The 10 worst Soviet aircraft

The Soviet Union lasted a mere sixty-nine years (the Spitfire has been flying longer), but in that time produced some of the largest, fastest, toughest and most agile aircraft ever created.

Even now, over three decades after its collapse, almost all Russian and Ukrainian aircraft have their roots in the communist super state.  Favouring clever robust design over high technology and refinement, the Soviet approach enabled the mass production of cheap machines. Many of these were outstanding, but some - for reasons of politics, bad luck or incompetence - were diabolical. Let's take a walk through the rusting graveyard of the 10 worst Soviet military aircraft. We include the date the plane was first built.

10: Tupolev Tu-116

With the death of Stalin, the ‘Khrushchev Thaw’ left the Soviet Union in the tricky position of wanting to engage with the wider world but with no indigenous way of getting there.  Fearing that mating an airliner fuselage to the wings of a Tu-95 nuclear bomber, to make the Tu-114, would take more time than was available before a 1959 state visit to the USA, a less ambitious back up plan was made.

The Tu-116 replaced the Tu-95’s bomb bays with a passenger compartment for the head of state and his entourage – but it was impossible to access the cockpit from the passenger compartment, messages being passed by pneumatic tube.

While no one appeared to think arriving on a diplomatic mission in something that looked exactly like a strategic bomber might be a bad idea, the nail in the coffin of the Tu-116 was actually the 737-style air stair that allowed the First Secretary of the Communist Party to emerge from the bottom of the aircraft, something he deemed beneath his standing.

Deprived of their raison d'être the two aircraft served out their miserable lives flying technicians to the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site, presumably to ensure this flying ‘Frankenstein’ was hidden from public view.  The Tu-116 was a poor idea and implemented badly. It was mercifully left to wallow in obscurity.

9: Sukhoi Su-7

For the first two decades after the second world war the Soviet Union wasn’t great at building ground-attack aircraft. Ilyushin’s classic wartime ‘Shturmovik’, the Il-2 and Il-10, soldiered on for a while, but in the era of atomic weapons, the use of aircraft for battlefield close support fell out of favour within the Red Army. If Soviet troops were to need firepower, they could call upon artillery. And nuclear-tipped battlefield missiles.

With the explosion of counter-insurgency and brushfire conflicts in the mid-1960s, it was time to reassess the ground-attack aircraft. The USSR’s first purpose-designed, jet-powered ground-attacker to reach service was the Sukhoi Su-7. Unfortunately, it wasn’t great. The Soviets never took it into battle. Other nations did, and were not impressed.

In July 1967 Egyptian pilot Tahsin Zaki was in a formation of 12 Su-7s that was to attack Israeli forces opposite the Suez Canal. Loaded with four 500kg bombs each, the jets suffered so much drag that they couldn’t accelerate beyond 600km/h. They also proved very difficult to control, lacking stability at slow speeds. Provided it made it over the battlefield unscathed, the Su-7 was hampered by a limited range.

This was because the powerful Lyulka AL-7F1 turbojet took up so much space that there was little room left for fuel tanks. It was vulnerable to foreign object damage and, without air-to-air missile capability, was unable to protect itself other than with its two NR-30 cannon. Were it unfortunate enough to get into a dogfight with a hostile fighter, its fuel was quickly expended.

8: Lavochkin LaGG-3

The LaGG-3 was terrible in many ways. A pathetic climb rate, sluggish top speed, poor build quality, the inability to pull out of a dive or even to perform a sharp turn are among the many failings of the lamentable LaGG. The designers intended the aircraft (which started development as the LaGG-1) to use the 1350 hp inline Klimov VK-106 engine.

When the VK-106 engine failed to mature, it was replaced with the Klimov M-105 - a weedy powerplant with around 300 less horsepower than needed. If this wasn’t bad enough, the LaGG-3 employed a partly wooden composite construction used a glue that caused severe irritation to those that handled it.  

The already temperamental engine, which required greater preparation before flight than its rivals, lacked anti-freeze liquid and on the ground the cooling system had to be kept functional with the aid of hand-poured hot water. The pilots founding the type sluggish with heavy controls.

