The Tupolev Tu-144 (Russian: Tyполев Ту-144; NATO reporting name: Charger) is a Soviet supersonic passenger airliner designed by Tupolev in operation from 1968 to 1999. [2]

The Tupolev Tu-4 (Russian: Туполев Ту-4; NATO reporting name: Bull) is a piston-engined Soviet strategic bomber that served the Soviet Air Force from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s. The aircraft was a copy of the American Boeing B-29 Superfortress, having been reverse-engineered from seized aircraft that had made emergency landings in the USSR.

Sep 7, 2020 · On Jun. 3, 1973, at the 1973 Paris Airshow, the flight crew on a Tu-144 attempted to perform an impressive steep climb manoeuvre to wow spectators, but they overstressed the airframe while pulling their plane out of a dive and it broke up in mid-air.

Tupolev Tu-144, world’s first supersonic transport aircraft, designed by the veteran Soviet aircraft designer Andrey N. Tupolev and his son Alexey. It was test-flown in December 1968, exceeded the speed of sound in June 1969, and was first publicly shown in Moscow in May 1970.

The 1973 Paris Air Show Tu-144 crash of Sunday 3 June 1973 destroyed the second production model of the Soviet supersonic Tupolev Tu-144. The aircraft disintegrated in the air while performing extreme manoeuvres and fell on the town of Goussainville, Val-d'Oise, France, killing all six crew members and eight people on the ground.

May 16, 2024 · The Russian-built Tupolev Tu-144 was the first supersonic passenger plane ever to fly, but it had some built-in flaws. Bigger, heavier, and less technologically advanced than Concorde, its development was marred by a spectacular crash at the Paris Air Show in 1973.

Not known by many people, the Tupolev 144 was the world’s first supersonic transport aircraft (SST) just two months before Concorde. It was also the first SST to exceed Mach 2. Very similar in design to Concorde, allegations were often made that the Soviets had stolen Concords plans.

Jul 10, 2019 · With just 55 completed flights and two fatal crashes, Concorde’s Soviet rival, the Tupolev Tu-144, was one of civil aviation’s biggest failures.

May 13, 2020 · On Sunday, June 3, 1973, the sky was bright with scattered clouds over the grounds of the Paris Air Show in Val-d’Oise. The stars of the show that year were two supersonic transport (SST) aircraft: the Anglo-French Con­corde and the Soviet Tupolev Tu-144.

The centerpiece of the project was the Tu-144LL, a former first-generation Russian supersonic jetliner that was modified by its developer, Tupolev ANTK, into a flying laboratory for supersonic research. Using the Tu-144LL to conduct flight experiments allowed researchers to compare full-scale supersonic aircraft flight