Post by jinx on Jan 21, 2007 13:33:54 GMT -5
THE TUPOLEV ANT-4/7 AND ITS R-6/ KR-6 DERIVATIVES.
R-6, Tupolev
Twin-engined reconaissance aircraft and escort fighter, an ugly
low-wing monoplane derived from the ANT-4 ({TB-1}) bomber. 435
were built.
Type: R-6
Function: reconaissance fighter
Year: 1929 Engines: 2 * 533kW M-17F
Wing Span: 23.20m Length: 15.06m Height: Wing Area: 80m2
Empty Weight: 3856kg Max.Weight: 6472kg
Speed: 230km/h Ceiling: 5620m Range: 800km
Armament: 5*mg7.62mm 500kg
One of the most interesting aircraft to come from Russia was the R-6, a derivative of the Antonov ANT-4 and -7.
Its development was started in 1925, and it evolved into various civil and military versions as a civil a/c which was even used in Arctic expeditions and as a "secret reconaissance" ("RAZVEDZCHIK"), armed a/c, with double machine guns and a retractable belly machine gun.
The word RAZVEDZCHIK, as my Russian wife tells me, means "one who goes out in secret to collect information", and that is why we have the prefix R.
The aircraft was often fitted out with floats derived from the Shorts Bros. designs, and some R-6'sa serving in the VVS RKKA were fitted with new and various types of usual armament (machineguns and bombs) and more unsual armament which included:
1. The G-54 chemicals container, which opened after launch and spread chemical bomblets with toxic gases.
2. The hydro-bacterial G-58 bomb, which contained a water-poisoner bacterail luquid and was destined to render water resources of densely-poplated areas useless.
3. The G-59 incendiaries container with 300 thermal bomblets.
As you may gauge from the above, the RAF Tornado bomblet dispersal pods of the Gulf War existed in other forms long before the British had them fitted to their aircraft in 1991.
These interesting aircraft were also used in WWII and the variants included the R-6, KR-6, PS-7, MP-6 and ANT-21 (civil version) , and other lesser-known subtypes. The civil derivative, the ANT-21, looked very different from the a/c portrayed in these illustrations and one would never guess it was a derivative of the R-6. The ANT-21 was a bird of a very different feather, as the saying goes.
These profiles come from the French magazine "Avions", issues 95 and 96, of February and March 2001 and the illustrator is the artist Michel Martraix. All credit and enormous thanks is due to both the magazine and the artist.
(If anyone makes this plane and paints it using these profiles, it would be courteous and good manners to give credit to the magazine and the artist--something unfortunately not often done.)
Photographs abound also, and if anyone is interested, please let me know by pm or email.
Nick