The result was an exceptionally underpowered fighter hated by its air crews and ground crews alike - and mauled by its enemies. Other than an exceptional ability to withstand battle damage (something it received in abundance) - the aircraft's only real saving grace was that it sired the magnificent LaGG-5. Despite this a staggering 6528 were built in total, more than even the popular civilian Cessna 180 light aircraft…

PHOTO: a LaGG-3 shot down in Finland, 1942

7: Silvanskii IS

During Stalin’s muddled and oppressive USSR, one A.V. Silvanskii secured state funding to create a new fighter aircraft in 1937. The concept seemed sound- it was a low-winged monoplane with a 1000-horsepower radial engine, armed with two heavy machine guns. But it would soon become apparent that Silvanskii was a reckless bodger.

By 1938 the prototype aircraft was virtually complete. Initial tests of the undercarriage revealed that the wheel wells were too small- the undercarriage did not fit into the wing in the retracted position. How this elementary mistake had been made is hard to understand, but the solution was simple- the undercarriage legs were shortened. 

Now there was a shorter undercarriage, the propeller did not have any ground clearance. In response, Silvanskii took a saw to the propeller and reduced it by 10cm. The bewildered factory manager promptly refused Silvanskii permission to fly from the airfield. Undaunted Silvanskii charmed the State Flight Research Institute into providing a runway and a test pilot.

In 1939, the LII test pilot took the machine out to fly. Thanks to a combination of full throttle and extremely dense cold air the machine was coaxed into taking off for one hair-raising circuit flown dangerously close to the stall. On landing the pilot damned the aircraft as unflyable. 

6: Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-23MS

Pilots of export MiG-21 pilots in nations outside of the Soviet Union were excited by the prospect of a new advanced fighter replacement, but early MiG-23s provided a huge disappointment. The Soviet Union generally offered friendly nations inferior versions of their fighters, but the MiG-23MS was one of the cruellest examples - and they were supplied when the air forces of Syria and Egypt were at war with a well-equipped enemy. 

Because of delays with the R-23 missile, the Mig-23MS carried only the shorter-ranged K-13.  The weapon system, with its very basic Sapfir-21 radar, was completely mismatched to the aircraft's performance - the aircraft was designed for fast long-range engagements - something it couldn't do with the K-13.

The former MiG-21 pilots now had an aircraft with greatly inferior agility to their previous mounts and nastier handling characteristics. The MiG-23MS force suffered terrible losses to the Israeli Air Force flying American aircraft, and encouraged Egypt and Libya to turn away from the use of Soviet equipment, and instead favour US F-4s and French Mirages respectively.

The MiG-23 was later developed into the formidable MiG-23ML, but the MS was a dreadful machine hated by many of its pilots. The MiG-23 featured a variable geometry ‘swing wing’ and served with a multitude of nations around the world. It was produced in huge numbers, with over 5047 made by the time production ended in 1985.

5: Antonov An-10

The An-10 was terrible. It’s almost as if the Ministry of Aircraft Production gave the brief to Antonov to make flying more unpleasant and dangerous. If this was the brief, then Antonov succeeded very well. Initial test flights revealed stability issues, leading to the ungainly ventral fins.

But even these didn’t fix the problem, and further stabilizing devices were added to the horizontal tails. Which was great, apart from making the aircraft wickedly uncomfortable - it shook like a paint mixer, perhaps even worse.

Then there was the insufficient number of windows causing nausea in those prone to air sickness. There was also the lack of a real baggage hold (the low floor took up this space). An almost criminal deficiency for any aircraft, let alone one based in the USSR, was the faulty anti-icing system; two aircraft were lost in its first winter resulting in the deaths of 72 people.

A paltry total of 104 An-10s was produced, and of these at least twelve were lost - most with fatalities. After a mere 13 years in service, metal fatigue made the wings fall off.

4: Tupolev Tu-144

Its chief designer, its passengers and its launch customer were all less than enamoured with the Tupolev Tu-144, the Soviet counterpart to Concorde, and for many valid reasons. In 1968 it became the first supersonic airliner to fly, two months ahead of Concorde’s maiden flight. But in the rush to achieve this symbolic victory, Alexei Tupolev (1925-2001) had made a turkey.

