Quote:
Originally Posted by keith A
I know it was heavily armed and that the earlier Petlyakov Pe-2 was the equivalent of the Mosquito FBVI in potency but did the Tupolev exceed it?
regards
Keith
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Hello Keith,
It is great that you are interested in the subject, there is plenty worth discussing concerning Soviet the performance and operational employment of Soviet aircraft. These topic are still very poorly understood in the West, part of a general picture of a grotesque misunderstanding of the Soviet Union and its armed forces.
The most important fact to understand about the Tu-2 is that it was Tupolev's literal way of getting out of prison. Tupolev had been the de-facto chief favourite of Stalin among aviation designers until other, even more vicious, schemers like Yakovlev and Ilyushin managed to get ahead of him and put him in jail. Tupolev's idea was to make a twin-engine super bomber, or rather get Stalin to believe that he was making one, and thereby return to favour. Since the USSR was backward, there were no engines which could power such an aircraft and Tupolev made little headway until the M-82 engine finally entered series production in 1942. Even then, only the M-82FN version of this engine, with increased boost and direct fuel injection had sufficient power to give the Tu-2 reasonable performance. Tupolev made the Tu-2 relatively fast by keeping its dimensions and weight similar to light bombers like the A-20 Boston, even though it was intended to perform the missions of a medium bomber. The Soviet Union had no medium bombers worth the name, flying obsolete Il-4s and malfunctioning Yer-2s. Therefore, there was a ready gap for the Tu-2 to fill and several hundred were produced before the war ended. They operated on a limited scale with heavy fighter escort and their main utility lay in their ability to carry a load of up to two tonnes of bombs, compared to the one tonne load of the Pe-2. The Tu-2s could also drop the one tonne FAB-1000 bomb.
The Tu-2s were concentrated in the three divisions of the 6 BAK (bomber air corps) at the end of the war. Given the heavy escort which was always provided and the weakness of German air power in the East, losses were few, although there were some occasions when individual formations of Tu-2s suffered heavy losses to German fighters. With its rear-facing defensive armament consisting of three single machin-guns, attacking the Tu-2 did not pose any significant difficulty for German interceptors.
Regards,
Dan