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00:00In 1955, a monumental aircraft appears in Soviet skies.
00:22It is the Tupolev Tu-95 Bear.
00:30The fastest propeller-driven aircraft in the world, it is capable of dropping nuclear weapons in the heartland of America.
00:46Russia became fascinated with large bombers very early.
00:51In 1912, Igor Sikorsky began to build the huge Bolshoi-Baltiski, the Baltic Grand, the world's first four-engined aeroplane.
01:03This is a replica of its successor, the Ilya Muramets, which was larger still.
01:10It had a wingspan of 113 feet and weighed about five tons.
01:15Almost 80 Ilya Muramets bombers were built.
01:19They served the Imperial Russian Air Service with distinction in World War I.
01:30In Soviet Russia in 1917, the new Red Air Force was neglected.
01:36The leaders of the Soviet state allowed the assets of the old Imperial Air Service to run down.
01:45In a country where the horse was still a military weapon, support for aviation was not widespread.
01:57But slowly, the value of the aeroplane was recognized.
02:02Aircraft and spare parts were salvaged.
02:05Factories were reopened.
02:07From 1917 to 1920, as the Civil War swept through Russia, the Red Army used aircraft primarily for reconnaissance.
02:25Most of the fighting took place on the ground, involving men, horses and guns.
02:37In January 1924, Vladimir Lenin, the Soviet leader, died.
03:06No one was powerful enough to succeed him as a clear-cut leader.
03:13Joseph Stalin was a member of the Troika, a group of three men who replaced Lenin at the head of the Communist Party and the state.
03:23By this time, Soviet aviation was beginning to recover from the effects of brain drain and neglect.
03:29The Society of Friends of the Air Fleet set out to raise interest in flight and money to build planes.
03:38They aimed straight at the people of the Soviet state for support.
03:41Their slogans, workers, build an air fleet, and proletariat, take to the air, were designed to identify industrial workers with the new air force.
03:55Their first squadron of aircraft, formed in 1922, was named in memory of Lenin.
04:01In 1925, Stalin was engaged in a political struggle to gain sole leadership of the Soviet state and of the Communist Party.
04:24At the same time, young, bright Soviet designers were beginning to emerge from the new academies.
04:31The Central Aero and Hydrodynamics Institute, known as Tsagi, was established in late 1918.
04:44By the mid-twenties, it was well on its way to becoming the Soviet Union's most important center for aerodynamic research.
04:53Tsagi had an interest in big aircraft from the beginning.
04:56In 1919, its founder, Nikolai Zhukovsky, proposed the design of a large transport aircraft.
05:05A prototype was built, but was not successful.
05:09At the time, Tsagi's chief designer was Andrei Tupolev.
05:15He was influenced by the German Junkers Company's use of metal in aircraft construction.
05:21He also used Tsagi's design and test facilities to work towards the production of large, long-range aircraft for bombers or transports.
05:32Throughout the twenties and into the thirties, Tsagi's test facilities expanded.
05:39Its wind tunnels, in particular, became essential tools for a Soviet aircraft industry
05:45that was beginning to throw off the influence of foreign designers and develop an identity of its own.
05:56Tupolev's first really large aircraft, the AMT-4, flew in 1925.
06:02The world's first all-metal twin-engined monoplane heavy bomber.
06:07It was an extremely successful design, but for Tupolev, it was just one of a long series of extraordinary large aircraft.
06:18The AMT-9 flew in May 1929.
06:22It was a nine-passenger airliner that proved its long-range capability by flying from Moscow to London and back via Berlin in 53 flying hours.
06:34It was just one of a number of major long-distance flights by Tupolev aircraft in the twenties and thirties.
06:46The AMT-6 of 1930 was the first Soviet four-engined heavy bomber.
06:52It was also produced as a troop carrier with room for 30 fully equipped soldiers.
06:57The Soviet strategic bombing policy was based on this aircraft.
07:04With the AMT-4, it made the Soviet bomber force the largest in the world at the time.
07:11More than 800 AMT-6s were built, and it remained in service right through the 1930s.
07:17In June 1933, Andrei Tupolev's remarkable ANT-25 flew for the first time.
07:29Its wingspan was 111 feet, but the fuselage was only 44 feet long.
07:36It had fuel tanks in the wings, retractable landing gear, and only one engine.
07:42Theoretically, at least, it could stay in the air for a hundred hours.
