It was a unique Soviet machine, which was capable to reach the speed of up to 3200 km/h or Mach 3. At the same time, it had a relatively small weight, about 100 tons. This gave the aircraft its unofficial name “sotka”, which means "a hundred", it was also called the "Project 100", while its name, the T-4 was classified immediately after the work on the plane had begun.
So many names for just one plane.
Eventually, this caused even more confusion with the name of the aircraft. Since the T-4 was developed by the Sukhoi Design Bureau, it’s sometimes called the SU-100, although it’s not quite accurate.
Traditionally, Sukhoi divided the design programs into two groups: “program T”, which meant “triangular wing” and “program S” which stood for “swept wing”; and this is where the indices of the experimental aircrafts come from, while the index SU was received only by the serial models.
Most of the components and structural elements of the aircraft were invented by its creators. Around 600 patents were filed in the development of this plane. Neither before nor after in the USSR was there a plane in which so many innovative ideas were incarnated.
This aircraft was immediately nicknamed "Aircraft Carrier Killer" and was expected to set new speed standards in aviation, but something went wrong.
When the Second World War ended former allies became fierce rivals. The confrontation of two ideologies led to the break-up of the Cold War.
Soviet military command considered American carrier groups the most serious threat to their defense. Since the USSR couldn’t afford to create such a fleet, they kept looking for some other way to resist them.
In December 1959, the head of the USSR Nikita Khrushchev introduced a new military doctrine totally based on the missile troops, while the rest of the troops carried out just one support function. This was a primarily hit upon long-range aviation.
Meanwhile, in 1960, on its own initiative, the Tupolev Design Bureau started the development of the TU-135 strategic bomber, which looked too much like American XB-70 "Valkyrie". It was a very large airplane weighing about 190 tons, with a speed of about 2500 km/h.
The machine was too expensive for the Soviet economy and too large for the military. Something had to be done about it and a solution was found.
In 1961, Aviation Ministry of the USSR ordered several design bureaus to develop a new aircraft with certain parameters, take-off weight of about 100 tons, a cruising speed of the order of Mach 3, a flight altitude up to 24 km and a range of flight about 7000 km. It was to become both carrier battle groups destroyer and strategic reconnaissance aircraft.
In addition to Tupolev with his TU-135, several other design bureaus participated in the competition. Yakovlev design bureau brought the YAK-35 and Sukhoi presented the T-4. Tupolev was sure that his project would win, as he specialized in the creation of strategic bombers, while Sukhoi and Yakovlev were engaged in the construction of fighters.
However, the incredible happened, the commission preferred the project presented by Sukhoi.
It could become the Soviet Valkyrie, but unlike XB-70 the T-4 flight tests had never been completed.
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