Oliver Rasmussen Evades the Japanese for Ten Weeks- *in* Japan

Oliver Rasmussen in the back seat of the Helldiver

The run up for the Allied invasion of the Japanese home islands began on 1 July 1945 when Task Force 38, a powerful US Navy fast carrier armada, weighed anchor and headed out from its forward anchorage in the Philippines. Under the command of Vice Admiral John McCain aboard the Essex-class carrier USS Shangri-La, TF38 was tasked with Phase One of Operation Olympic, the preparatory phase of the invasion of Kyushu planned for November 1945. The aircraft of the task force would establish air superiority by mid-August over Kyushu which would in turn set the stage for Operation Coronet, the invasion of Honshu in 1946. The first strikes would begin on northern Japan on 13 July before moving south to Kyushu. In poor weather than grounded most of the Japanese fighter forces, the aircraft of TF38 struck coastal targets and shipping on Hokkaido, the northernmost of the home islands. Despite the weather, the Japanese managed to put up a spirited defense in the two-day strikes, with the Navy losing 44 aircraft and 26 pilots in crew. 

On the first day over Hokkaido, the Shangri-La's air wing would lose eight Curtiss SB2C Helldivers. One of the Helldivers lost was flown by Lt.(jg) Howard Eagleston, who descended too low under the overcast and struck a mountain in rural Hokkaido. He was killed on impact, but his gunner, 23-year old radioman Oliver Rasmussen, survived. With only the clothes he wore and an empty backpack, Rasmussen knew all too well what the Japanese did to their prisoners and decided he'd chance it in the Hokkaido wilderness. Being part Chippewa Indian from Minnesota, Rasmussen had come from an impoverished family (he referred to them as "the second generation right out of the teepee") but had spent his youth in the great outdoors. Having only a vague idea of his general location, Rasmussen spent seventeen days trekking to the coast, living off the land and avoiding any Japanese residents he came across. On 31 July upon reaching the coast, Rasmussen found his first source of significant food- a farmer's cow near his hideout would provide the sailor fresh milk for nine straight nights- each night he'd creep out to the cow and help himself to the milk and return to his hideout. The farmer never figured out what was going on, eventually turning to cow lose figuring she was longer able to produce any milk. 

Rasmussen then built a small boat and tried to head out to sea, but the breakers on that particular stretch of coastline proved hazardous. He retreated back up into the mountains of Hokkaido and set up quarters in an abandoned railroad shack where he kept himself fed with raw onions, birds' eggs, uncooked rice and frog legs. On 16 August, the day after the Japanese surrender, he was spotting by a Japanese civilian, but not aware the Japan had surrendered, Rasmussen abandoned his hideout and sought new refuge. After several days of exploring, he found a site well-hidden that was within easy reach of five farms. He scavenged some scrap lumber to build a small shelter and helped himself to the produce and milk from the five farms each night. As he hadn't bathed in weeks, one of the farms' dogs got his scent on 5 September and the owners went to investigate. He managed to knock over some of the farmers as he made a narrow escape back into the wilderness. Each day he noted more and more American aircraft flying overhead, but he was unable to get their attention. He did find it odd, though, that they attracted no defensive fire and it didn't appear that they were conducting any offensive strikes.

Frustrated that he wasn't able to attract any passing aircraft and growing weary of being in the wilderness, he opted for the direct approach on 19 September and walked into the port city of Tomakomai and presented himself to the local police station to surrender. To Rasmussen's surprise, the police chief treated him as a guest with his first real meal in ten weeks and a bath. It was then that he found out about Japan's unconditional surrender on 15 August. Rather amusingly, the police chief asked Rasmussen if he knew anything about the rash of milk and produce thefts from local farms over the past several weeks- to which Rasmussen denied any knowledge. After an astonishing sixty-eight days in the Japanese wilderness, he was returned to the USS Shangri-La to a hero's welcome. While the end of the war dominated news headlines in the United States, upon his return stateside some news articles did cover his story and regrettably most were condescending about Rasmussen's experience given his native American heritage. As a result, he told no one else about his story despite remaining with the Navy. 

Donald Norton's book on Oliver Rasmussen's experiences

Postwar, he made a career in the Navy working the Berlin Airlift and flying combat missions over Korea. He retired a chief petty officer in 1962 and settled in California where he got a technical job at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab. He passed away in his sleep in 1980 after a year-long battle with cancer with only a few people aware of his story. In the 1960s, though, a family friend made numerous recordings of Rasmussen's ten-week experience in Japan for a planned book. That family friend, however, died a year after interviewing Rasmussen and Rasmussen's wife put the tapes into storage. There they remained until nearly 20 years later, when one of Rasmussen's subordinates in the Navy from the 1950s, Donald Norton, set out to document Rasmussen's story for his own book project. Finding out that Rasmussen had died in 1980, his widow passed on the recordings to Norton, which became the basis for the book Chippewa Chief in World War II: The Survival Story of Oliver Rasmussen in Japan which was published in 2001.

Source: Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan, 1942-1945 by Barrett Tilman. Simon and Schuster, 2011, p199-204.

RNZAF Squadron Leader Leonard H. Trent and his Victoria Cross Mission

Sqn Ldr Leonard H. Trent

With the drums of war building in Europe in 1939, the Royal Air Force asked Lockheed for a twin-engine bomber to be used for anti-submarine and coastal patrols. Based on the RAF's own experience with the Hudson which was based on the Lockheed 14 Electra airliner, Lockheed offered a bomber version of the Model 18 Lodestar transport as the Ventura. First flying on 31 July 1941, the British were suitably impressed with the Ventura's performance to order 650 of the Ventura I and 487 of the upgraded Ventura II aircraft. Though the bulk of the Venturas were diverted to US forces following Pearl Harbor, a significant number did reach the RAF who needed the Ventura as a replacement for the Bristol Blenheim as a fast, low-level, bomber. Though there were more suitable aircraft for the role, at the time, only the Ventura was available in the numbers needed. In Norfolk, the RAF equipped No. 21 Squadron with the Venturas and co-located were two Commonwealth squadrons also assigned the Ventura- Australian-manned No. 464 Squadron and New Zealander-manned No. 487 Squadron. The three units were tasked with coastal targets in occupied Europe. Despite a high number of accidents and technical issues, the three units pressed ahead in committing the Ventura to combat, being assigned industrial targets primarily in Holland. As the war progressed, the RAF would team up the Ventura units with squadrons flying the faster Mosquito and Douglas Boston (RAF version of the A-20 Havoc) bombers. 

The pilots of No. 487 Sqn and one of their Venturas

On 3 May 1943 the Kiwis of No. 487 Squadron were assigned a diversionary raid against a power station in Amsterdam while an RAF squadron flying Bostons would attack the Royal Dutch Steel Works at low level. Opposition was expected to be heavy but the Venturas despite their poor reliability could absorb a considerable amount of damage and still fly home. The pilots of No. 487 Squadron were encouraged to do what they could to hit the target and complete the mission as a means of boosting the morale of the Dutch population and resistance. Leading the twelve Venturas would be Sqn Ldr Leonard H. Trent. 

As poor luck would have it, that same day the German military governor of Holland would be visiting the area and the Luftwaffe had placed a large number of its fighters on alert. To make matters worse, a squadron of RAF Spitfires assigned to escort No. 487 Squadron arrived at the rendezvous point off the coast half an hour too soon. Not only did this trigger the Luftwaffe alert, but when the Venturas arrived at the rendezvous point, the Spitfires were low on fuel and had to return to base, leaving the Kiwis to hit the power station unescorted in broad daylight. Crossing the Dutch coast at 12,000 feet, the twelve Venturas were in two formations of six and were bounced by seventy Luftwaffe fighters. Trent's second-in-command took hits and had to turn back to return to England- his aircraft would be the only one of the twelve to make it home. As the Venturas fought off the Germans, the fighters savaged the formation, leaving only three aircraft led by Sqn Ldr Trent to complete the mission. Six Venturas were shot down in less than four minutes. As they neared the target, another two Venturas were shot down, leaving Trent and his crew as the only remaining aircraft. Approaching the target and his gunner managing to shoot down a Messerschmitt Bf 109, Trent pressed home his attack and just as his bombs hit the power station, accurate flak destroyed his aircraft with Trent and his navigator being thrown clear of the shattered aircraft. The rest of his crew failed to escape and Trent and his navigator parachuted down and were captured. 