07:47It was built on the orders of Stalin as a record-breaking aircraft,
07:52but was also thought to have potential as a long-range bomber.
07:57It never became a bomber, but it certainly broke records.
08:00In September 1934, an ANT-25 made a non-stop closed-circuit flight of almost 8,000 miles,
08:11a record that was not broken until the 1970s.
08:19In June and July 1937, ANT-25s flew non-stop from Moscow to America by way of the North Pole
08:28on two separate occasions, staying in the air for more than 60 hours on each flight.
08:35The June flight to Portland, Washington, covered 5,300 miles,
08:41and the second to San Jacinto, near Los Angeles in California, was 1,000 miles longer.
08:47In 1934 came Tupolev's most extraordinary aircraft, at least in terms of size.
08:55The project began in 1932, when the Union of Soviet writers and editors
09:01raised 6 million rubles for the construction of a giant aircraft
09:06to carry the name of the Russian writer Maxim Gorky,
09:09and to create a Maxim Gorky propaganda squadron.
09:15The aircraft Tupolev designed was metal.
09:19It had a wingspan of 206 feet,
09:22and was powered by eight engines of 900 horsepower each.
09:28It flew for the first time on May 19, 1934,
09:32and then joined the Maxim Gorky squadron for propaganda flights all over the Soviet Union,
09:39showering pamphlets, broadcasting messages and music from its loudspeakers,
09:45and even projecting images onto clouds.
09:49The Maxim Gorky was the world's largest land plane of the time.
09:54Its potential as a bomber design was not lost on the West.
09:57It could fly over a thousand miles without refuelling.
10:02It was faster than many fighters.
10:05But almost exactly a year after its first flight,
10:09it crashed, brought down by an escort fighter
10:13performing unauthorized aerobatics.
10:18In spite of Soviet achievements and the design of heavy long-range aircraft in the 30s,
10:23by the time World War II broke out,
10:25there was only one long-range strategic bomber in the Soviet inventory.
10:31It was the Petlyakov PE-8.
10:35The PE-8 project began under Tupolev in 1936,
10:40but was delegated to the Petlyakov Bureau in 1938.
10:45Petlyakov had been wing designer on a number of major Tupolev aircraft.
10:49For its time, it was an advanced design.
10:53The PE-8 entered service in 1940 and took part in retaliatory raids on Berlin in 1941.
11:02But losses were heavy and such long-range raids were not persevered with.
11:07The PE-8 was used regularly throughout the war to fly VIPs to conferences of allies in Britain and in America.
11:25In its final form, it was at least as fast and its range at least as long as the multi-engined bombers of Britain and America.
11:39But the pressure in the Great Patriotic War was for small twin-engine tactical bombers,
11:44and the PE-8 was never produced in quantity.
11:47The introduction of the extraordinary Boeing B-29 was an event of great importance to the outcome of the war.
12:03The United States now had an aircraft of unprecedented long-range high-altitude performance.
12:09Throughout the war, the Soviets had made repeated requests to the Allies for a four-engined bomber to replace the PE-8.
12:18There was no response.
12:21The Soviets had already seen the need for a future strategic air force,
12:26given the massive striking power Britain and America now possessed.
12:29Then, in August and November 1944, three USAF B-29s landed on Soviet territory in the Far East after running low on fuel.
12:42Stalin had been presented with a windfall gift in the shape of the world's most advanced strategic bomber.
12:49Tupolev was ordered to copy the airframe,
12:51and Shvitsov, the engine designer, to copy the right whirlwind engines.
13:04Just one year later, the prototype Tu-4, the Soviet copy of the B-29, was flying.
13:12In April 1946, the Soviet Long Range Air Force was revived.
13:19In 1947, Western authorities were shocked to see the first three pre-production Tu-4s flying in the Aviation Day Parade.
13:29It took two years to complete the flight test program, and the Tu-4 did not enter service until 1949.
13:42In the United States, the B-29 was already obsolete.
13:47But the Tu-4, code-named by NATO Bull, was produced in quantity.
13:53One and a half thousand were built before production ended in 1954.
13:57The end of the Great Patriotic War in 1945 was a great turning point in the history of the Soviet Union.
14:14Four years of extreme struggle had ended in victory.
14:18For a population that had been totally committed to resisting Hitler's invasion
14:22and turning it back on itself, celebration was sweet.
14:32The task of rebuilding the ravaged nation was immense.
