Whoosh

Ever since Sputnik I. the Russians have been ostentatiously flexing their missiles in an artful campaign to persuade the West that in the rocket age, warplanes are not worth a ruble--or a U.S. defense dollar. "Airplanes," sneered Nikita Khrushchev, "belong in museums." But last week at Moscow's Tushino airport, as the Soviet Air Force staged its first public flypast in three years, it was clear that Soviet aviation designers have been working overtime all the while. More than 100,000 spectators, including Khrushchev, squinted into the bright sunny sky as one new plane after another whooshed into view, then veered sharply away to prevent Western observers from getting too close a look. Among the most startling:

P: The Bounder, a huge delta-wing bomber with two outsized jet engines mounted on the wingtips and two even larger engines slung underneath the wings. First spotted by U.S. intelligence in 1958 (probably by the U-2), the Bounder is now presumed to be in production, can fly 1,600 m.p.h. It is the largest supersonic plane in the air, 40 ft. longer than the eight-engined, subsonic (650 m.p.h.) B-52, the U.S.'s only heavy intercontinental bomber.

P:A column of ten sweptwing, supersonic heavy bombers, featuring two jet engines mounted on either side of the tail (see cut). So new it has not yet been assigned a name,* the plane seems to be comparable in performance to the U.S.'s only supersonic bomber, the B58 Hustler, which flies at some 1,300 m.p.h., has a range of up to 4,000 miles.

P: A third supersonic bomber, the medium-range Blinder. First seen in 1957 in prototype, the production model at last week's flypast featured a new tail turret, radar and radar-jamming equipment.

P: Two new 1,500-m.p.h., long-range interceptors comparable to U.S. F-104 and F106 fighters. But one of the Russian planes had a new twist unlike anything in the U.S. hardware field: a liquid-fuel rocket booster under its tail, designed to give it tremendous, straight-up climbing power and speed in a pinch.

P:P:A covey of twinjet, all-weather Flashlight fighter bombers with striking clear-plastic needle noses, roughly the equivalent of the U.S. F-105.

P: A big transport plane with rotors on top for vertical take-off like a helicopter, two propeller engines for forward flight once aloft. The British are working on such a plane for the West (the Rotodyne), have not yet perfected it.

The Russians also unveiled a twin-jet flying boat (the U.S. experimented with one, wrote it off as of little strategic value), a new three-tailed helicopter with jet-driven blades, and a huge conventional helicopter carrying a small house slung beneath it and capable of carrying 180 infantrymen (biggest U.S. model, due next year, will lift only 100). Though some of the planes on display were already known to Western aviation experts, and others were simply old models with new touches, the flypast made bunk out of Nikita's boast that Russia had consigned its warplanes to junk. Judging by what they saw, Western observers concluded that the Russians are roughly on a par with the U.S. in the quality of their fighters, clearly ahead in variety, if not quantity, of supersonic bombers.

The Russian display was a cause for concern although not necessarily for alarm. It was yet another spur to Washington's current reappraisal of U.S. military planning (see THE NATION) to determine whether the U.S. had the hard ware necessary for its defense. But the best answer to Russia's new planes may not be a better plane, but a new rocket or more Polaris submarines.

*Faced with Russian secrecy, NATO arbitrarily assigns code names to Russian military aircraft: names beginning with "B" designate bombers, those with "F" fighters.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.