RAF Ventura over its target

After his capture, Trent was sent to the Stalag Luft III POW camp where he participated in the "Great Escape" in March 1944. He avoided getting shot by surrendering right outside of the camp gates. The Gestapo executed fifty escaped prisoners, but Trent only got solitary confinement because of his early capture. On his repatriation did the circumstances of the disastrous Amsterdam raid become known and on 1 March 1946 he was awarded the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest military honor, for his leadership on the raid that claimed 11 of the 12 Venturas sent to hit the power plant. The squadron was virtually wiped out after that raid and the RAF questioned the continued use of the Ventura as a daylight attack bomber. King George VI himself and his daughter, the future Queen Elizabeth II, visited No. 487 Squadron at their base only days later to offer their condolences. 

After the war, Trent remained with the Royal Air Force and in January 1956 he became the first commanding officer of No. 214 Squadron at RAF Marham which was the first to become operational with the Vickers Valiant, the first of the RAF V-bombers that formed Britain's nuclear deterrent until the arrival of the Polaris SLBM with the Royal Navy. He retired in 1965 when the Valiant fleet was retired due to wing spar structural failures and returned to New Zealand where he passed away in 1986. His biography, Venturer Courageous, was published in 1984 and authored by James Sanders and Laddie Lucas.

Source: PV Ventura/Harpoon Units of World War 2 (Osprey Combat Aircraft No. 34) by Alan C. Carey. Osprey Publishing, 2002, p17-19. Photos: Royal Air Force, United States Navy.

Master Sgt Red Erwin, One of Many Heroes

In coming up with a suitable blog post for Memorial Day, I had scoured my aviation library for a historical event- given that I've long been interested in military aviation history, there's no shortage of material in that department, believe me. However, I'm currently reading Barrett Tillman's outstanding book Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan 1942-1945 and came across the story of a red-headed Alabaman, Master Sgt. Henry "Red" Erwin. In April 1945, the massive arsenal of democracy that was American industry had already started the systematic destruction of the Japanese war machine the previous month as Boeing B-29 Superfortresses of the XXI Bomber Command based in the Marianas Islands under the command of General Curtis LeMay began to deliver destruction to the cities of Japan. The first fire-bombing raids had already visited untold disaster on Tokyo and other urban areas of the Home Islands. Superfortress attacks on the kamikaze bases on Kyushu had helped ensure victory on Okinawa. And by this month, the XXI Bomber Command finally had enough Superfortresses to wage a round-the-clock strategic bombing campaign on the Japanese homeland. On 12 April 1945 news reached the bases in the Marianas about the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt- for many of the fighting men in the Pacific, Roosevelt was the only leader they had known. But there was war to fight, and every bomb dropped meant getting home sooner. 

Erwin is 2nd from the right, front row, with his B-29 crewmates

On that day, 250 Superfortresses set out in three airborne task forces to attack industrial centers near Tokyo. Half of the force belonged to the 29th Bomb Group and were tasked to hit the Koriyama chemical complex north of Tokyo. Off the coast of Japan, the lead pilot of the Koriyama-bound force was Captain George Simeral flying The City of Los Angeles. His crew excelled at their jobs and earned The City of Los Angeles the lead position of the task force. His crew had been together since June 1944 and had already flown ten missions over Japan. As Simeral neared the coast. he ordered his radioman, Master Sgt. Red Erwin, to drop a phosphorous flare to mark the assembly point for his own squadron. Erwin left his station in the forward compartment, picked up the large flare canister and pulled the arming pin before dropping it as was the standard procedure- only this time the flare prematurely fired and a 1,300-degree Fahrenheit blast hit him in the face, blinding him and instantly burning off his nose and one ear. The forward compartment of the B-29 filled with white smoke and Simeral and his co-pilot quickly lost view of their instruments and the outside world. 

Erwin realized that the hot burning flare could burn through the compartment like a big blowtorch into the bomb bay and set off the bomb load. Griping around the compartment, he somehow managed to find the flare and pick it up. He stumbled his way forward, planning to throw it out the co-pilot's window but found his way obstructed by the navigator's table- the navigator at the time was in the astrodome taking a sighting when the flare fired. As the table could be unlocked and hinged downward, Erwin tucked the hot flare between one arm and his side and managed to fold the table so he could continue his way forward through the compartment. Though blinded, he somehow managed to get to the co-pilot's window, open it, and throw the burning flare overboard. He immediately collapsed on the bomber's throttle console. 

In the short time it took for Red Erwin to throw the flare overboard, the crew had lost control of the B-29 and Simeral managed to regain control with the bomber only 300 feet above the sea as the crew opened every hatch and window possible to vent the forward compartment. Everyone else did what they could to easy Erwin's suffering and Captain Simeral set course for Iwo Jima. The doctors there could do little for him and he was flown to Guam where a fleet hospital was located. General LeMay had been informed of the situation and when doctors advised him that Erwin would likely die from his burns, LeMay was determined to get him the Medal of Honor irrespective of the regulations. 

To understand what happened next, you have to realize that LeMay was already well-known in the USAAF as being very results-oriented. When he was tapped by the head of the USAAF, General Henry "Hap" Arnold, to head the XXI Bomber Command, the B-29 was not performing well as a combat machine, being constantly plagued by rushed training and poor maintenance practices. Arnold wanted results as he was one of the most staunch defenders of the B-29 program and the massive funding it required- not to mention a successful air campaign over Japan strengthened his case for an independent United States Air Force. LeMay was given his orders- and unusually for a combat command, the XXI Bomber Command was run right out of Arnold's office at the Pentagon so theater commanders couldn't appropriate the prized Superfortress for tactical missions. It was LeMay who had to deliver and the way Arnold entrusted LeMay, so did LeMay entrust his subordinates- "Get me the results I want and I won't ask questions." As a result, his subordinates became well-known in the Pacific Theater for circumventing rules and red tape to get their boss results. 

It usually took several months to get a Medal of Honor awarded as it passed via several levels of review. That didn't suit LeMay. His first act was to order an aircraft and its crew to Hawaii to get a Medal of Honor that could be presented to Erwin before he died. The crew took this task to heart and having found one in a display case, were unable to locate who had the keys to open the case. So they broke into the case and returned to Guam with the medal in hand. With the medal secured, LeMay then cabled General Arnold at the Pentagon and insisted that Erwin's award be approved immediately as he was on his deathbed. Luckily for LeMay, Arnold agreed with him and quickly got the orders and citation approved and the papers were on President Harry S Truman's desk in just days. In fact, one of Truman's first acts as President after FDR died was to sign the papers for the awarding of the Medal of Honor to Red Erwin!

Red Erwin's widow with the painting of him at Maxwell AFB

At a hastily arranged ceremony at Erwin's bedside at the fleet hospital in Guam, LeMay presented him with the Medal of Honor six days after the mission took place. The general order that announced the award took three months to be processed and formally announced! But the tough Alabaman surprised everyone by surviving his wounds. Over the next two and a half years he underwent over 40 reconstructive surgeries and managed to regain his vision. Discharged from the now-independent United States Air Force in 1947, he went to work for the Veterans' Administration hospital in Birmingham, Alabama, working closely with burn patients for the next forty years. Master Sgt. Henry "Red" Erwin passed away in 2002 at the age of eighty. 