14:37The litter of war was gathered, committed to furnaces, and melted down.
14:42But the steel of the German guns and helmets and tanks and trucks would not all be reformed into post-war equivalents of plowshares.
15:00As the Soviet nation was marshaled to rebuild, the Kremlin confronted a new world strategic situation.
15:17The possibility of another war, a war between East and West was loomed.
15:24If the United States could drop a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, it could equally deposit one on Leningrad.
15:31And the Soviet military had little knowledge of radar early warning systems, or jet engine design, or surface-to-air defenses.
15:44At the Paris Peace Conference in 1946, US Secretary of State Burns summarized the situation from the American point of view.
15:55Members of the conference, we must try to understand one another, even when we cannot agree with one another.
16:03We must never accept any disagreement as final.
16:09We must work together until we can find solutions which, while not perfect, are solutions which can be defended.
16:21A world longing for peace will not forgive us if, in striving for perfection, we fail to obtain peace.
16:34The United States believes that those who fought the war should make the peace.
16:45The 1947 May Day Parade in Red Square continued the pre-war Soviet tradition of mammoth shows of military strength.
17:03In spite of the scale of the display, Stalin knew that Soviet military technology was lagging behind the West.
17:11The great Convair B-36 could fly 6,800 miles and carry 84,000 pounds of bombs.
17:20Its appearance forced the Soviets to develop a large version of their B-29 copy, but by the time it was ready, America had leapfrogged into the age of the intercontinental jet bomber.
17:41In April 1947, Berliners struggled with floods and a Soviet blockade of their city, which aimed to force the Americans and British out of the former German capital.
17:55In poor weather conditions, one of the American aircraft flying supplies into Berlin crashed.
18:02It was the beginning of an airlift in which British and American planes flew thousands of tons of food a day over the Soviet blockade.
18:10What was now being referred to as the Cold War deepened.
18:20Relations between the West and the Soviet Union reached new levels of stress.
18:24After three months of blockade, the situation was deadlocked, and in September 1948, the question of the reunification of Berlin was submitted to the United Nations.
18:38This is Dr. Philip Jessup of the American delegation giving his country's view of Soviet action in Berlin.
18:45The Soviet government, using the harsh instrument of the blockade, has indeed chosen a strange way in Berlin to live up to its agreement to democratize German political life.
19:00Thanks to the air bridge, and to the support given it by the Berliners, the Soviet government has not succeeded in its purpose.
19:10Now, Mr. President, as I pointed out to the Security Council before, we could have used our armed force against the Soviet threat,
19:18or we could have meekly submitted and surrendered our rights and duties in Berlin,
19:23subjecting nearly two and a half million Germans to Soviet rule with all that that implies.
19:30What we actually did, and what we're still doing, is to live up to our obligations under the charter of the United Nations,
19:39and try to settle the question by peaceful discussion while continuing to discharge our obligations in Berlin.
19:47By May 1949, the blockade was over, but the Western powers had formed NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
19:55a united front against the Soviet Union.
20:00By 1952, the world political situation had become even more tense.
20:07The Soviet Union had announced that it possessed nuclear weapons, and America had tested the hydrogen bomb.
20:15The Communist German Democratic Republic had been established, so had the People's Republic of China.
20:20The Korean War was continuing.
20:24In America, General Dwight Eisenhower ran for the presidency and won a landslide victory on the side of the Republican Party.
20:34It wasn't the only radical change in world leadership.
20:41In March 1953, Joseph Stalin, who had been the power behind the Soviet Union for almost 30 years, had a stroke and died.
20:52Western analysts looked for the emergence of a clear successor.
20:57They found it in the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Nikita Khrushchev.
21:02The prototype of the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress flew for the first time in April 1952, and immediately transformed the balance of air power between the Soviet Union and the United States.
21:19Even though it would not enter service for some years, it was a vast technological leap beyond the B-29 and the B-36.
21:30It could fly halfway around the world without refuelling, and reach speeds close to the speed of sound.
21:35It was an impressive aircraft, and would remain the symbol of American intercontinental air power for 30 years.
21:45But while America led the intercontinental strategic bomber race in 1952, it was not by as much as Westerners may have imagined.
21:56This is the Tupolev Tu-16, codenamed the Badger by NATO.
22:01It made its first flight at about the same time as the B-52, and while it did not match the B-52's range or speed, it was still a major achievement for Soviet aviation.
