Tupolev Tu-95 Tu-95V

The Tu-95V answered an exceptional requirement: carrying a thermonuclear device that no standard bomb bay could hold. One aircraft was built in 1956 on a Tu-95M airframe, with a lengthened bomb bay, an extra-strong bomb holder and specific protection against the flash — anti-flash white paint on the lower surfaces, windscreen visors and a climate-controlled bay. With the crew exposed to the detonation, none of that was cosmetic.

Because high-yield hydrogen bombs were not available until the end of the 1950s, the aircraft spent its early years on training duties. In 1961 it returned to plant no. 18 at Kuibyshev for the overhaul that prepared it for its real mission. On 30 October that year it released the AN602 device — "Product 700", built by KB-11 and later known as the Tsar Bomba — over the Novaya Zemlya range. At roughly 27,500 kg the weapon had to be slung semi-externally, since it could not fit inside the aircraft. The yield, estimated at 58 megatons, remains the most powerful nuclear explosion ever produced.

Western intelligence never recognised the Tu-95V as a distinct variant and gave it no NATO reporting name of its own. Once its test career was over the aircraft served as a transport, sat idle for a time and ended its days as a static classroom.