After his death, the U.S. Air Force established the Red Erwin award for the outstanding enlisted airman of the year in the Air National Guard and Reserves. More recently, the library at the Air University at Maxwell AFB in Alabama was named the Red Erwin Library in his honor with a specially-commissioned painting of him and the B-29 Superfortress. Always the modest man, Erwin told everyone that he didn't wear the Medal of Honor for what he did on that fateful mission in 1945- he wore the medal for everyone who served.

Source: Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan, 1942-1945 by Barrett Tillman. Simon and Schuster, 2010, p164-167. Photos: United States Air Force.

The Fairchild XNQ-1/T-31 Trainer

In USAF markings as the T-31

As the Second World War began to wind down with victory in Europe established and the end of the Pacific War on the horizon, the US Navy set out to issue specifications for a replacement for the basic and primary aircraft trainers that were used during the war (like the PT-19 or the BT-13, PT standing for "Primary Trainer" and BT standing for "Basic Trainer in the Navy lexicon) as well as the North American SNJ/T-6 Texan. These specifications were released to the industry on 26 April 1945 by the Bureau of Aeronautics (BuAer). Three companies entered designs- Temco entered the T-35 Buckaroo which was adapted from the Globe Swift general aviation aircraft, Beechcraft entered the T-34 Mentor which was a tandem seat adaptation of the Bonanza and Fairchild entered a custom-designed aircraft that had the Navy designation XNQ and the later USAF designation T-31. History, of course, shows that the Beech Mentor won the competition and one of it's strong points was its tricycle undercarriage layout compared to the taildragger layout of both the Buckaroo and the XNQ. For the forward thinking armed services, taildragging aircraft were obsolete. 

Fairchild's chief engineer, Armand Thiebolt, had already established a name for himself having designed a number of training aircraft during the war, from the PT-19 Cornell to the AT-21 Gunner. His work on the XNQ was based on his own experiences and what he felt was a balance between state of the art and simplicity. Registered with a civilian tail number N5726, the first XNQ, built at Fairchild's Hagerstown, Maryland, plant, made its first flight there on 10 February 1947 with Fairchild's chief test pilot, Richard Hansen, at the controls. The 20-minute maiden flight was uneventful and showed only some simple rework of the aileron tabs were necessary. After a series of company test flights, the XNQ was delivered to the US Navy at Anacostia, Washington for formal evaluation. After an initial series of flights in the Washington DC area, the flight test program continued at NAS Patuxent River after which the aircraft returned to Fairchild to prepare it for evaluation by the USAF as the T-31. 

By this point the second aircraft had been completed and both XNQs as T-31s were flown to Randolph AFB outside of San Antonio, Texas, for their formal USAF evaluation in a fly-off with both the Beech and Temco candidates. At the time the USAF also considered the De Havilland Canada DHC-1 Chipmunk as well as the British Boulton Paul Balliol, but both were quickly eliminated from consideration, leaving Fairchild, Beech, and Temco remaining in the USAF evaluation. Like the US Navy, the USAF selected the Beech T-34 Mentor, again, its tricycle landing gear layout being one of its strong points. It was the second rejection of the Fairchild design. The aircraft was passed on to the US Navy where it was flown by student test pilots at the US Navy's Test Pilot School at NAS Patuxent River and after a gear up landing that resulted in only minor damage in 1953, the Navy declared the unique aircraft surplus to its needs after it had only amassed just over 1,000 flight hours. 

The wing commander for the National Capital Wing of the Civil Air Patrol arranged to take ownership of the XNQ and in October 1953 the aircraft was repaired at NAS Patuxent River before being flown to a small airfield south of Alexandria, Virginia where it was stationed for the next 2 years, only clocking 12 flight hours in that time period. Part of the problem with the XNQ wasn't its performance or handling, but that its wingspan was just over a foot too wide for the standard 40-foot hangar at the airfield and it ended up spending most of its time outdoors which adversely affected its condition. In 1955 the aircraft was ferried to Rockville, Maryland, but again, was stored outdoors which resulted in further deterioration. When that small airfield was closed, the Fairchild was abandoned in situ. 

In her original US Navy markings

John St. Clair, the operations officer of the Congressional Squadron of the Civil Air Patrol, trucked aircraft to his home 8 miles away to try and save it given its unique history. He later assumed formal ownership of the aircraft to keep it from going to the junkyard. Fast forward to 1978, the aircraft is still on the St. Clair farm in rural Maryland and Armand Thiebolt's son visited John St. Clair and asked about purchasing the aircraft, the deal of which fell through. Later, Robert Taylor, the founder of the Antique Airplane Association, asked St. Clair if he would done the XNQ to a museum, which he agreed to and a crew from the association trucked what was left of the aircraft to Waco, Texas with plans of restoring her to flight status. The history of the XNQ took a new turn after its arrival in Waco when general aviation pilot Don Pellegrino and his wife were weathered in at the airport and he found the XNQ in storage in a hangar and approached Taylor about purchasing the aircraft. 

While negotiations proceeded, the aircraft was moved to Oklahoma City in 1982 but still no restoration work had started. At a fly-in in Iowa, Taylor approached Pellegrino and told him "Make me an offer I can't refuse" and with that, Pellegrino become the XNQ's new owner for $800. In September that year Pellegrino trucked the aircraft to his farm in Iowa and began restoration work in earnest. After ten years of working on it in his free time, the XNQ made its second maiden flight on 1 June 1992, the first time the aircraft had flown since 1955! Pellegrino flew the 25 FAA-required hours of flight testing himself and since then he has since moved to Rhome, Texas, just outside of the Dallas-Fort Worth area and has flown the XNQ to airshows around the country. And yes, she still has her same tail number of N5726 after all these years!

Bill Spidle has three pages of detailed photographs of a walk around of the XNQ.

Source: Air Enthusiast, No. 117, May/June 2005. "Their Loss, My Gain: Fairchild's XNQ-1- Twice Rejected for Service" by Gilles Auliard, p78-79. Photos: US Naval Test Pilot School Alumni.

Sukhoi's First Jet Bomber

The Sukhoi Su-10 in its final configuration

Following the end of the Second World War, both the Soviet Union and the West aggressively pursued jet bomber designs after the Luftwaffe had successfully introduced the Arado Ar 234 to combat in the waning months of the war. In the West, many early designs were based on layouts of high-mounted wings with wing-mounted nacelles to allow for a reasonably-sized bomb bay. Similar approaches were taken in the Soviet Union with the design bureaus (called OKBs) of Illyushin, Tupolev, and Sukhoi tapped to develop jet bomber designs to succeed the Soviet Air Force's standard bomber, the piston-powered Tupolev Tu-2. Last summer I had posted about an early Tupolev design that actually did fly, the Tu-12, that was based on the Tu-2 as a matter of expediency pending the arrival of the Tu-14 bomber. While Illyushin and Tupolev both had large aircraft design experience from their own work on twin-engine bombers during the war, Pavel Sukhoi's experience was limited to his prewar tenure at OKB Tupolev. But, given the pace of technological progress and the urgency of rearmament in competition with the West, Sukhoi was ordered on 26 February 1946 to develop a jet bomber powered by four Junkers Jumo 004B turbojets, the same jet engines that powered the Arado Ar 234. Work on Sukhoi's first bomber design began in earnest in April of that year and the aircraft received the official designation of Su-10. 