22:14The Tu-16 could fly at more than 600 miles an hour, and its range of 3,000 miles could be extended by aerial refuelling from the wing tip of a tanker version of the same aircraft.
22:27The Tu-16 was not intended to compete directly with the B-52.
22:33It was designed as a medium range bomber, and closely matched the performance of the American medium jet bomber of the time, the Boeing B-47.
22:42Almost 2,000 Tu-16s were produced for the Long Range Air Force and the Naval Air Forces between 1952 and 1958.
22:54The Tu-16 originated from a Red Air Force request for a replacement for the Tu-4.
23:11The two main design bureaus in the competition were Tupolev and Ilyushin.
23:15Ilyushin already had a successful jet bomber, the IL-28, in service.
23:21They chose simply to scale it up to a larger version.
23:25But Tupolev was developing a completely new design, and when the Ilyushin and Tupolev prototypes flew off against each other, the Tupolev aircraft was superior.
23:35It went into production as the Tu-16.
23:44The Ilyushin competitor, the IL-42, was an old-fashioned straight-winged aircraft with its jet engines in large wing pods, but the Tu-16 was a thoroughly modern design.
23:56Its advanced aerodynamic features placed it on a par with any comparable Western aircraft.
24:05It had swept wings with a span of 108 feet.
24:09Its two engines were recessed smoothly into the sides of the fuselage at the wing roots.
24:15The engine nacelles themselves were more slender in the middle than at the front or back, giving a wasted effect that was intended to reduce drag.
24:27The Tu-16 carried a crew of six.
24:31Two were gunners.
24:33The forward dorsal gunner operated from a bubble on top of the fuselage.
24:45There were two pilots in the main cockpit, and the navigator was housed in the glazed nose section.
24:51This is the bomb site.
25:03But not all Badgers were bombers.
25:06During its long service life, NATO identified at least 11 different variations.
25:10Some were naval anti-shipping versions, and others were used for electronic surveillance.
25:27The Tu-16 could carry up to 8,000 pounds of bombs in its internal bomb bay.
25:32It could also carry missiles under the wings, or a standoff bomb under the fuselage.
25:39The rear gunner was housed in a turret right in the tail of the aircraft.
25:54The fin and rudder were mounted high on top of the fuselage to keep them well above the level of the wings and engines.
26:01The Tu-16 was an extremely successful aircraft with a very long service life.
26:10It was still being produced in China in the 1980s, and some Tu-16s are still operational in Russia.
26:17The civilian derivative, the Tu-104, was one of the first jet airliners to go into service anywhere in the world.
26:26This is the Myasyshev Atlant.
26:39It's the civilian version of the Myasyshev M4, known to NATO as the Bison,
26:45the Soviet Union's first attempt at a genuine intercontinental jet bomber.
26:50The Atlant was developed in the mid-80s to transport the Soviet space shuttle, the Buran, on its back.
27:01The large tank this one is carrying is used for liquid hydrogen, also for the shuttle program.
27:14Apart from its large twin vertical tails and the carrying attachment on the fuselage,
27:19the Atlant is basically the same as its ancestor, which was first seen in public
27:24at the Soviet Aviation Day flypast in 1954.
27:28The Bison was the Soviet Union's first serious attempt to match the B-52,
27:33The Bison was the Soviet Union's first serious attempt to match the B-52
27:56and build a heavy jet bomber with intercontinental range.
28:00It was a response to Joseph Stalin's 1949 order for work to begin on a jet bomber capable
28:09of flying to the USA and back.
28:12When the prototype of the Mershyshev M4 was finished, it was called the mullet, the hammer.
28:20Andrei Tupolev, knowing that Soviet jet engines were not sufficiently developed to satisfy
28:26Stalin's demand, chose not to compete with Mershyshev and instead concentrated on the
28:33development of a turboprop engine capable of powering a large aircraft.
28:40Stalin's requirement was that the intercontinental bomber be capable of flying 10,000 miles.
28:47Mershyshev used four of the same jet engines that powered Tupolev's Tu-16, but they were
28:53not capable of delivering Stalin's range.
28:57Mershyshev had been given special resources to build this mammoth aircraft.
29:07A new factory was built and he was given a free hand to recruit 1,500 designers and technicians
29:14from other design bureaus.
29:16The Bison was not as big as its American opponent, the B-52.
29:30Its wingspan was 20 feet less.
