Tu-95MS "Bear"

But clearly not enough to warrant a change...

perhaps at the very high speeds TU-95 reaches vs other prop planes the requirements are different

That is a good point... perhaps these new efficient blades are not better in some areas like takeoff or high speed medium altitude, or medium altitude cruise speeds...

If the new blades improve performance in areas that don't suit tactics with the Bear then it hardly makes sense to use them...

I am sure they know what they are doing...

Sadly looking cool doesn't come into it... otherwise they would have black and white spirals on the blades so if you are looking from the front it would hypnotise you...

*Breaking news, Russian 'Bear' Downs NATO Planes*
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In breaking news this hour several innocent democratic fuzzy & cute fighter jets from multiple NATO countries have disappeared off radar after being sent to intercept an aggressively Russian 'Bear' bomber sent by Putin to aggressively Russianly approach NATO borders & possibly interfere in elections along the West coast from Norway to Spain.

Military sources have been unable to determine exactly what method the Bear used to down the planes but can confirm that the aircraft disappeared from radar screens shortly after the fighters made visual contact with the Putin bomber, some form of hacking is suspected but UK Intelligence sources who cannot be identified for security reasons are unable to rule out the possibility ultra-deadly Novichok chemical warfare agent was smeared on the control sticks of the fighters before they took off 'we have no evidence whatsoever but we're quite sure that Putin ordered the GRU to do it' they advise.

While the evil communist bombers have only just started their return leg the independent definitely not a UK state sponsored info-war campaign researcher Bellingcat has released its 3rd expose on the incident with shocking proof that Putin Done It! in the form of a photo showing Skripal Novichok poisoner Russian Colonel Anatoly Chepiga at the controls of the Russian Aggressor  holding what appears to be a perfume bottle and with a Russian Built BUK missile launcher in the co-pilot seat next to him.

Coming up after the break our panel of independent ex CIA directors will rationally discuss how Putin just started WWIII, is exclusively to blame & definitely nothing to do with the weird spiral patterns on the props in the Bellingcat image which look suspiciously like '60s movie hypnotising machines...
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News just in... officials at Porton Down have confirmed that the substance used was Novachok and that Vladimir Putin administered it personally to each of the brave heroic western pilots before they took to the air to defend NATO airspace (which of course is all airspace).

Correction from previous report... the pilots were not just cute and fuzzy, they were also non gender specific... and not mentioning this fact has hurt their feelings...

mnztr wrote:you can really see how the TU-95 evolved from the TU-4 /b-29 though. The TU-95 is the ultimate Steampunk bomber design, it looks timeless and awesome!!!

wut? Is this a joke?    The Tu-95 is a swept wing aircraft that weighs nearly 3x the B-29 and over 50% faster....  how dafuq could the Tu-95 be an evolutionary development of the B-29 clone?  Maybe because it has two wings, 4 engines and the pilots sit at the front?....

you can really see how the TU-95 evolved from the TU-4 /b-29 though.

Not really, and even then the Tu-4 was superior to the B-29... it had more powerful engines that were not prone to burst into flames like the US model and the gun positions had decent 20mm cannon instead of HMGs.

The Tu-95 was not related to the B-29 or Tu-4... in fact after being made to copy the B-29 (Stalin had decided there was not enough time to develop a new aircraft) Tupolev vowed never to copy another aircraft design...

The soviets certainly copied a few western designs... usually for very good reasons... and they never denied that they copied when they did.

Of course a lot of the time it was not copying but licence production like the Maxim MG, or the C-47/DC-3 (Li-2) transport aircraft.

The Tu-4 was developed first into the Tu-80 and than the Tu-85. The Tu-85 comes close to the Tu-95. So he is right that there is a line.

Well how about this... when the single engined ANT-25 long range Tupolev landed unexpectedly in the US after a 11,500km flight the US decided not to cancel work on what became the B-17... so in actual fact if there was no ANT-25 there would have been no B-17 or B-29....  

Hole wrote:The Tu-4 was developed first into the Tu-80 and than the Tu-85. The Tu-85 comes close to the Tu-95. So he is right that there is a line.