Several powerplant arrangements were considered along with the use of six engines instead of the four as originally specified. In the Soviet Union, the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute in Moscow, or TsAGI by its Russian name, did a lot of wind tunnel and theoretical research work to support design efforts at each of the OKBs. At the time that OKB Sukhoi was working on the Su-10, TsAGI had lagged behind Germany and the West in high speed research and as a result, they lacked a significant amount of information on evaluating jet aircraft designs. As a result, much of what laid the basis of TsAGI's high speed aircraft research came about during their work in support of the development of the Su-10 in addition to what had been obtained of German design work following the end of the war. Two leading design variants were evaluated in TsAGI's wind tunnels- one design had four of the jet engines clustered in the mid fuselage and exhausting out the rear with two jet engines under the nose- this was felt to be advantageous design as it left the wings clean. The other leading variant had wing mounted nacelles with a high unswept wing with three engines mounted in clusters on each wing. 

To meet the specified target speed of 528 mph at 26,000 feet, Pavel Sukhoi decided that four engines were insufficient and that six were necessary. Since the Junkers Jumo 004 engine was the only jet engine available to the Soviet Union at the time that had reached production status, the Soviet Politburo placed high priority in reverse-engineering the engine for production- Vladimir Klimov and his OKB were already known for their piston engine designs during the war and he was put in charge of getting the German engine into production as the Klimov RD-10. Klimov's closest aide, Nikolay Kuznetsov, headed the actual reverse-engineering effort- Kuznetsov would go on to form his own engine OKB several years later. 

Inboard layout of the Su-10

With approval from the state authorities to use six engines, design work had settled on a cluster of three engines on each wing as the most efficient layout- the nacelle had two engines side by side with the third RD-10 engine below and slightly ahead of the pair. On 6 May of that year, a full scale mockup was built that was tested in TsAGI's largest wind tunnel with real RD-10 jet engines. Within two months, refinements to the design based on TsAGI's evaluation were in place as full-scale engineering began on the prototype. While two months sounds rapid, development of the Su-10 hit repeated technical hurdles, the biggest of which was that TsAGI lacked a significant portfolio of well-studied high speed airfoils. As a result, while supporting development work on the Su-10, assimilating German design work, TsAGI was also hurriedly developing its on portfolio of high speed airfoils. As a result, Sukhoi's team was constantly having to revise the Su-10 design based on developments from TsAGI. 

By October the full scale mockup had been approved by Soviet Air Force authorities and metal was finally cut for the prototype on 14 October 1946. In the first week of December, the Soviet government commission in charge of aircraft production decreed that the Su-10 would no longer use the Klimov RD-10 engine but instead use the TR-1 engine from the Lyulka OKB, the first indigenous Soviet jet engine design. Since the TR-1 was more powerful than the RD-10, the Su-10 could revert back to a four-engined design and once again Sukhoi and his team had to revise the bomber's design to accommodate the new Lyulka engines. Working at a frantic pace to meet state-decreed deadlines, Sukhoi managed to have a full set of production drawings ready by 23 December 1946 and three days later the OKB's own workshops had completed a static test airframe and production jigs and tooling for the prototype. If things weren't frantic enough as it was, the Minister of Aircraft Industry wanted the Su-10 flying for participation in the air show at Moscow on 18 August 1947! Common sense prevailed and that was one deadline Sukhoi was allowed to ignore. 

Three-view showing the layout of the Su-10 medium bomber

By 15 December 1947 the hydraulic system had been fully tested on a special ground rig (similar to today's "iron bird"), but construction of the prototype was hampered by slow progress from the various subcontractors that were responsible for some of the Su-10's systems. For example, the defensive armament system (which consisted of a manned tail turret, a remotely-operated dorsal turret and forward-firing cannon), the autopilot, the navigation suite and even the Lyulka TR-1 engines were to have all been delivered to Sukhoi's workshops for the prototype but by the end of 1947 none of those items were ready yet. During the delay, studies looked at alternative powerplant options and it was decided that the initial flight tests of the Su-10 would use the TR-1 engine but as soon as the more powerful TR-2 engine developed from the TR-1 became available, the Su-10 prototype would have its engines swapped out and then continue with the flight test program. 

 

These persistent delays led to the Su-10 prototype to sit in the OKB workshops missing various components- by 4 June 1948 the Soviet Council of Ministers ordered that spending had to be reduced on aircraft development programs that year and one of the unlucky programs to get canceled was the Su-10. By that summer OKB Ilyushin had already made the first flight of its Il-28 medium bomber and its performance outstripped what was projected for the Su-10. Not even rolled out, the Su-10 prototype was donated to the Moscow Aviation Institute where it was slowly reduced to parts over time as an instructional airframe. Sukhoi in the years to come devoted its efforts at interceptor, fighter, and ground attack aircraft and it wasn't until the arrival of the Su-24 Fencer in the late 1970s that Sukhoi finally had a production jet bomber. 

Source/Images: OKB Sukhoi: A History of the Design Bureau and Its Aircraft by Yefim Gordon and Dmitriy Komissarov. Midland Publishing, 2010, p93-101.

The Last Operational B-17 Flying Fortresses

The Israeli B-17s originally flew without any defensive armament

On the day prior to the expiration of the British Mandate over Plestine on 15 May 1948, David Ben-Gurion declared the independence of the new State of Israel and within hours, Arab forces from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon invaded, starting the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, or the War of Independence in Israel. At the time of the declaration, the hastily-organized aviation assets of the fledgling state became the nascent Israeli Air Force, which in turn became part of the IDF, Israeli Defense Forces, on 26 May 1948. Initially outclassed by the Arab air forces with only a modest light plane fleet, the air war began to swing in favor of the Israelis on 20 May with the arrival of the first Avia S-199s from Czechoslovakia- the Junkers Jumo-powered version of the Messerschmitt Bf109 leveled the playing field against the Egyptian Spitfires. Despite a UN arms embargo on the participant parties on the 1948 war, resourceful Israelis and supporters worldwide (who were called "machal") insured a supply of arms through rather creative means, often involving subterfuge. Al Schwimmer was a long time flight engineer for Trans World Airlines who organized the transfer of arms to Israeli in 1948. At first Schwimmer got surplus C-47 transports transferred via Panama to form the nucleus of the IDF's air transport arm, but he soon recruited a former government purchasing agent, Charlie Winters, who at the time was based in Miami and was using three civilianized Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses to transport produce between Puerto Rico and Florida. Winters sold the B-17s to the Israelis for $15,000 a piece and organized a team of former USAAF mechanics and engineers to make the aircraft combat ready.

Aircraft 1602 had a Mickey Mouse cartoon on its tail

The three B-17s (44-83811, 44-83753, and 44-83851) were covertly flown from the United States to an airfield in Czechoslovakia that was acting as the European terminus for the aerial supply line to Israel. Bogus flight plans to Brazil were filed to cover their tracks. Winters himself flew one of the B-17s across the Atlantic. He had arranged for a fourth B-17 as well, but this aircraft after eluding authorities in Canada managed to reach the Azores only to be impounded by the Portuguese government. At the Czech airfield of Zatek, the B-17s were further upgraded with improved instrumentation. They were loaded with bombs for the flight to Israel on 15 July 1948, but with the military situation becoming tenuous for the Israelis that summer, during their delivery flight they were diverted to hit Egyptian targets since they were carrying bombs anyway. One B-17 was to hit Gaza City, the second B-17 was assigned the Egyptian air base at El-Arish, and the third B-17 was assigned King Farouk's Royal Palace in Cairo. The first two B-17s had problems finding their assigned targets but the third B-17 did manage to bomb Cairo, which, like the Doolittle Raid's psychological effect on the Japanese in 1942, caused significant anxiety in Egypt as Cairo was felt to be immune from attacks by Israel's rag-tag air force of what was thought to be just light aircraft. The first two aircraft ended up bombing an Egyptian target in Rafiah instead but the overall effect of the raids not only damaged Egyptian morale, it served to boost Israeli morale as well. Since all three aircraft had been hurriedly made combat ready, numerous technical problems beset them on their delivery flight/first combat mission- one of the more notable issues was that the oxygen system kept quitting, which on several occasions during the flight from Czechoslovakia to Israel by way of Egypt had caused some of the crew members to pass out. 

