Tupolev Tu-114T

The Tu-114 was born of an August 1955 Council of Ministers directive tasking the Tupolev design bureau with an airliner of 8,000 km range derived from the Tu-95 strategic bomber. The result kept the bomber's wing, empennage, main landing gear and four Kuznetsov NK-12 turboprops, mated to an entirely new pressurised fuselage of much larger diameter. It was, at the time, the largest and fastest passenger aircraft in the world, and 32 were built at the Kuibyshev aviation plant No. 18 in the early 1960s.

On that airframe the bureau studied several conversions intended to exploit the fuselage volume and the aircraft's range for purposes other than carrying passengers. Two of them formed a pair: the Tu-114T, conceived as a cargo transport, and the Tu-114TS, a transport-and-medical variant. Russian sources describe both as projects for converting existing passenger Tu-114s rather than as new-build aircraft: the idea was to give airline airframes a second life once they were no longer needed on Aeroflot's routes.

The distinguishing feature the sources attribute to the Tu-114T is a swing-tail: the rear section of the fuselage would open to clear the full cross-section and allow large items to be loaded from the rear, something impossible on the passenger aircraft, whose fuselage was split into two decks linked by a staircase, with the galleys and the crew rest area on the lower one. That solution sets it apart from the Tu-115, the other transport project on the same basis, which was planned as a military aircraft with a rear loading ramp, a tail gun turret and a troop compartment.

The Tu-114TS would have shared that transformation, adding an interior fit-out for medical evacuation and care. The sources do not entirely agree on the division of roles: Military Factory classes both the T and the TS as MEDEVAC platforms, whereas the Russian Wikipedia and GlobalSecurity distinguish between cargo transport (T) and medical transport (TS). None of them gives any detail on the interior layout, the cargo capacity or the intended weights, a sign of how little the study progressed.

No Tu-114T or Tu-114TS was ever built: all sources agree they remained paper projects. The fleet of 32 Tu-114s stayed in passenger configuration throughout its working life with Aeroflot, in scheduled service from 1961 to 1976. The airframe fatigue life was set at 14,000 flying hours, most aircraft reached that point in 1976, and in the summer of 1977 Aeroflot decided to scrap 21 aircraft at once.

Paradoxically, the transport role the Tu-114T never got to play was partly filled by unconverted passenger aircraft: after withdrawal from civil service, some Tu-114s passed to the Soviet Air Force for troop movements. The sources disagree on when that use ended: the Spanish Wikipedia places the last flight in 1983 with a military aircraft, which matches the end of operation by the Armed Forces of the USSR given by the Russian edition, while the English edition extends Air Force use to 1991. In any event, no Tu-114 ever received the swing-tail or the cleared hold that the T project envisaged.