29:32Its maximum takeoff weight of 350,000 pounds compared with the B-52's half a million.
29:40There were similarities, however.
29:43The main landing gear was housed in a fuselage in a tandem arrangement similar to the B-52's.
29:51Like the landing gear of all Russian aircraft, it was massive.
29:57For stability, the tips of the drooping wings were fitted with small outrigger wheels.
30:06When the prototype was completed and tested in flight, it was a disappointment.
30:12Mershyshev's hammer was not the tool to strike fear into the Cold War hearts of the American population.
30:20Instead of Stalin's 10,000 miles, the Bison could only manage five and a half.
30:26Turbofan engines, which were more powerful and economical, were fitted to later versions.
30:31But by then, Khrushchev was concentrating resources on strategic rockets.
30:37And Andrei Tupolev's giant turboprop bomber, the Bear, was in operation.
30:43Bison continued to be produced, but never in large numbers.
30:59Their prime role switched to long-range naval operations, and some were converted as tankers.
31:06They began to be phased out of service in the mid-80s.
31:18At the Geneva summit in July 1955, the reunification of Germany, European security, and disarmament were on the agenda for discussion by the leaders of Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union.
31:45U.S. President Eisenhower made his Open Skies proposal, suggesting that America and the Soviet Union exchange defense blueprints and allow mutual aerial surveillance in the interests of slowing down the arms race.
32:00Nikita Khrushchev did not accept.
32:03In the 1955 Moscow Aviation Day air show, Western observers watched a huge swept-wing bomber fly past, powered not by jets, but by turbo-driven propellers.
32:17The observers thought it could be little more than a curiosity, and no match for the Mirsyshev Bison they had seen the year before, but they were in for a shock.
32:28Among an impressive array of Soviet Air Force equipment, they had just glimpsed what would prove to be the world's fastest propeller-driven aircraft, a bomber with a range of almost 8,000 miles, a bomber quite capable of flying across the North Pole and of reaching America.
32:47The turboprop engine that gave the Bear its speed and range was developed by the Kuznetsov Bureau.
32:54Kuznetsov were helped by engineers who had worked with Juncker's company, recruited from Germany at the end of the war.
33:03Between 1950 and 1954, they developed a turboshaft engine that could produce over 12,000 horsepower and drive a pair of counter-rotating propellers.
33:18The propellers themselves were supersonic, with automatic pitch change.
33:22The combination of engine and propeller was extremely efficient, and justified Tupolev's decision to seek long range and high speed through turboprop rather than pure jet power.
33:35The Bear could fly 100 miles an hour faster than anyone thought possible in a propeller-driven aircraft.
33:42It could reach 575 miles an hour.
33:46In October 1956, there was a wave of protest across Europe at the severity of Soviet action in crushing Hungary's anti-Soviet revolt.
33:59In West Berlin, there was a torch-lit mass meeting.
34:03In Paris, the headquarters of the Communist Party was put to the torch.
34:08In Holland, the Communist Party's building was stoned.
34:12There was a fear in the West that the Soviets were reverting to tactics like those employed by Stalin to keep the Soviet Union together.
34:29In March 1958, Nikita Khrushchev, who had been first Secretary of the Communist Party since the death of Stalin, and the strong man of Soviet politics, consolidated his power even further in the eyes of the West.
34:43He was elected Premier, replacing Nikolai Bulganin, and becoming the first Soviet leader since Stalin to be Premier and Party Secretary.
34:53As he accepted the office, he said,
34:55We shall conquer capitalism with a high level of work and a higher standard of living.
35:09The arrival of the Tu-95 Bear in service in the late 50s was a unique achievement for the Tupolev Design Bureau.
35:17It was the only turboprop-driven strategic bomber ever to enter first-line service in the world.
35:25And it forced change in American defensive thinking.
35:29Its potential as a strategic bomber, and its potential to reach U.S. soil via the North Pole, forced the U.S. to divert money and technology into the construction of interceptor fighter bases and early warning radar sites.
35:45The basic model Bear was a long-range strategic bomber.
35:53It was not as big as the B-52, but was still an enormous aircraft.
35:57Its wingspan was nearly 170 feet.
36:00Its maximum take-off weight was 415,000 pounds.
36:05It could carry 20,000 pounds of nuclear or free-fall conventional weapons.
36:15The Bear was a direct descendant of the Tupolev Tu-4 Bull, which means that it was also closely related to the American B-29, from which the Bull was copied.