The three Israeli B-17s at various points in their careers

All three B-17s landed safely at Ekron airfield in Israel following their highly eventful delivery flight- the leader of the flight, a former USAAF pilot named Bill Katz, was named commander of a new squadron based at the former RAF base of Ramat David that would operate the B-17s- 69 Squadron "Patishim" or "The Hammers". The three aircraft were camouflaged and serialed 1601, 1602, and 1603. At the time the IDF had been relying on converted transports as bombers, so the arrival of the B-17s represented a significant leap in offensive capability for the Israelis. The following day on 16 July the three bombers flew three combat missions together, the first one to bomb the El-Arish air base that was missed the previous day, the second mission later in the day to bomb advancing Egyptian forces in the south and that night the third mission was against advancing Syrian forces in the north. Over the next several days multiple bombing missions were flown each day against Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian forces. Several attacks were mounted against Arab air bases in the belligerent countries and even several missions were flown against targets in the Syrian capital of Damascus. At first the missions were flown with fighter escort by Israeli Spitfires and Avia S-199s, but as the Arab air forces' losses mounted, soon the B-17s were able to operate without fighter escort. By the time of the armistice in February and March of 1949, over 200 combat missions had been flown by 69 Squadron. With the end of the war, the squadron eventually moved to the new air base at Hazor.

One of the B-17s, aircraft 1602, was modified to carry a search radar under the nose where the chin turret was located. This aircraft through the first half of the 1950s was stripped of its desert camouflage and operated as a maritime patrol aircraft in bare metal colors in the Mediterranean. By this time, enough spares had been acquired to allow all three B-17s to be retrofitted with gun turrets and at least two of the B-17s were kept operational at any given time. By July 1956 the long serving bombers were placed in storage. 

During the 1956 War, Israeli B-17s wore yellow/black identification bands

The Suez Crisis of 1956 brought the three B-17s back out of storage that October. Israeli involvement in the 1956 war began on 29 October with Operation Kadesh, the Israeli invasion of the Sinai Peninsula. On 31 October 1956 the three B-17s attacked Egyptian positions in the Gaza Strip, but a series of mounting technical problems over the course of the war spelled the end of B-17 operations for the IDF. The bombers were finally retired in November 1958 as the last operational B-17 Flying Fortresses in action. 69 Squadron was disbanded as well, but would be reformed in 1969 as the second Israeli Air Force squadron to operated the F-4E Phantom II. Today 69 Squadron operates the F-15I Ra'am, the Israeli variant of the F-15E Strike Eagle. Al Schwimmer, the TWA flight engineer who was instrumental in organizing Israel's air force, would go on after the 1948 War to establish Israeli Aircraft Industries. His activities were called by David Ben-Gurion as the "single biggest contribution by the Diaspora towards the survival of the State of Israel". Charlie Winters was an Irish Protestant who helped the Israelis as a favor to his Jewish friends in Miami. As a result, he was charged by the US District Attorney in Miami for violating US laws and was fined $5,000 and sent to prison for 18 months. Two other Americans were also charged who aided Israel- one was Al Schwimmer, who never served prison time as he was convicted in absentia and was pardoned by President Bill Clinton in 2000. The other American in the operation was Hank Greenspun, who also never served an prison time and was pardoned in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy. 

Charlie Winters passed away in 1984 having never told his children of his role in the creation of the State of Israel. It was only after the Israeli government sent an arrangement of blue and white flowers did his family learn of his activities in 1948. His ashes were interred in the ancient Templars' Cemetery in Jerusalem. In 2008, Winters was pardoned by President George W. Bush as only the second posthumous pardon in history. 

Sources/Images: Aviation Classics, Issue 8. "The Israeli Air Force and the B-17" by Tim Callaway, p118-119. B-17G Flying Fortress in Israeli Air Force Service 1948-1957 by Alex Yofe. White Crow Publications, 2010.

Operation Teaball: Network-Centric Real-Time Intelligence During Vietnam

In 1972, US fighters had an added resource in the fight against MiGs

In past blog posts I've discussed some of the measures taken by the military to reverse the decline in air combat proficiency in the skies over Vietnam. This past November I had blogged about the origins of Red Flag as well as the top secret USAF program to obtain and fly MiGs. Back in March I wrote about the US Navy's own efforts that began with the Ault Report. While these were all steps that would benefit fighter pilots in the skies over Vietnam, there was another effort that took place that has received scant attention in the history books and presaged today's military buzzword of "network-centric" warfare. Between the bombing halt of 1968 and the start of the North Vietnamese Easter Offensive in 1972, air combat over North Vietnam was nearly non-existent. With the start of the NVA offensive in 1972, though, President Nixon reversed the gradual drawdown of US forces in Southeast Asia with a massive buildup and bombing offensive under Operation Linebacker I and Linebacker II. With the ramp up of offensive air strikes on North Vietnam, US aircrews found themselves embroiled in multiplane dogfights that were resulting in growing US losses. In the three months following the start of Linebacker in May 1972, the US lost 48 aircraft, 21 to VNAF MiGs and 27 to improved ground defenses. In the same period, only 31 MiGs were shot down by US aircraft and things worsened in the summer with 13 US aircraft lost to MiGs and only 11 MiGs shot down. 

At the same time, the policy of rotation of air crews meant that experienced personnel were rotated out of combat and replaced with novice air crews on their first combat tour. In the days before Red Flag and dissimilar air combat training, the loss rate of first tour air crews was staggering enough the General John Vogt, commander of the Seventh Air Force which oversaw combat air operations in Southeast Asia, ordered the minutes of mission critique conferences to be disseminated to all units in theater, not just the units involved. But it wasn't enough for General Vogt. He reported to the USAF Chief of Staff, General John Ryan, that the US was losing the air war over Vietnam in 1972. As a result, General Ryan ordered his staff to create a plan to assist US pilots in the skies over Vietnam- no studies, no plans, but what General Ryan wanted was something in place that could offset the fact that the VNAF MiG pilots were battle-experienced and had excellent GCI controllers who could relay the MiG air crews detailed descriptions of the tactical situation. 

General John Vogt, commander USAF Seventh Air Force

Ryan tasked a three-man "action group" with setting something up- USAF officers Lt. Col. William Kirk and Maj. Ernie Short teamed up with Delmar Lang, an intelligence specialist with the National Security Agency. Lang was brought in as he had several times in the years prior repeated offered to set up an eavesdropping facility that could listen in on the communications between the VNAF MiG pilots and their GCI controllers to provide real time information to US pilots. Lang's idea had historical precedence- during the Korean War, the USAF had a listening post on the island of Cho-do off the coast of Korea that was staffed with linguists and air control specialists that would listen in on North Korean, Chinese, and Russian communications to give US pilots a real-time picture of what was going on in "MiG Alley". Since the Korean War, the pace of technological progress in electronic and signals intelligence (ELINT and SIGINT) improved by leaps and bounds, but national security and a variety of compartmentalized secret programs kept many of these new methods out of sight to those on the front line. Delmar Lang's NSA position, however, coupled with the access given Lt. Col. Kirk and Maj. Short, intended to cut through the institutional resistance to using those technological resources to win the war in the skies of over Vietnam. 

