The Tupolev Tu-75 (russian: Туполев Ту-75) was a military transport variant of the

Tu-4 The Tupolev Tu-4 (russian: Туполев Ту-4; NATO reporting name: Bull) is a piston-engined Soviet strategic bomber that served the Soviet Air Force from the late 1940s to mid-1960s. It was reverse-engineered from the American Boeing B-29 ...

bomber, an unlicensed,

reverse engineered Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...

copy of the

Boeing B-29 Superfortress The Boeing B-29 Superfortress is an American four-engined propeller-driven heavy bomber, designed by Boeing and flown primarily by the United States during World War II and the Korean War. Named in allusion to its predecessor, the B-17 Fl ...

. The Tu-75 was similar to the Tu-70 airliner, both using a new, purpose-designed fuselage. The first Soviet military machine of this class, it was equipped with a rear fuselage loading ramp. It was not placed into production because the VVS decided it would be cheaper to modify its existing Tu-4s for the transport mission and to use its existing

Lisunov Li-2 The Lisunov Li-2 (NATO reporting name: Cab), originally designated PS-84, was a license-built Soviet-version of the Douglas DC-3. It was produced by Factory #84 in Khimki, Moscow-Khimki and, after evacuation in 1941, at Tashkent Aviation Pro ...

and

Ilyushin Il-12 The Ilyushin Il-12 (NATO reporting name: Coach) was a Soviet twin-engine cargo aircraft, developed in the mid-1940s for small and medium-haul airline routes and as a military transport. Design and development The Il-12 was developed as a priva ...

transports.

Design and development

The Tupolev

OKB OKB is a transliteration of the Russian initials of "" – , meaning 'experiment and design bureau'. During the Soviet era, OKBs were closed institutions working on design and prototyping of advanced technology, usually for military applications. ...

began work in September 1946 on a military transport version of the Tupolev Tu-70 airliner and this was confirmed by 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 nati ...

on 11 March 1947 with state trials to begin in August 1948. To expedite the process, maximum use was made of components of the Tu-70. Its engines were the uprated

Shvetsov ASh-73 The Shvetsov ASh-73 was an 18-cylinder, air-cooled, radial aircraft engine produced between 1947 and 1957 in the Soviet Union. It was primarily used as the powerplant for the Tupolev Tu-4 heavy bomber, a copy of the American Boeing B-29 Superfortr ...

TKFN or TKNV fuel-injected version. A new, narrower fuselage was designed, which included a rear cargo hatch, a vehicle loading ramp and paratroop exit doors. Three gun turrets (dorsal, ventral and tail), were to be adapted from the Tu-4, although they were not fitted on the prototype. It had a crew of six (two pilots, three gunners, a radio operator, and a navigator). The aircraft was intended for three different roles; transport, parachute transport and aerial ambulance. In the first role it was designed to carry two ASU-76

assault gun Assault gun (from german: Sturmgeschütz - "storm gun", as in "storming/assaulting") is a type of self-propelled artillery which uses an infantry support gun mounted on a motorized chassis, normally an armored fighting vehicle, which are designed ...

s, two

STZ NATI artillery tractor The STZ-5 artillery tractor was a product of the Stalingrad Tractor Factory (STZ) (Russian: Сталинградский тракторный завод) from 1937 to 1942 in the Soviet Union. The tractor was designed to tow division to corps le ...

s, six or seven

GAZ-67 The GAZ-67 and the GAZ-67B (from January 1944) were general-purpose four-wheel drive Soviet military vehicles built by GAZ starting in 1943. By the end of the war, it was the Soviet equivalent of the World War II jeep. The GAZ-67 was a further d ...

B jeeps or five guns without their prime movers or any combination of equipment up to . To facilitate the loading of cargo, a winch was mounted on the ceiling of the cargo hold with a capacity of . It could carry either 120 troops, 96 fully loaded paratroopers or 64 standard parachute loads. As an aerial ambulance it could carry 31 stretchers and four medical attendants.

Operational history

Construction of the first prototype was quite prolonged; the aircraft was not finished until November 1949, with its first flight taking place on 21 January 1950. It finished its manufacturer's trials the following May, but Tupolev decided not to submit it for the State acceptance trials as 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 ...

had already decided that it would be cheaper to rely on its existing transports and to modify Tu-4 bombers for the cargo role. The prototype was used by the MAP (russian: Ministerstvo Aviatsionnoy Promyshlennosti – Ministry of Aviation Industry) until it crashed in October 1954.Gordon and Rigamant, p. 109

Specifications

References

Notes

Bibliography