Ummm... No. Tu-80/85 were aborted attempts at developing the Tu-4, but the Tu-95 was an all-new deign. It may have (I'm assuming) leveraged some engineering solutions from the B-29 clone, but to all intents and purpose it was a seperate development on a clean sheet. Swept wings, turbo-props, totally different fuselage and tail shaping...

mnztr wrote:

Big_Gazza wrote:

Hole wrote:The Tu-4 was developed first into the Tu-80 and than the Tu-85. The Tu-85 comes close to the Tu-95. So he is right that there is a line.

Ummm...  No.  Tu-80/85 were aborted attempts at developing the Tu-4, but the Tu-95 was an all-new deign.  It may have (I'm assuming) leveraged some engineering solutions from the B-29 clone, but to all intents and purpose it was a seperate development on a clean sheet. Swept wings, turbo-props, totally different fuselage and tail shaping...  

The TU-80 and 85 were developed from the TU-04 and were still piston powered. Only when a suitable engine came along, did TU-95 become possible. The swept wings were driven by aerodynamic requriements of capability provided by the engines. Of course structure, weight and payload all came hand in hand with the massive increase in power (6X) . If you cannot see the linage you are blind. There is zero chance Tupolev (as brilliant as he was) could have designed the TU-95 without having first designed the Tu-04

There is no "lineage".  Tu-80/85 proved to be a dead-end and were abandoned.  Tu-95 was a clean sheet. Just because Tupolev opted to retain some design features of the 80/85 such as the general arrangement of the forward fuselage/cockpit area doesn't mean the Tu-95 is related to the Tu-04.  It just means that the modernisations planned for the 80/85 were modified and rolled into the new aircraft.  Thats not a lineage.

The only way to settle this would be to examine structural drawings of the Tu-04/80/85 and compare them to the Tu-95.  AFAIK no such details are available, so lets agree to disagree.

BTW Tupolev didn't really "design" the Tu-04. It was a direct clone of the B-29, differing only in use of Soviet powerplant and internal equipment. Saying that he couldn't have developed the Tu-95 without first copying the B-29 is nonsense. That would be tantamount to saying that Tupolev learned his craft by copying the US article...

Have a nice day!

Ahh, well that clinches it... all Tupolev aircraft are based on the US B-29... hilarious...

Next we hear that the AK uses M1 Garand parts too and is basically something Colt developed in the 1800s... the amusing thing is that they have the balls to say something when the Soviets make stupid propaganda claims that are simply just as silly...

The sad thing is that the Soviets knew they were being lied to... the Americans still haven't worked that out yet.

Very simply the Russians were at the forefront of four engined bombers, but their efforts stagnated in the 1930s, though as I mentioned without their 11,000km range flights to the US in the 1930s the B-17 would have been cancelled and there never would have been a B-29.

the only problem is that is is not refuted that the Tu-80 and Tu-84 are related directly to the B-29... in fact they are all dramatic improvements on the B-29 using new materials and components.

The problem is that the Tu-85 was described as the final extrapolation of the B-29 design... the Tu-95 was a redesign... required by the new engines and higher speeds.

The Pe-8 had longer range than the B-29, but wasn't produced in large # on Stalin's orders:

The only purpose for strategic bombers was for use against the US, the Pe-8 was interesting but not really critical to the war effort.

Not all, pl. don't exaggerate!

That chart suggests the origin of all Tupolevs is the B-29... where is the exaggeration?

A few flying boats & transports with bigger range were developed & used before WWII, so the Americans had not only Soviet land planes for inspiration:

With bigger range than what?

The ANT-25 flew about 11,500km to the US... I don't think the US had anything even close at that time or for a long time since.

Of course it was only a single engined aircraft and it was all fuel, but its potential as a strategic bomber was recognised by those in the US that were otherwise just about to cancel the B-17.

GarryB wrote:The problem is that the Tu-85 was described as the final extrapolation of the B-29 design... the Tu-95 was a redesign... required by the new engines and higher speeds.

At last, a bit of frigging sanity.