On 26 July 1972, literally in just one month, General Ryan's "action group" set up the Operation Teaball Weapons Control Center at the Thai air base of Nakhon Phanom (nicknamed "Naked Fanny" by US pilots). Working with the intelligence specialists of the USAF's 6908th Security Squadron, the Teaball control room had map displays where data from a variety of intelligence sources already in place was collected and synthesized to form a single tactical picture that could be disseminated to US pilots in real time by specialist ground controllers. Orbiting high over the Gulf of Tonkin and Laos, specialist ELINT/SIGINT RC-135s listened in on communications between MiG pilots and their GCI controllers- this data was then relayed to a Lockheed U-2 orbiting high overhead that then relayed the information direct to the Teaball control center at Nakhon Phanom. Ground and ship-based (like "Red Crown" in the Gulf of Tonkin) radar pictures were added to refine the tactical picture. Finally, radar and SIGINT data from specialist EC-121s- such as the famous radar early warning EC-121 that used the call sign "Disco"- was also relayed to the Teaball specialists as well. Also little known was a US capability to trigger the IFF systems of the MiGs so they could be easily tracked. The stream of data from all these sources made use of a top-secret NSA computer system called "Ironhorse" that was designed to analyze and synthesize all the data to create a cohesive tactical picture that was then displayed on the map screens for the Teaball controllers to relay via another radio relay RC-135 to US pilots over North Vietnam. Once the system was up and running, the delay was as little as 45 to 60 seconds before the Teaball controllers were issuing advisories to US pilots!

"Combat Lightning" was one many specialist KC-135 variants used

Each combat air crew, regardless of service branch, were notified of a discrete UHF channel to monitor that advisories from the Teaball control center were broadcast. Teaball controllers also knew the call signs of each and every combat mission for that day going into North Vietnam. Positions of VNAF MiGs were given in relation to a notional point called the "Bull's Eye" which was Hanoi. Distance and bearing from the Bull's Eye was given and air crews often programmed the Bull's Eye into their aircraft's own navigational equipment. "Blue Bandits" were MiG-21s, "White Bandits" were MiG-19s, and "Red Bandits" were MiG-17s. The code word "Green Bandit" indicated an exceptionally experienced VNAF MiG pilot was airborne. "Heads up" meant MiGs were nearby. Teaball controllers and analysts noted that certain combat flights were targeted especially heavily by the MiGs at times, and these US air crews were designated "Queen for a Day". A Teaball controller might inform a flight of F-4s about "Red Bandits, 25 miles SE of Bull's Eye, heading NE 300 knots" over a designated UHF channel. In effect, the Teaball controller acted as a GCI controller for the US pilots, constantly feeding them information on the position and action of any MiGs nearby to allow the US pilots to exploit the situation.

Lt. Col. Kirk briefed every unit that was flying combat missions over Vietnam and warned them explicitly "Pay attention when I call you on that channel!" Within the first month of Operation Teaball's operation, American fighters had moved from a 1:1 kill ratio to a 3:1 ratio and by the end of the Linebacker operations, the ratio had risen to 4:1 in favor of US air crews. The system saved many an air crew's life in the skies over North Vietnam, to the point that inbound flights often checked in with the Teaball control center once they had taken off to be sure they had their call signs!

Operation Teaball was one of the earliest and most successful uses of data fusion and what today we would call "network-centric" warfare- to use diverse data collection sources fused together to give situational awareness to our men and women in combat. It was the first time that such diverse sources of intelligence that were once the sole realm of distant analysts in the United States were used to deliver real-time actionable information to win battles. 

Sources: The Linebacker Raids: The Bombing of North Vietnam, 1972 by John T. Smith. Arms and Armour, 1998, p95-97. Air Force Magazine, July 2008, Volume 91, Number 7. "The Teaball Tactic" by Walter Boyne.

The Bell 207 Sioux Scout- Grand Daddy of the Gunship

The Bell D-245 Warrior set the pattern for gunship designs

With the turbine-powered Bell UH-1 Iroquois "Huey" utility helicopter offering a quantum leap in capability for the US Army over previous, cumbersome, piston-driven rotorcraft, it was a natural progression that the UH-1s would be armed for aerial fires support for the growing conflict in Vietnam. But Bell's engineers in Fort Worth were steps ahead of the military with studies as early as 1958 for a tandem-seat purpose-built helicopter gunship that used the transmission and engine systems of what would become the UH-1. Bell's first offering had the in-house designation D-245 and was named "Warrior" which laid down the standard layout of gunships that followed- a slim fuselage with tandem seating for a pilot and gunner, stub wings for weapons, and nose-mounted gun turret. But despite its potential, the Army had yet to determine operational doctrines for the use of attack helicopters and the D-245 Warrior was quietly shelved. 

Despite official disinterest from the US Army, Bell decided to embark on internally-funded development to further refine the D-245 Warrior design. In June 1962 Bell unveiled the D-255 Iroquois Warrior to the Army at its Fort Worth facility. The D-255 was a bit larger than the earlier D-245 but retained the tandem seating for pilot and gunner in stepped layout with the pilot sitting behind and higher than the gunner in the forward seat. Again, the tail boom, rotor transmission and engines were adapted from the UH-1. While the mixed reaction from the US Army was an improvement over the official disinterest that the earlier D-245 design elicited, it still wasn't enough to get a production contract from the Army. Again the D-255 was quietly shelved, but this still wasn't going to discourage the Bell team from staying ahead of the game. In December 1962 a brainstorming session of the engineering team resulted in a decision to build a flying demonstrator to prove the US Army what Bell's gunship concept could accomplish. 

The Sioux Scout was quite small for a two-seat gunship

Designated the Model 207 and named the Sioux Scout, the demonstrator combined the engine, rotor, and drive systems of the proven Bell OH-13 Sioux (the bubble-cockpit helicopter made famous in the introduction to the TV series M*A*S*H) with its civilian counterpart, the Bell 47. The six-cylinder Lycoming 435 engine of the OH-13/Bell 47 was supercharged to deliver 220 horsepower driving the main rotor system from the OH-13 and the tail rotor/tail boom of the Bell 47. An all-new slim fuselage was created that used box beams to create a rigid structure to which were attached the stub wings that could carry external stores on six hardpoints on each side as well as house an additional 43 gallons of fuel which gave the Sioux Scout a range of 200 miles. At high speeds, the stub wings helped offload the main rotor as well. An Emerson Electric TAT-101 gun turret was installed under the nose (the rigid fuselage structure dampened recoil) housing twin 7.62mm machine guns that were adaptations of the M60 gun. With 1,100 rounds of ammunition, the gunner in the forward seat used a pioneering hand controller to operate the gun turret 100 degrees side to side, 15 degress upward, and 45 degrees downward. Under each stub wing were six round, 2.75 inch rocket launchers on each hardpoint. 

The gunner had an outstanding field of view from the front seat

The Sioux Scout made its first flight from Bell's Fort Worth facility in Hurst on 27 June 1963, in the process becoming the first pure gunship in the world to take flight. Since the demonstrator program was somewhat secret, the helicopter was painted red and white to not so blatantly give away its military purpose. After several weeks of testing with Bell that added up to 65 flight hours, the Sioux Scout was repainted in more Army-like olive drab and began a series of weapons tests at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, northwest of Fort Worth. In November of that year, the Sioux Scout was taken on the road, touring Army bases and being flown by both Army and even NASA test pilots with over 300 flight hours that included firing over 83,000 rounds of ammunition from the chin turret. Finally, in 1964, B Troop, 3rd Squadron, 17th Cavalry of the 11th Air Assault Division spent a month flying the Sioux Scout in operational conditions and in field exercises. At the time, the 11th Air Assault Division was tasked by the Army commanders with experimenting and creating operational doctrines in helicopter assault at Fort Benning, Georgia. 

