Tupolev Tu-2
The Tupolev Tu-2, known to NATO as the Bat, was a twin-engined Soviet high-speed frontline bomber of the Second World War. Designed by Andrei Tupolev's team while they worked in an NKVD prison design bureau, a sharashka, it first flew on 29 January 1941. Production built up from 1943 after an early halt, and more than 2,200 aircraft were built in all; the Tu-2S became the standard variant and fought through to the Battle of Berlin in 1945. The Soviet Air Force retired the type in 1950, but exported aircraft served abroad for decades, and China's air force kept its last Tu-2s until 1982. A small number survive in museums.
Why It Mattered
The Tu-2 was designed to a Soviet requirement for a bomber that matched a single-seat fighter's speed while carrying a large bomb load internally. Vintage Aviation News records that in service it was rated second in importance among the Soviet Air Force's twin-engined bombers, behind the Petlyakov Pe-2. Its pilots appreciated its fighter-like speed and maneuverability, and Wikipedia records that its crews were universally happy with their aircraft. Designed by engineers working under NKVD guard in a prison design bureau, it went on to play a large part in the Red Army's final offensives, and it remained in foreign service into the 1980s. NATO knew the type as the Bat.
Design Notes
Andrei Tupolev was arrested in October 1937 during Stalin's Great Purge, and he and fellow imprisoned designers began work on the new bomber, provisionally the ANT-58, or "Aircraft 103", inside a sharashka at Bolshevo outside Moscow. The first prototype flew on 29 January 1941, powered by two Mikulin AM-37 V12 engines. When AM-37 production was stopped, the design was reworked around the Shvetsov ASh-82 air-cooled radial, and by March 1942 the radial-engined aircraft had been renamed the Tu-2. The production aircraft carried a crew of four and two 1,850-horsepower ASh-82 radials, and reached a maximum speed of 328 mph. Bomb load was 3,300 pounds carried internally and another 5,000 pounds externally. Armament was two 20 mm ShVAK cannon fixed in the wings and three rear-firing machine guns; the rear guns began as 7.62 mm ShKAS and were later replaced by 12.7 mm Berezin UB guns. Torpedo, interceptor and reconnaissance versions were also produced.
Operational History
Mass production began at the Omsk aircraft factory in September 1941, and the first aircraft reached combat units in March 1942. The first unit to take it into combat was the 132nd Bomber Aviation Regiment of the 3rd Air Army, which flew 46 sorties over Velikiye Luki from November to December 1942. In the operations that followed, to April 1943, the regiment lost only three aircraft in action, with seven damaged. Production then paused after the design bureau returned to Moscow and industry was ordered to favour fighters and the Il-2, but it resumed in the summer of 1943 and built up rapidly. Vintage Aviation News gives a production total of 2,257 aircraft built between 1941 and 1948. Wikipedia's narrative accounting differs: about 800 of the new variant built during the war to June 1945, and 2,460 aircraft in all built until 1952, most of them at Factory No. 23 in Moscow. By 1944 the Tu-2S, the most widely produced variant, was in service attacking German railway yards and airfields, and it fought on to the Battle of Berlin in April and May 1945. After the European war ended, Tu-2s saw brief service against Japanese forces in Manchuria in August 1945. The Soviet Air Force retired its last Tu-2s in 1950.
Afterlife
After the war, Soviet Tu-2s served as testbeds, among them aircraft fitted with jet engines for flight testing and others used to test ejection seats. The type was exported to Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Romania, and North Korea flew it during the Korean War, when NATO assigned it the reporting name Bat. China's People's Liberation Army Air Force imported its first Tu-2s in 1949 and flew them in combat in the Korean War; in the 1959 Tibetan uprising, Chinese Tu-2s flew ground-attack, reconnaissance and liaison missions. Wikipedia's operators list counts 311 Tu-2s imported by China between late 1949 and 1952, and the last Chinese aircraft were retired in 1982. Vintage Aviation News counts eleven surviving aircraft, with Tu-2s on display in Bulgaria, China, Poland, Russia and the United States. They include a Tu-2S 'White 103' at the Central Air Force Museum at Monino, one at the Polish Aviation Museum in Kraków, and a former Chinese aircraft displayed by the War Eagles Air Museum in Santa Teresa, New Mexico.