The Antonov A-40 ''Krylya Tanka'' (russian: крылья танка, meaning "tank wings") was a

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

attempt to allow a

tank A tank is an armoured fighting vehicle intended as a primary offensive weapon in front-line ground combat. Tank designs are a balance of heavy firepower, strong armour, and good battlefield mobility provided by tracks and a powerful engin ...

to glide onto a battlefield after being towed aloft by an airplane, to support airborne forces or partisans.Winchester 2005, p. 62 A prototype was built and tested in 1942, but was found to be unworkable. This vehicle is sometimes called the ''A-40T'' or ''KT''.

Design and development

Instead of loading

light tank A light tank is a tank variant initially designed for rapid movements in and out of combat, to outmaneuver heavier tanks. It is smaller in size with thinner armor and a less powerful main gun, tailored for better tactical mobility and ease of ...

s onto gliders, as other nations had done, Soviet

airborne forces Airborne forces, airborne troops, or airborne infantry are ground combat units carried by aircraft and airdropped into battle zones, typically by parachute drop or air assault. Parachute-qualified infantry and support personnel serving in ai ...

had strapped

T-27 The T-27 was a tankette produced in the 1930s by the Soviet Union. It was based on the design of the Carden Loyd tankette, bought under license from the United Kingdom in 1930. Design The Soviets were not fully satisfied with the Carden Loyd des ...

tankette A tankette is a tracked armoured fighting vehicle that resembles a small tank, roughly the size of a car. It is mainly intended for light infantry support and scouting.

s underneath heavy bombers and landed them on airfields. In the 1930s, there were experimental efforts to

parachute A parachute is a device used to slow the motion of an object through an atmosphere by creating drag or, in a ram-air parachute, aerodynamic lift. A major application is to support people, for recreation or as a safety device for aviators, who ...

tanks or simply drop them into water. During the 1940 occupation of Bessarabia, light tanks may have been dropped from a few meters up by

TB-3 The Tupolev TB-3 (russian: Тяжёлый Бомбардировщик, Tyazhyolyy Bombardirovshchik, Heavy Bomber, civilian designation ANT-6) was a monoplane heavy bomber deployed by the Soviet Air Force in the 1930s and used during the early ...

bombers, which, as long as the

gearbox Propulsion transmission is the mode of transmitting and controlling propulsion power of a machine. The term ''transmission'' properly refers to the whole drivetrain, including clutch, gearbox, prop shaft (for rear-wheel drive vehicles), differe ...

was in neutral, would allow them to roll to a stop. The biggest problem with air-dropping vehicles is if their crews are dropped separately, they may be delayed or prevented from bringing them into action. Gliders allow crews to arrive at the drop/landing zone along with their vehicles. They also minimize exposure of the valuable towing aircraft, which need not appear over the battlefield. So the

Soviet Air Force The Soviet Air Forces ( rus, Военно-воздушные силы, r=Voyenno-vozdushnyye sily, VVS; literally "Military Air Forces") were one of the air forces of the Soviet Union. The other was the Soviet Air Defence Forces. The Air Forces ...

ordered Oleg Antonov to design a glider for landing tanks. Antonov was more ambitious. Instead of building a glider, he added a detachable cradle to a

T-60 The T-60 scout tank was a light tank produced by the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1942. During this period, 6,292 units were built. The tank was designed to replace the obsolete T-38 amphibious scout tank and saw action during World War II. The K ...

light tank bearing large wood and fabric

biplane A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings stacked one above the other. The first powered, controlled aeroplane to fly, the Wright Flyer, used a biplane wing arrangement, as did many aircraft in the early years of aviation. While ...

wings and a

twin tail A twin tail is a specific type of vertical stabilizer arrangement found on the empennage of some aircraft. Two vertical stabilizers—often smaller on their own than a single conventional tail would be—are mounted at the outside of the aircra ...

. Such a tank could glide into the battlefield, drop its wings, and be ready to fight within minutes. One T-60 was converted into a glider in 1942, intended to be towed by a

Petlyakov Pe-8 The Petlyakov Pe-8 (russian: Петляков Пе-8) was a Soviet heavy bomber designed before World War II, and the only four-engine bomber the USSR built during the war. Produced in limited numbers, it was used to bomb Berlin in August 1941. ...

or a

Tupolev TB-3 The Tupolev TB-3 (russian: Тяжёлый Бомбардировщик, Tyazhyolyy Bombardirovshchik, Heavy Bomber, civilian designation ANT-6) was a monoplane heavy bomber deployed by the Soviet Air Force in the 1930s and used during the early ...

. The tank was lightened for air use by removing its armament, ammunition and headlights, and leaving a very limited amount of fuel. Even with these modifications, the TB-3 bomber had to ditch the glider during its only flight, on September 2, 1942, to avoid crashing, due to the T-60's extreme drag (although the tank reportedly glided smoothly). The A-40 was piloted by the famous Soviet experimental glider pilot Sergei Anokhin. The T-60 landed in a field near the airport, and after dropping the glider wings and tail, the driver returned it to its base. Due to the lack of a sufficiently powerful aircraft to tow it at the required , the project was abandoned.

Specifications

References

Citations

Bibliography

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Design and development

Specifications

See also

References

Citations

Bibliography

External links