrillic equivalent of the letter V (“B”), resulting in the name VM-T. These also happened to be the initials of Myasishchev’s first name and patronymic (Vladimir Mikhaylovich). The planes were also called Atlant (Russian for “Atlas”, the Greek mythological figure who held the burden of Earth on his shoulders).

Before transporting actual flight hardware, the Atlant planes undertook numer­ous test flights from the Flight Research Institute in Zhukovskiy. These began on 29 April 1981 with the first in a series of 19 flights of Atlant 01402 without a payload. In October 1981 the same plane was loaded with a mock-up 1GT payload, which had been delivered from the Progress factory in Kuybyshev to Zhukovskiy by barge via the Volga, Oka, and Moscow rivers. After several taxi tests and take-off runs, the combination took to the skies on 6 January 1982 with a six-man crew commanded by Anatoliy Kucherenko, climbing to an altitude of 2 km before returning to its home base. To onlookers it seemed as if a giant cylinder was flying in the sky, with the “small” Atlant barely visible under it. After four more flights with the 1GT payload Atlant 01402 flew seven test flights with a mock 2GT payload between 15 March and 20 April 1982, revealing the need to fly this payload at a somewhat slower speed to prevent vibrations. This cleared the way for the first ferry flights of Energiya hardware (2GT and 1GT configurations) from Kuybyshev to Baykonur on 8 April and 11 June 1982.

Meanwhile, Atlant 01502 had begun its own autonomous test flights in March 1982 and flew the mock 1GT payload on 19 April. Both planes then underwent several months of modifications before 01502 flew to Baykonur in December 1982 for the first test flights with a 3GT payload. On 28 December the plane for the first time returned a 3GT from Baykonur to Kuybyshev.

In early 1983 Atlant 01502 was ready for the first test flights with a Buran test model. A total of eight test flights were flown between 1 March and 25 March. The final one ended with the VM-T skidding off the runway in an incident blamed on pilot error. Due to a mistake in the landing gear deployment sequence, the nose gear failed to lock and lost steering capability during the landing roll-out. High crosswinds and the aircraft’s own drag chute then pushed the combination off the runway, where it got stuck in the sand. Attempts to tow it back onto the runway caused serious damage to the aircraft’s fuselage, which took several months to fix. Eventually, the Buran model had to be removed from the aircraft with two big cranes before the aircraft could be pulled loose. The incident was apparently photographed by American reconnaissance satellites and reported by the American magazine Aviation Week & Space Technology less than a month after it happened.

In December 1983 and August 1984 the VM-T ferried the first orbiters from Zhukovskiy to Baykonur (the OK-ML1 and OK-MT full-scale models). The planes were declared operational by a government and party decree in November 1985, and the following month (on 11 December) one of them delivered the first flight vehicle to the cosmodrome. During delivery of the second flight vehicle on 23 March 1988, the aircraft had a close call during the final approach to the runway, when it lost both of its left engines because of a fuel leak and suffered a power blackout in the cabin. Increasing airspeed to compensate for the loss of the engines, pilot Anatoliy Kucherenko managed to safely land the VM-T on the runway, with the airplane coming to a stop after an unusually long landing roll-out.

In all, the VM-T Atlant planes flew more than 150 missions in support of the Energiya-Buran program. In the late 1980s and early 1990s they were also considered for other tasks, such as serving as a launch platform for experimental spaceplanes and rockets and performing ferry flights and drop tests of the European Hermes spaceplane, but these plans never came to fruition [7].