Tupolev Tu-95N

The Tu-95N was the only Tu-95 turned into the mothership for a supersonic parasite bomber. Listed as "order 236", it grew out of the composite strategic strike system launched by a USSR Council of Ministers decree on 30 July 1955 (no. 1974-776, according to GlobalSecurity). The system had two stages: the first, the Tu-95N carrier, supplied the range; the second, the RS supersonic bomber designed at OKB-256 under chief designer Pavel Tsybin, was the one meant to reach the target. The scheme was conventionally nicknamed "the sheep and the shepherd". The subject was close to one Tupolev's own bureau was studying, the "108" system.

On paper the division of labour was simple. Until the moment of separation, the RS would ride semi-recessed in the Tu-95N's bay on a special suspension. Once released, the strike aircraft was to accelerate on two ramjets to its cruising speed of 3000 km/h. No return to the carrier was planned. The estimated range of the complete system was 12500-13500 km.

The RS itself had a troubled path. According to English Wikipedia, Tsybin's bureau started developing it in 1954 as a ramjet-powered supersonic strategic bomber; the design proved impracticable and a smaller derivative, the 2RS, was proposed, which would achieve intercontinental range by being air-launched from a modified Tu-95. GlobalSecurity likewise identifies the 2RS as the Tu-95N's load. It did not convince either: on an intercontinental mission the aircraft could not return to base, and it was also incapable of carrying a thermonuclear bomb.

The decree tasked Tupolev's OKB-156 with converting a series Tu-95 released by the Air Force into the carrier. According to Russian Wikipedia, the airframe chosen was the Tu-95 with factory number 5800101 and tail number 45. At Tupolev the work was led by I. F. Nezval. After preliminary joint studies with OKB-256, design began in the second half of 1956, first at the Zhukovsky flight test base and then at the OKB-156 branch in Tomilino.

The conversion went far deeper than adding a few attachment points. Hanging the RS required considerable changes to the fuselage structure and to several Tu-95 assemblies, because the load weighed 30 to 40 tonnes and was very large; the hatch cut under the fuselage to house it also affected the adjoining areas. To be certain, the mutual fit of all systems was checked on a full-scale mockup, and once the equipment was settled a new fuselage was designed for the Tu-95N. By late summer 1957 the design was complete and working drawings began reaching plant No. 18 in Kuibyshev, where the assigned bomber was converted.

In 1958 the finished carrier flew to the Flight Research Institute (LII) airfield at Zhukovsky. Everything was ready for the special equipment to be installed and for testing to begin, but that same year the Council of Ministers decided to end all work on the RS system. The Tu-95N was left without its suspension and never carried an RS: no separation test ever took place. For some time it stayed at the OKB-156 flight test base.

Its final fate is unclear. Ugolok Neba (airwar.ru) and GlobalSecurity state that in the 1960s it was handed over to the Air Force museum at Monino, where it remains. Russian Wikipedia, by contrast, records that the Monino aircraft was long believed to be the Tu-95N, but that volunteers established it is in fact the second prototype, the "95-2", which was flown to Monino in 1972. Given that contradiction, the survival of the Tu-95N cannot be taken for granted.

The parasite-bomber idea did not survive, but Tsybin's line carried on without a mothership: the project was reworked into the RSR reconnaissance aircraft, able to operate from conventional runways, whose NM-1 aerodynamic prototype first flew on 7 April 1959. According to GlobalSecurity, Western intelligence did not detect the Tu-95N's existence at the time, so it never received a NATO designation of its own.