36:31But, superficially at least, the similarity is not obvious.
36:35The Bear is a very exotic-looking aircraft.
36:38The appearance of the Bear is dominated by its propellers.
36:53They are enormous.
36:54Sixteen and a half feet in diameter.
36:57Four blades on each propeller.
37:00Four.
37:01Four engines.
37:02Two propellers driven by each engine, revolving in opposite directions.
37:07A total of 32 blades.
37:09Two blades.
37:18To propel the Bear at its maximum speed, they are revolving at 750 revolutions a minute.
37:25The speed of the propellers at the tips is Mach 1.08, just over the speed of sound.
37:32The Kuznetsov turboprop engines produce almost 15,000 horsepower each.
37:44They are housed in long, narrow nacelles, fared into the swept wings.
37:49The Kuznetsov turbop engines produce a unique
37:54MUSIC CONTINUES
38:24Bomb load internally, but the Bear B, introduced into service in the early 60s, could also carry a single large kangaroo air-to-surface missile underneath the fuselage.
38:37The kangaroo missile was roughly the size and shape of a MiG-17.
38:42It had a range of 400 miles and could travel at twice the speed of sound.
38:47MUSIC CONTINUES
38:53The landing gear of the Bear had to be extremely long to give the propellers ground clearance.
38:59And as in all Soviet military aircraft, it had to be rugged to allow landing on rough, unmade strips.
39:06MUSIC CONTINUES
39:10The combination of 32 propeller blades and four extremely powerful turboprop engines made the Bear one of the loudest aircraft in the history of aviation.
39:27Its noise echoed round Soviet airfields for miles.
39:32There are even stories of American fighter pilots experiencing discomfort because of engine noise from bears under escort penetrating their cockpits.
39:44MUSIC CONTINUES
39:45The Bear had a crew of between eight and ten.
39:57The number varied depending on the nature of the mission.
40:00There were two pilots and one or two navigators.
40:05The rest of the crew were radar operators and gunners.
40:07The gunners and observers at the rear of the aircraft were physically separated from the pilot station at the front by about 50 yards of fuselage.
40:18The defensive armament of the basic Bear was heavy.
40:21It had a remotely controlled turret underneath the fuselage with two cannon.
40:26There was a fixed forward firing cannon in the nose.
40:30There was a man-tailed turret with another two cannon.
40:33But other versions of the Bear, particularly those for maritime reconnaissance, carried less defensive armament.
40:47Some naval versions of the Bear were not used as weapon systems themselves,
40:52but provided targeting data to missile control and guidance stations on board Soviet ships or aircraft
40:59that were too far away from their target to aim accurately.
41:03Using information from the Bears, they could launch their anti-shipping missiles in precisely the right direction.
41:14The observation blisters on each side of the rear fuselage were used by gunners to aim the cannon in the remotely controlled turret
41:22underneath the aircraft's belly.
41:25On versions without the ventral turret, they could be used to house surveillance or photographic equipment.
41:35In 1963, Bear bees flying over the American fleet near the Azores and off Midway Island
42:05were intercepted by American fighters.
42:08They were different from the Bear A in that they had long in-flight refueling probes in the nose
42:14and the recesses that were normally occupied by the Kangaroo missile
42:18were fared over and fitted with camera ports for photographic surveillance.
42:24There was also a large blister on the starboard side of the fuselage.
42:27The Bears were particularly interested in the U.S. carriers' forestal and constellation
42:34and a great deal of film was exposed by both the Soviets and the Americans
42:39as the cat-and-mouse game between fighter and reconnaissance aircraft was played out.
42:44The Bear D was identified by NATO in 1967.
43:06These American F-4 Phantoms are shadowing one to take pictures.
43:10The Bear D had a large blister fairing under the centre of the fuselage.
43:15It housed surface search radar.
43:19Opportunities to photograph Soviet aircraft in detail
43:21were accepted whenever possible by NATO aircraft
43:25so that the latest information on development could be analysed
43:29and fed into the identification system.
43:32A Soviet manned bomber fleet capable of striking freely round the world
43:37had been Stalin's dream.
43:40A response to the development of the great American bombers of the late 40s and 50s.
43:45Khrushchev's attitude was different.
43:48He decided that increasing reliance would be placed on long-range surface-to-surface missiles
43:53for the delivery of Soviet nuclear weapons.