The Model 209 prototype had retractable landing skids

Other than the Sioux Scout being underpowered and the reliability of the experimental gun turret being less than ideal, Army evaluators were overwhelmingly pleased with the outcome of the 11th Air Assault Division's operational evaluation of the demonstrator. The recommendation was issued that a turbine-powered, more capable version be developed as quickly as possible for operational use. In late 1964 the Secretary of the Army created the Advanced Aerial Fire Support System (AAFSS) with invitations to industry to submit designs. With the quick realization that the AAFSS design would take time to field, the Army decided that an interim design was needed that would field the gap until the AAFSS became operational. Bell dusted off its D-255 Iroquois Warrior design and with further refinements based on the Sioux Scout evaluation, designated it the D-262. However, in 1965 the Army rejected the D-262 design. But, as Bell had done before, they quietly went about refining the design further on company funds- within several months of the rejection of the D-262, the situation in Vietnam worsened and the US commander in Vietnam, General William Westmoreland, advised the Pentagon that either the AAFSS needed to fielded quickly or some interim design was needed as soon as possible. In March 1965 Bell just happened to finish the full-scale mockup of its refined gunship designated the Model 209 and "leaked" to Army commanders what it was up to. Before long, the Army issued a formal requirement for an interim design. Beating out submissions from Sikorsky, Kaman, Piasecki and Boeing Vertol, the Model 209 was selected on 11 March 1966 for production as the AH-1 Cobra.

And the AAFSS? That became the Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne and was a classic case of wanting too much out of a design. It ended up getting cancelled in August 1972. That same month, the Army created the Advanced Attack Helicopter program (AAH) which became the AH-64 Apache. And what become of the Sioux Scout? The grand daddy of gunships can be seen today in the Army Aviation Museum in Fort Rucker, Alabama. And of course, Bell's interim design is still in production today for the US Marine Corps as the AH-1Z Viper.

Source: Helicopter Gunships: Deadly Combat Weapon Systems by Wayne Mutza. Specialty Press, 2010, p56-60. Images from aviatstar.org

The "Wings of Russia" Sukhoi Super Jumbo

The Sukhoi KR-860 was conventional in its layout

At the 2001 Paris Air Show, the Russian delegation created quite a stir by unveiling a four-engine, double-deck, long-haul airliner christened "Kryl'ya Rossii", or "Wings of Russia". The ambitious project had the Sukhoi OKB designation "KR-860"- KR for "Kryl'ya Rossii" and 860 indicating the passenger load. Design work on the KR-860 began in 1997 under the General Designer, Mikhail P. Simonov who had headed the design bureau since 1983. Already under his direction the Su-27 Flanker family of fighter aircraft had been upgraded and new variants had taken flight. By the time that design work began on the KR-860 project, Sukhoi had already been making its first steps into the civil aviation market with the start of work on the Su-80 utility transport and the Su-38 agricultural aircraft. But an aircraft in the class of the KR-860 was nothing short of a bold leap by Sukhoi. The "Wings of Russia" would rival the Airbus A380 and would be larger than the Boeing 747. The design team had looked at advanced technologies and unconventional layouts such as a flying wing, but eventually settled on a blend of advanced technologies (fly-by-wire, composites) combined with a conventional layout with a double deck fuselage and four turbofans. At each step of the KR-860's design evolution, tradeoffs were made between high technology and innovation and low-risk approaches. 

Note the twin nose gear and unusual cockpit fairing

Although the layout of the KR-860 was conventional in appearance, the Sukhoi team succeeded in achieving a predicted lift/drag ratio of 19.5 (compared to the L/D ratio of the Boeing 747 of 17) via aerodynamic refinements. Large winglets were a part of the design and the smooth lines of the double deck fuselage were unusually broken by a blister-like fairing that housed the flight deck. One of the more unusual features of the KR-860 was its use of folding outer wings to reduced the footprint of the aircraft. Boeing had looked at a similar system during the design of the Boeing 777 and had even built a test article, but eventually dropped the idea as the gain in space at the gate wasn't enough to offset the increased weight and complexity. For the KR-860, though, the folding outer wings meant that the aircraft could use any gate position that could accommodate a Boeing 747. While the main landing gear was very similar to that of the 747 and A380 with two inward-retracting wing units and two fuselage mounted units, the nose landing gear was more like that of the Antonov An-124 Condor transport with twin units. The third unique feature of the KR-860 was its three integral airstairs that were on the centerline of the underfuselage- the forward airstair was ahead of the nose gears, the second one was mid-way down the fuselage where the wings were located, and the third and aft unit was under the tail. Like the integral airstairs on the Ilyushin Il-86, these were meant to reduce the ground support needs for the KR-860. 

Note the folding outer wings and the boarding airstairs under the nose

A variety of powerplant options were evaluated for the aircraft- the most serious contender was the General Electric CF6-80E1 used on the Airbus A330 family of aircraft- Sukhoi was reportedly in negotiations with GE at the time of the KR-860's unveiling at the 2001 Paris Air Show. License production of the engine in Russia was even discussed. In addition, consideration was also given to the Rolls-Royce Trent 800 used on the Boeing 777 and the Pratt & Whitney PW4168 used on the A330. In addition, Russian solutions were evaluated from the Kuznetsov NK-93 ducted fan to the unusual suggestion of using eight Soloviev PS-90 turbofan engines in paired nacelles. This would have been the cheapest solution, but the pair nacelles and eight engines would have been significantly heavier and cost more in fuel consumption. 

The aft boarding airstairs under the tail

The eight-engined variant was considered more appropriate for a cargo variant which had an upward-hinged nose visor like that of the An-124 Condor and the Boeing 747-400F. Sukhoi even pitched this version as a successor to the An-124s operated by the Russian Air Force. The cargo version was capable of carrying up to thirty of the 40-foot rail/road cargo containers. Using four turbofan engines, such a version was claimed to have a cost per mile only slightly higher than that of rail transit. In addition, combi versions were suggested and one of the more unusual variants was that of a flying liquified natural gas (LNG) tanker to connect outlying regions in Siberia planned for oil/gas exploration that lacked suitable infrastructure for conventional transport methods. 

Sukhoi estimated the costs for the development of the KR-860 would be more than offset with its use in cargo transport. Costs depending upon the authority consulted ranged from 3-4 billion US dollars to as high as 5.5 billion US dollars. As ambitious as the KR-860 was, there was simply not enough passenger traffic in Russia to justify an aircraft its size. Sukhoi turned to both India and China which had booming passenger markets to explore risk-sharing partnerships. At the end of the day, though, an aerospace project the size and scope of the KR-860 was simply more than both Sukhoi and the Russian government could handle and with more pressing financial needs, the Kremlin was reluctant to invest in the development of Sukhoi's super jumbo. Russian aviation authorities were highly skeptical of the need for the KR-860 given that most of what might get built would be exported to more robust and booming aviation markets. As a result, the KR-860 "Wings of Russia" program died quietly as Sukhoi shifted its resources to a much smaller aircraft that was needed in Russia to replace the aging fleets of Tupolev Tu-134 and Tu-154 fleets. Though development of the Sukhoi SuperJet 100 had started in 1999, the shift of OKB resources from the KR-860 to the SuperJet program which was formally launched in 2002. 

Source: OKB Sukhoi: A History of the Design Bureau and its Aircraft by Yefim Gordon and Dmitriy Komissarov. Midland Publishing, 2010, p501-503.

