The Tupolev Tu-28 (NATO reporting name Fiddler) is a long-range interceptor aircraft introduced by the Soviet Union in the 1960s. The official designation was Tu-128, but this designation was less commonly used in the West. It was the largest and heaviest fighter ever to enter serial production.The Tu-128 had a broad, low/mid-mounted swept wing carrying the main landing gear in wing-mounted pods, and slab tailplanes. Two Lyulka AL-7F-2 turbojet engines were mounted in the fuselage. The two-man crew of pilot and navigator were seated in tandem. The Tu-128, with its maximum weight of 43 tonnes, was the heaviest fighter to enter service.A pure interceptor with high wing loading, unsophisticated but reliable avionics, and poor visibility, it was not an agile aircraft and was intended only to engage NATO bombers like the B-52, not dogfight smaller aircraft. The interceptor made its initial public appearance in the 1961 Tushino air parade. Western experts, unaware that the bulge on the belly carried testing instruments, mistook it for a large ventral radar for a mixed interceptor/AWACS role. The production version lacked the bulge and had a large nose radome housing a radar, known as RP-S Smerch, having a detection range of about 50 km (31 mi) and a lock-on range of about 40 km (25 mi). Armament of the Tu-128 was four Bisnovat R-4 air-to-air missiles (known as K-80 during development; NATO reporting name AA-5 ‘Ash’). Usually two of them were R-4Rs with semi-active radar homing and two were R-4T infrared-homing missiles, with the former on the outer pylons and the latter on the inner underwing pylons. There was no internal weapons bay. Production of the Tu-128 ended in 1970 with a total of 198 aircraft having been built. We celebrate this remarkable aircraft with a picture of one …
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March 18
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