The Mikoyan-Gurevich I-270 (Design Ж ("Zh") under Mikoyan-Gurevich's in-house designation sequence, USAF/DoD designation: Type 12) was a response to a

Soviet Air Forces 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 ...

requirement in 1945 for a

rocket A rocket (from it, rocchetto, , bobbin/spool) is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using the surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entir ...

-powered

interceptor aircraft An interceptor aircraft, or simply interceptor, is a type of fighter aircraft designed specifically for the defensive interception role against an attacking enemy aircraft, particularly bombers and reconnaissance aircraft. Aircraft that are ...

for the

point-defence Point defence (or point defense; see spelling differences) is the defence of a single object or a limited area, e.g. a ship, building or an airfield, now usually against air attacks and guided missiles. Point defence weapons have a smaller range i ...

role. In concept and basic configuration, it was related to the early

Korolyov RP-318 The RP-318 or RP-318-1 was USSR's first rocket-powered aircraft or Rocket Glider (Rocketny Planer or Raketoplan) which "RP" stands for in Russian language. Beginning in early 1936 it was first known as RP-218-1 or "Objekt 218" before it was rename ...

rocket-powered aircraft which was developed in 1936 and first flew February 20, 1940, and the more recent Bereznyak-Isayev BI-1 Soviet design. Only two prototypes were built, both of which were destroyed in crashes, leading to the cancellation of the project. I270 1

Flights

In the early stages of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

(1942), a complete prototype BI-1 (also known as The Devil's Broomstick), made its first several flights. The I-270 shared the BI-1's simple, tapered fuselage,

bubble canopy A bubble canopy is an aircraft canopy constructed without bracing, for the purpose of providing a wider unobstructed field of view to the pilot, often providing 360° all-round visibility. The designs of bubble canopies can drastically vary; s ...

, wing design, and dual-chambered

bipropellant rocket A liquid-propellant rocket or liquid rocket utilizes a rocket engine that uses liquid propellants. Liquids are desirable because they have a reasonably high density and high specific impulse (''I''sp). This allows the volume of the propellant t ...

motor. On the other hand, it was considerably larger than the BI-1 and featured short, reinforced wings (from the RP-218) and a raised T-tail which aircraft such as the Tupolev ANT-8 proved, offered better landing control than the BI-1's more traditional fighter layout. While there seems little doubt that the BI-1 influenced the design of the I-270, the latter appears far from a direct descendant of the former, and much closer to being a Soviet version of the Me 263, sharing very similar fuselage, canopy and landing gear layouts, while adding a conventional stabilizer surface atop the vertical tail, absent on the German design. Soviet tradition of rocketry, starting from the early work of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and carried through by men like Sergei Korolev, made rocket fighters a reality. The RD-2M engine, designed by

Leonid Dushkin Leonid Stepanovich Dushkin (Леонид Степанович Душкин) (August 15, 1910 in the Spirove settlement of the Tver region – April 4, 1990), was a major pioneer of Soviet rocket engine technology. He graduated from Moscow ...

was the dual-combustion chamber version of the engine used for the 1941 BI-1 rocket plane. That in turn had followed from a tradition dating back to Sergey Korolev's work on project "06" in the early 1930s and the RP-318 rocket plane designed in 1936. The first gliding trials commenced in December 1946, with the first prototype towed into the air behind a

Tupolev Tu-2 The Tupolev Tu-2 (development names ANT-58 and 103; NATO reporting name Bat) was a twin-engine Soviet high-speed daylight and frontline (SDB and FB) bomber aircraft of World War II vintage. The Tu-2 was tailored to meet a requirement for a hig ...

, ballast-loaded in place of an engine. The second prototype began powered tests early in 1947, but was damaged beyond repair making a hard landing. Shortly afterwards, the first prototype was also destroyed in a landing accident. By this stage,

turbojet The turbojet is an airbreathing jet engine which is typically used in aircraft. It consists of a gas turbine with a propelling nozzle. The gas turbine has an air inlet which includes inlet guide vanes, a compressor, a combustion chamber, a ...

technology was at a far more advanced stage than it had been at the outset of the project, and

surface-to-air missile A surface-to-air missile (SAM), also known as a ground-to-air missile (GTAM) or surface-to-air guided weapon (SAGW), is a missile designed to be launched from the ground to destroy aircraft or other missiles. It is one type of anti-aircraft syst ...

s had replaced the need for point-defence interceptors. Under these circumstances, the Air Force decided to cancel the project.

Operators

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Specifications (I-270)

References

{{Mikoyan aircraft I-270 1940s Soviet fighter aircraft Rocket-powered aircraft Abandoned military aircraft projects of the Soviet Union Aircraft first flown in 1946 T-tail aircraft

Flights

Operators

Specifications (I-270)

See also

References