43:57By the mid-50s, the intercontinental ballistic missile
44:01seemed more promising to Khrushchev than the manned bomber.
44:05His opinion was shared by other high-ranking military personnel.
44:10In 1955, the commander-in-chief of the Soviet Air Force
44:14predicted the demise of the manned bomber.
44:18He said they were expensive to build, man, and maintain.
44:23They had to be housed in large airfields where they were vulnerable to air attack.
44:27They tied up large numbers of maintenance personnel
44:30and needed great supplies of fuel.
44:33Missiles, on the other hand, were cheaper to build,
44:36less costly to maintain,
44:38easily concealable,
44:40and less vulnerable.
44:42That view was reinforced in the early 60s.
44:45A publication on Soviet military strategy
44:48said that the defeat of the enemy's strategic weapons and land forces
44:52would largely be achieved by nuclear missile strikes.
44:56In the early 60s, some Soviet military academies
44:59stopped training bomber crews
45:01and instead concentrated on preparing officers
45:05for the strategic rocket force.
45:08Long-range bomber personnel began to worry about their careers.
45:12But even though under Khrushchev
45:14the role of the long-range bomber force was downgraded,
45:19it was still in a condition to be revived.
45:21Soviet missile development did not proceed as quickly
45:25and effectively as Khrushchev wished.
45:28Production of the Bear and the Badger
45:30continued into the 60s.
45:32Bombers were capable of carrying air-launched guided missiles
45:35that allowed them to stand off from the target
45:38rather than have to penetrate deep into enemy airspace.
45:44By the late 60s,
45:46a resurgence in belief in the long-range bomber was beginning.
45:49While it was accepted that the Bear,
45:52the Badger and the Bison
45:53would never penetrate American airspace,
45:56they could still easily reach most parts of Europe.
46:01With their range supplemented
46:04by an efficient system of aerial refuelling
46:06and their ability to use either stand-off weapons
46:10or free-fall bombs,
46:11they were still a major threat to the West.
46:14Even when the supersonic backfire
46:17and later the Blackjack entered service,
46:20there was still a place for the Bear.
46:23In 1984, 30 years after the prototype Tu-95 flew,
46:29a new variant identified by NATO
46:31as Bear H entered service.
46:34It could carry a long-range cruise missile
46:37and was capable of hitting targets inside the USA
46:40without ever entering American airspace.
46:48At the time, the Bear H,
46:50which appeared with much less fanfare
46:52than the supersonic Blackjack,
46:54was seen as a major threat to Europe and America.
46:59The cruise missile it carried, the AS-15,
47:02was considered a serious challenge
47:04to the American air defense system.
47:13After almost 40 years of service,
47:16the great rumble of the Bear's engines
47:18can still be heard across Russia,
47:20Europe, and the oceans of the world.
47:23These days, they are even becoming welcome guests
47:25at some of the world's great air shows,
47:28giving Western audiences a close-up look
47:31at one of the most extraordinary aircraft ever built.
47:47In the Soviet Union,
47:49most major civil aircraft
47:50were developed from military designs.
47:53The extraordinary Tu-114 airliner
47:56was a development of the Tu-95 Bear.
47:59It entered service in the early 60s
48:02and could carry up to 220 passengers.
48:18This is not just any field in Russia.
48:20It's part of the Monino Air Force Museum outside Moscow,
48:24where one of these giant Soviet airliners
48:27is part of the collection.
48:28In 1959, a Tu-114 flew Nikita Khrushchev
48:33from Moscow to New York non-stop.
48:37The 4,162 miles were covered in 11 hours
48:41in a propeller-driven aircraft.
48:46At the time, it was the largest
48:48and heaviest commercial airliner in the world.
48:52It remained in service until the late 60s,
48:54flying international routes
48:56to France, Canada, India and Japan,
49:00competing successfully
49:01with a new generation of jet airliner.
49:04in bringing back at seasels for aїpt k paintings or an island on September and forever.
49:10Thereof being a connectedarias wakily
49:11of those tamamen
49:11united and thereof from such a company
49:12by the students
49:13who will be one of them
49:14they will use.
49:14Harvest is a brilliant
49:26for the two suicides,
49:27which leads towards ET forget toανha,
49:27where it has transformed into 8でしょうs and that
49:29they willим it,
49:30they will obtain a lot of equipment
49:31in the windât
49:31under first hivolts.