The Grigorovich TB-5 (russian: Григорович ТБ-5) was an experimental heavy bomber designed and tested in the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
in the early 1930s. Designed as a competitor for the
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 TB-5 was intended to be powered by two FED 24-cylinder
X engine
An X engine is a piston engine with four banks of cylinders around a common crankshaft, such that the cylinders form an "X" shape when viewed from front-on.
The advantage of an X engine is that it is shorter than a V engine of the same number o ...
s of 746 kW (1,000 hp) each. When these were canceled, the underwing pods were revised to each house a pair of
Bristol Jupiter
The Bristol Jupiter was a British nine-cylinder single-row piston radial engine built by the Bristol Aeroplane Company. Originally designed late in World War I and known as the Cosmos Jupiter, a lengthy series of upgrades and developments turn ...
engines in a
push-pull configuration
An aircraft constructed with a push-pull configuration has a combination of forward-mounted tractor (pull) propellers, and backward-mounted ( pusher) propellers.
Historical
The earliest known examples of "push-pull" engined-layout aircraft incl ...
. Despite projected performance inferior to TB-3, it was hoped that TB-5 would gain an advantage by using less metal (in short supply at the time) thanks to its mixed construction of fabric-covered metal frame.
Test flights began on 1 May 1931 with disappointing results, in part due to poor thrust of the rear-facing engines.
The prototype TB-5 was wrecked in a crash landing following the in-flight detachment of an engine in the spring of 1932,
[Gunston 1995, p. 91.] and with the entry into service of the superior TB-3 that year, the TB-5 project was abandoned.
Specifications (TB-5)
See also
References
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{{Soviet bomber-attack designations
1930s Soviet bomber aircraft
Grigorovich aircraft