The first flight was misleading, as the production machine was virtually a complete redesign of the prototype. Its design was aided by a huge national effort, which even Tupolev himself thought it was given too great a priority. Almost all state funding for civil aviation went into the Tu-144, at the detriment of more conservative (and more useful) designs.

At the 1973 Paris Air Show, the Tu-144 display pilot Mikhail Kozlov, had boasted "Just wait until you see us fly. Then you'll see something.” His words proved tragically prescient. He put the plane into a steep climb on full power, but then it appeared to stall. Trying to recover and in a steep dive, the aircraft disintegrated in the air, killing Kozlov and his five crew – and eight more on the ground, including three children. Not just a disaster, but a massively high profile one. Following this, Aeroflot decided not to put the aircraft on international passenger routes. Concorde would have a disaster in Paris too – but that was nearly three decades later.

It even reached the point where no Tu-144 was allowed to take off without an inspection by its chief designer. In May 1978 another Tu-144 crashed. This was too much for Aeroflot, and passenger flights were cancelled. In a twist that nobody would have predicted in the 1960s, the Tu-144 ended its life as ‘supersonic flying laboratory’ for NASA.

3: Yakovlev Yak-38

Were it not for two factors, the Yakovlev Yak-38 ‘Forger’ would probably be regarded as a success. Putting a vertical take-off and landing fighter (VTOL) into operational service was no mean feat. Of the profusion of concepts and designs that plastered drawing boards in the 1960s, the vast majority never reached even prototype stage - and only two types entered service.

On the basis of being one of only two operational VTOL fighters the Yak-38 could be seen as a success. The first of its reputation-killing problems was the lack of any more capable follow-on. The second was the existence of the rival Hawker Siddeley Harrier.

Unfortunately, the Yak’s payload was derisory and its range pathetic, and its air-to-air capability virtually non-existent. One reason was the Forger’s VTOL concept – while the Harrier had a single engine and could use all its thrust for horizontal or vertical flight, the Yak-38 had to lug two lift engines, dead weight at all other times than in vertical flight.

In hot and high conditions (such as the combat evaluation it endured in Afghanistan), the Yak-38 could carry less than 500lb (227kg) of munitions. As a proof-of-concept vehicle, the Yak-38 only managed to ‘prove’ that VTOL combat aircraft were impractical. If only the Harrier had not disproved the point over the Falkland Islands, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

2: Sukhoi Su-2 (1937)

The rather unassuming Su-2 is historically significant in being the first creation of Pavel Sukhoi (1895-1975). The Su-2, both by design and unfortunate circumstances, did not anticipate any of this greatness. Designed at a time when metal was a strategically limited resource, the Su-2 was one of the last frontline aircraft that are not all metal construction (prior to today's composite age).

Other examples of mixed construction being the famously excellent British de Havilland Mosquito and the spectacularly atrocious LaGG-3 series mentioned above. Armed with a meagre four fixed 7.62 light machine guns and a notoriously unwieldy turret armed with a single Shkas. The unfortunate Su-2 was thrown into the meat grinder of the German invasion in 1941 where, to the surprise of no-one, it racked up tremendous losses.

2: Sukhoi Su-2

While faster than its much more famous replacement, the Ilyushin Il-2, it had much lower survivability, armament, and payload. The toughness of the Ilyushin competitor – as well as its enormous production figures – explain why the name Il-2 still resonates to this day while the Su-2 is now almost forgotten.

The first of the Sukhois was a little more than a footnote in aviation history though and, much like other designs of the era, it went from design to obsolescence in the space of three years. Despite Sukhoi’s inauspicious start, today it is the dominant military aircraft company in Russia.

1: Kalinin K-7

The USSR of the 1930s was in love with big things. Their big locomotives hauled big trains over massive distances, their enormous factories churned out terrific amounts of Fordson tractors – copied from the Americans - and in the air the Kalinin K-7 was to display the triumph of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to a disbelieving world.

Their other big aeroplane, the Tupolev ANT-20, was impractically large but wasn't a bad aircraft considering. The Kalinin K-7 on the other hand was ridiculous. Konstantin Kalinin had already produced the USSR’s most successful airliner to date and he had some interest in flying wing development.