Istoriia konstruktsii samoletov v SSSR, 1938-1950 gg: Materialy k istorii samoletostroeniia (Russian Edition) [Hardcover]

V. B Shavrov (Author)

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Text: Russian

Product Details

• Hardcover: 543 pages
• Publisher: "Mashinostroenie"; 3. izd., ispr edition (1994)
• Language: Russian
• ISBN-10: 5217004770
• ISBN-13: 978-5217004775
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,536,822 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4.0 out of 5 stars V.B. Shavrov, History of Aircraft Design in the USSR, January 3, 2004

By 

James G. O'Haver (Prescott, AZ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Istoriia konstruktsii samoletov v SSSR, 1938-1950 gg: Materialy k istorii samoletostroeniia (Russian Edition) (Hardcover)

V.B. Shavrov, Istoriya konstruktsii samoletov v SSSR 1938-1950gg. [History of Aircraft Design in the USSR 1938-1950] (2d revised edition, Mashinostroenie, Moscow, 1988). ISBN 5-217-00477-0. 568 pp. 311 illustrations. Text in Russian. 2.5cm x 14cm x 21cm. Hardcover. Vadim Borisovich Shavrov's companion volume to his "History of Aircraft Design in the USSR to 1938" picks up where that previous Volume One left off, providing a systematic examination of aircraft that appeared from 1938-1950-roughly from the end of the biplane era up to the onset of the supersonic era. It is divided into 5 main Chapters: 1. Aircraft of the Prewar Years [146 pp]; 2. Aircraft of the Period of the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) [159 pp]; 3. Postwar Aircraft (1945-1950) [112 pp]; 4. Rotary-Winged Flying Apparati (1926-1950) [37 pp]; and 5. Artillery (Gun) Armament of Soviet Aircraft 1918 - 1950 (A Short Outline) [4 pp]. Bibliography is 3 pp. Both Subject and Personnae Indices [14 pp] are included and are thorough and complete. Appendices comprise fully 70 pages of exhaustive tabular data, including, for each subject aircraft textually described in the narratives not only the typical information on dimensions, weights, maximum speed, and ceiling that one usually finds, but also such information as wing area, wing loading, power loading, as well as performance figures such as landing speed, rate of climb, range, and takeoff roll and landing rollout in both time (seconds) and distance (meters). The textual narrative material is equally as impressive. Within the broad chronological framework of the Chapters, the subjects are divided roughly by Design Bureaux, and the lesser-known OKBs/designers and their projects are not neglected-many of which may be totally unfamiliar to the western reader. Each aircraft type/sub-type is described under its own (sub)heading, usually accompanied by line drawing (general arrangement 3-views of adequate clarity and detail) and/or black & white "photos" (of that quality usually encountered in Soviet publications: heavily censored and airbrushed). The depth and detail of the narrative text is impressive, with sub-types being distinguished in detail. A typical example of excerpted text reads as follows [apologies for my translation]:
"The I-26 (fig. 125 [photo of the I-26]) was the first experimental fighter from A.S. Yakovlev, the prototype of all his later numerous piston-engined fighters, the size, form, and design of which were repeated from this originating type. Planform was single-seat low-wing monoplane with M-105PA engine of 1050 h.p. (at first the M-106 engine of 1350 h.p. had been proposed) and VISh-61P propellor. Construction was mixed. The frame of the fuselage was a welded truss of 30KhGSA steel tube, the nose section being covered with aluminum, while the tail section was light planking covered with fabric. The wing, set at angle of attack of 0 degrees, 30 minutes, was of wood, without voids, with doped covering over plywood veneer covering. Airfoil section was "Clark-YN" section with a relative thickness of from 14% to 10% (at the tips). Empennage and ailerons were of aluminum with fabric covering; flaps were all aluminum. Armament: one ShVAK-20 cannon (120 rounds) through the hub of the reduction gear of the engine and two synchronized ShKAS machine guns (1500 rounds) over the engine. Flight duration was 2 hours, 35 minutes. First flight of the I-26 by Yu.I. Piontkovskii was completed on 13 January 1940. Results of factory tests were exceptional, having obtained a speed at altitude of 586 kph, but with further flight on 27 April 1940 there was an accident due to manufacturing defect. Piontkovskii died, but it was clear that the aircraft was a good one and time would remove all doubt. It was decided to put it into series and mass production in the middle of 1940 prior to completion of state trials, which it passed successfully in June-November 1940. In December 1940 it was given the designation Yak-1.
The Yak-1 (figs. 126 [photo] and 127 [3-view line drawing]) was a development of the I-26 in series with completion of a series of improvements in design, owing to which the weight of the aircraft with the same armament and M-105PA engine with VISh-61P propellor (later VK-105PF of 1180 h.p. with the same VISh-61P) increased somewhat and the empty weight rose to 2347 kg, while the flying weight was 2847 kg; that is, by far less than the weight of the LaGG-3 fighter with the same engine. Speed of the Yak-1 series aircraft with ehe VK-105PF engine reached 592 kph at an altitude of 4100m with very good manoevreability (time of turn 19 seconds). Ceiling was 10,000 m."
And so on, through some 480 pages of descriptions of the obscure and the famous, the successful and the failures. The mass-produced and the prototype only. The projects and the scrapped concepts. Fighters, bombers, shturmoviks, transports, flying boats, gliders, autogyros, tailless experiments, operational rocket-powered fighters, the early jets, all of these and more are described in detail.
I would give this the highest possible rating, were it not for the pedestrian quality of the photography and the fact that the book is available, if at all, only in Russian. This makes accessibility and use difficult for most and restricts its utility to those with Russian language facility or who have translation resources. For me, I only wish I could find Volume One....