TU-104: Un diseño fatal

Video from the channel Dwaynes Aviation about Tupolev Tu-104, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 12:47. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

English-language documentary about the Tupolev Tu-104, the passenger jet with which the Soviet Union answered the British Comet, and about the incidents that exposed its design flaws.

In the 1950s Soviet airliners lagged one or two generations behind Western ones: a flight from Moscow to Vladivostok required at least six stops and about 50 hours. After the unveiling of the de Havilland Comet in 1952, Andrei Tupolev convinced the leadership that he could deliver a jet within three years based on the Tu-16 bomber, reusing its engines, wings, tail, landing gear and avionics under an enlarged fuselage. The Comet was grounded in 1954, and when the Tu-104 flew in June 1955 the USSR found itself with the only operational passenger jet; in 1956 it carried a Soviet delegation to the United Kingdom, and in 1957 it appeared at the Paris Air Show.

It was demanding to fly: heavy controls, high-speed landings, and neither airbrakes nor thrust reversers, so it often relied on a braking parachute. In 1958 a CSA aircraft lost both engines in turbulence, and others were pushed by updrafts into stalls, causing fatal accidents. Investigators blamed those currents and a centre of gravity prone to shifting aft, and the operating altitude was restricted. According to the video, around 20% of the Tu-104s built were lost in accidents, although the aircraft drove the modernisation of airports and air traffic control in the USSR.