Genesis of the Predator UAV

Leading Systems' Amber UAV, grandfather of the Predator

In the mid-1970s, Abraham Karem, a designer of high-tech weaponry for the Israeli Defense Forces, emigrated to the United States but despite his credentials working with the Israeli military, found himself unable to get employment with any of the major American defense contractors. Karem had some innovative ideas for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), so ended up starting his own company, Leading Systems, in the garage of his home in Irvine, California, to pursue his UAV concepts. In 1982, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, was providing seed money to small companies that offered innovative solutions to problems outlined by the US military. One such problem was a need for an advanced UAV that could provide reconnaissance imagery while having a long endurance but be both inexpensive and reliable. The classified DARPA program TEAL RAIN was established to study the technology for long-endurance UAVs. The problem at the time was that previous long endurance UAVs exemplified by the Boeing Condor as well as the Compass Cope program were large and prohibitively expensive. Two years after he founded Leading Systems, Abraham Karem secured seed money from DARPA to develop his concepts and in 1984, he received a contract to develop a classified reconnaissance UAV code-named Amber. While most competing companies adapted existing piston engines from snowmobiles and motorcycles for their designs, Karem used the DARPA seed money to hire engineers willing to design and build engines custom tailored for the Amber program. 

The first Amber UAV flew in 1986 (just two years after Karem got the DARPA contract!). Karem designed Amber to fold up and be fired from a standard torpedo tube- the US Navy was one of the backers of the Amber project- as a result, it had a slender fuselage with a parasol wing and an inverted-V tail with a pusher prop. Two types of Amber UAVs were planned- the "A" version had a pointed nose section carrying a warhead and was to be a low-cost cruise missile- approaching its target, the wing was to be jettisoned, hence the need for a parasol-type wing. The "B" version replaced the warhead section of the "A" version with a slightly bulged nose compartment that housed imaging sensors and datalinks to act as a reconnaissance UAV. The "B" version had a stalky retractable landing gear as well. The use of an inverted-V tail was to protect the pusher prop during landing and takeoff. By 1988, Amber had demonstrated a flight endurance of nearly 40 hours when competing companies were barely getting 12 hours out of their designs. Not only was Karem's design outflying its competitors, it was also proving to be immensely reliable as well. Thirteen Amber UAVs were built by 1990. 

In the same year that Amber was breaking records in 1988, Congress began to get impatient with the Pentagon's slow pace of UAV development. By 1990 the Pentagon was forced by Congressional mandate to consolidate the UAV research efforts of the different armed services into a single Joint Program Office (JPO). The JPO, however, wasn't budgeted any funds for research, which meant that only big defense contractors could stay in the running where internal corporate funding was plentiful. At the same time, and in its infinite wisdom, Congress banned DARPA from supporting UAV projects outside of the jurisdiction of the Pentagon JPO and as a result, Leading Systems' funding dried up overnight and Amber had to be canceled despite its achievements. 

Leading Systems/General Atomics Gnat 750

To try and stay afloat, Abraham Karem and his small team at Leading Systems developed a UAV based on Amber that was less-complex and used a standard Rotax piston engine for propulsion. This UAV was named the Gnat 750. Since the Gnat was planned for the export market, it was larger and didn't have as many of the advanced features of Amber, but it retained the overall layout with the difference that the wing was now directly attached to the fuselage instead of high-mounted on a pylon. The inverted-V tail was still there as well as a pusher prop and the stalky retractable undercarriage. The Gnat 750 first flew in 1989 and despite being "less high-tech" than Amber, boasted a significant number of design improvements. However, the loss of DARPA funding was too much for Leading Systems and Karem was looking at shutting down the company. However, San Diego-based defense contractor General Atomics was looking in 1990 to diversify its holdings outside of its core business of nuclear reactor technologies. One of its corporate directors was a former US Navy rear admiral, Thomas Cassidy, who joined General Atomics in 1987. He thought Karem's operation would be a good fit for what General Atomics was looking for and in 1990, General Atomics acquired Leading Systems and set up Abraham Karem and his team in a subsidiary General Atomics Aeronautical Systems to continue the development of the Gnat 750 UAV. 

In 1993, the Pentagon issued a requirement to rapidly field a surveillance UAV to support UN peacekeeping forces in the former Yugoslavia. The Gnat 750 was selected, but because the need was immediate and existing military acquisition procedures were too slow, the program was transferred to the CIA under the code name LOFTY VIEW. Since the CIA would be operating the Gnat 750 in secret, it fell outside of the purview of the Congressional mandate the created the UAV JPO that inadvertently killed off the Amber program. By 1994 the first Gnat 750s were deployed to a CIA operating base in Albania for operations throughout the Balkans. The UAVs provided overhead surveillance for UN convoys as well as spotting artillery emplacements and the operating locations of the various belligerents in the wars that wracked the region through the latter half of the 1990s. The bad weather of the Balkans and the limited range of the Gnat's datalink proved to be the main issues that affected operations. 

While the CIA was getting the Gnat 750 operational over the Balkans, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems had secured funding under an advanced concept technology program. At the time, UAV development had been stratified into "Tier" levels based on endurance and performance. I had reviewed these Tiers a year ago in a previous blog posting that covered the development of top-secret stealthy Quartz UAV: 

In the 1990s, there were three "tiers" of UAV development based on operational capability. "Tier I" was for a low-altitude system that became the Gnat-750 UAV. "Tier II" was for a more capable medium altitude system based on the Tier I craft and that became the current Predator UAV family. The specification for "Tier III" would have been filled by the Quartz project, but with its cancellation, Tier III was split into two- Tier II+ was for the Quartz's performance without stealth and this became the RQ-4 Global Hawk UAV. Tier III- ("Tier III Minus") was stealthy but without the performance and payload of Tier II+. This design became the RQ-3 DarkStar. DarkStar, a joint effort between Boeing and Lockheed, had little in common with Quartz and itself would be canceled in 1999 in favor of further development of the Global Hawk.

General Atomics RQ-1/MQ-1 Predator

The Pentagon was issuing contracts for UAVs at each Tier. General Atomics's funding was for development of a Tier II UAV. The new design took the Gnat 750 and stretched the fuselage and lengthened the wings. The inverted-V tail, stalky retractable undercarriage, and pusher prop were retained (though with a more powerful Rotax piston engine). Since one of the weaknesses of the Gnat 750 was the limited range of its datalink, the new UAV had an enlarged nose section that had the imaging payload on the underside of the nose similar to what the Gnat 750's layout, but incorporated a satellite communications dish in a bulged radome as the new datalink. Use of a satcom datalink now meant that the UAV operators and pilots didn't even have to be in the same region as the UAV's area of operations. It was now possible for the crews to fly the UAVs from stateside bases using the satcom datalinks to fly the Tier II UAV anywhere in the world it was needed. 

Named Predator, the new Tier II UAV made its first flight in June 1994. Less than a year later during the Roving Sands 95 exercise at Fort Bliss, Texas, the Predators were used for the first time in an operational demonstration. They were so successful at Roving Sands that year that the USAF established its first UAV squadron, the 11th Reconnaissance Squadron at Indian Springs Auxillary Airfield in Nevada (later renamed Creech AFB in 2005) shortly after the exercise in Texas and just one month after Roving Sands, the first Predators were deployed to the Balkans under Operation Nomad Vigil. From July to November that year the 11th RS operated its Predators out of Gjader in Albania in support of Operation Deliberate Force, the NATO air campaign against Bosnian Serb forces. While more capable than the Gnat 750s operated by the CIA, the need for overhead surveillance was so great in the Balkans that both the Predator and the Gnat 750s operated simultaneously in theater. 

By 2001, the USAF had taken delivery of 68 Predator UAVs. Due to the steep learning curve in operating such a radically different type of aircraft, 19 were lost, but only 4 were confirmed to have been shot down over the Balkans. But it was only the beginning of how the Predator began to change the way air campaigns were fought. And that is subject matter for a future posting on this blog!

Sources: Birds of Prey: Predators, Reapers and America's Newest UAVs in Combat by Bill Yenne. Specialty Press, 2010, p37-40.

 Popular Science, September 1994. "Drones: Invented and Forgotten" by Bill Sweetman, p34.

Designation-Systems.net by Andreas Parsch. "Leading Systems Amber" and "General Atomics Gnat".

Photos: Federation of American Scientists, United States Air Force.