The Il-54 was a

transonic Transonic (or transsonic) flow is air flowing around an object at a speed that generates regions of both subsonic and supersonic airflow around that object. The exact range of speeds depends on the object's critical Mach number, but transoni ...

bomber developed in the

USSR 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 nati ...

in the 1950s. Only two examples were built before the project was abandoned.

Design and development

The

Council of Ministers A council is a group of people who come together to consult, deliberate, or make decisions. A council may function as a legislature, especially at a town, city or county/ shire level, but most legislative bodies at the state/provincial or ...

issued a directive to OKB-115, for a

bomber prototype to be submitted for State Acceptance Trials in July 1954. The design of this bomber went through several stages before settling on the final configuration. The Il-54, as built, had a very thin 45 degree

swept wing A swept wing is a wing that angles either backward or occasionally forward from its root rather than in a straight sideways direction. Swept wings have been flown since the pioneer days of aviation. Wing sweep at high speeds was first investiga ...

with anhedral, which was shoulder-mounted on the

fuselage The fuselage (; from the French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds crew, passengers, or cargo. In single-engine aircraft, it will usually contain an engine as well, although in some amphibious aircraft t ...

. The

Lyulka AL-7 The Lyulka AL-7 was a turbojet designed by Arkhip Mikhailovich Lyulka and produced by his Lyulka design bureau. The engine was produced between 1954 and 1970.Gunston 1989, p.100. Design and development The AL-7 had supersonic airflow through th ...

engines were housed in slim, pylon mounted, pods at approximately 1/3 span. Because the wings and engine nacelles were too small to house a conventional undercarriage, the Il-54 used a bicycle undercarriage arrangement, with nose and main gear units on the centreline of the aircraft, at each end of the bomb bay. This arrangement meant a conventional rotating takeoff would be impossible. To enable the Il-54 to take off, in a reasonable runway length, the main gear knelt and the nose gear extended to give the ideal angle of incidence for takeoff (10 degrees). Flight trials of the Il-54 commenced in April 1955 with test pilot Vladimir Kokkinaki at the controls. Difficult handling during the landing run was rectified by modifying the undercarriage. Production of the Il-54 was not proceeded with, due to competition from Yak-25 derivatives, and the belief that manned aircraft would soon be replaced by missiles. Booked to fly in the flypast at Tushino Airfield in 1956, the Il-54 was dropped from the flying programme. The aircraft was then shown to a US military delegation at

Kubinka Kubinka (russian: Ку́бинка) is a town in Odintsovsky District of Moscow Oblast, Russia, located on the Setun River, west of Moscow. Population: __TOC__ History Kubinka, founded in the 15th century, may have been named after Prince , a ...

. The delegation was told that the Il-54 was the Il-149, as part of a deception programme. As a result, the Il-54 was assigned far more importance than it actually warranted, and was assigned the

NATO reporting name NATO reporting names are code names for military equipment from Russia, China, and historically, the Eastern Bloc (Soviet Union and other nations of the Warsaw Pact). They provide unambiguous and easily understood English words in a uniform man ...

("Blowlamp") after it had ceased flying.

Variants

''Datafrom:''OKB Ilyushin * Il-54T - Torpedo Bomber (project) * Il-54U - Trainer (project) * Il-54R - Photo-Reconnaissance (project)

Specifications (Il-54)

References

External links

* {{Ilyushin aircraft 1950s Soviet bomber aircraft Abandoned military aircraft projects of the Soviet Union Il-054 Twinjets Aircraft first flown in 1955

Design and development

Variants

Specifications (Il-54)

See also

References

External links