Soviet Fakes, Failures and Copycats War Secrets- Volume Three

Dilandu said:
Justo Miranda said:
Contents

The Soviet Aggressor, November 1936-June 1941.
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The mere title is enough; another bunch of "Russians bad-bad-bad-bad-bad guys" under the pretense of "objective technological research".
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My respects to the Russian people, their traditions and their Rodina, the mistakes I comment on in this book are only those made by the Soviets during their unfortunate era of power.
 
Zizi6785 said:
Will there be drawings of the early Yak-19 pod-and-boom projects??
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Soviet designers adopted the "Redan" configuration because of the low power available with the captured German turbojets, when they were able to use the Rolls-Royce Nene and Derwent British turbojets, the new fighters were built with the "Flying Stovepipe" configuration that produced less drag and weighed less.

This fuselage construction system was developed in Podberezhye by a team of captured German technicians, originally for the MiG I-270 rocket fighter.
 

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In Early Soviet Jet Fighters book (Gordon-Komissarov) wrote 6 or 7 projests.
Where are the other project drawings? I would be very curious about them.
 
Zizi6785 said:
In Early Soviet Jet Fighters book (Gordon-Komissarov) wrote 6 or 7 projests.
Where are the other project drawings? I would be very curious about them.
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Lyulka TR-1 turbojet (June 26, 1946)
R.R. Derwent V (June 25, 1946)
R.R. Nene Mk.I...?
R.R. Nene Mk.II (June 17, 1946)
 

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Justo Miranda said:
Zizi6785 said:
In Early Soviet Jet Fighters book (Gordon-Komissarov) wrote 6 or 7 projests.
Where are the other project drawings? I would be very curious about them.
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Lyulka TR-1 turbojet (June 26, 1946)
R.R. Derwent V (June 25, 1946)
R.R. Nene Mk.I...?
R.R. Nene Mk.II (June 17, 1946)
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I have the book, I'm looking for drawings that aren't in the book
 
Available at Amazon-Kindle.

A previously unpublished compilation of eighty-seven fighters developed in the USSR between 1928 and 1961.

Inside you will find:

A historical framework including performance details for each project.

Profusely illustrated with 150 pages of technical drawings and providing exhaustive coverage on different models and variants.

Eleven pages of bibliographic information.

Of interest to aviation and military historians, modelers, gamers and flight simulator enthusiasts.

 
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There would be real merit in a book focused on Western miss-understanding of specific existing or non-existing Soviet aircraft (or even widening it out to other aspects like Soviet nuclear weapons and delivery systems, tanks, ships/ submarines etc.) giving balanced nuanced context and all as a way of seeing these modern “myths” as telling us something about the USSR of the time as well as telling us about the West of the time (and specifically the different “myths” the different western audiences choose to believe and why).
Unfortunately the book that appears to be on offer sounds like it is not remotely concerned with such matters and to be focused on the authors own particular political views and perspective.
 
kaiserd said:
There would be real merit in a book focused on Western miss-understanding of specific existing or non-existing Soviet aircraft (or even widening it out to other aspects like Soviet nuclear weapons and delivery systems, tanks, ships/ submarines etc.) giving balanced nuanced context and all as a way of seeing these modern “myths” as telling us something about the USSR of the time as well as telling us about the West of the time (and specifically the different “myths” the different western audiences choose to believe and why).
Unfortunately the book that appears to be on offer sounds like it is not remotely concerned with such matters and to be focused on the authors own particular political views and perspective.
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I look forward to someone writing that book, maybe you will.
 
kaiserd said:
There would be real merit in a book focused on Western miss-understanding of specific existing or non-existing Soviet aircraft (or even widening it out to other aspects like Soviet nuclear weapons and delivery systems, tanks, ships/ submarines etc.) giving balanced nuanced context and all as a way of seeing these modern “myths” as telling us something about the USSR of the time as well as telling us about the West of the time (and specifically the different “myths” the different western audiences choose to believe and why).
Unfortunately the book that appears to be on offer sounds like it is not remotely concerned with such matters and to be focused on the authors own particular political views and perspective.
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Edward Said tried, but he was a little abstracted from the specificities of the USSR and more emphasized the stereotyping in general. You could probably apply Said's description of Orientalism to oodles of cultural hangups throughout the Cold War. It would be good fodder for a dissertation in polisci.
 
kaiserd said:
There would be real merit in a book focused on Western miss-understanding of specific existing or non-existing Soviet aircraft (or even widening it out to other aspects like Soviet nuclear weapons and delivery systems, tanks, ships/ submarines etc.) giving balanced nuanced context and all as a way of seeing these modern “myths” as telling us something about the USSR of the time as well as telling us about the West of the time (and specifically the different “myths” the different western audiences choose to believe and why).
Unfortunately the book that appears to be on offer sounds like it is not remotely concerned with such matters and to be focused on the authors own particular political views and perspective.
Click to expand...

There are a lot of elements to this--not only misunderstanding specific weapons systems, but misunderstanding policies and doctrine. Some of the latter came out in the 1990s when American nuclear weapons theorists were finally able to talk to former Soviet leaders. They discovered that in the US there were all these theories about things like "escalatory ladders" and different aspects of deterrence, and the Soviets never thought about that stuff in a similar way, meaning that the American theories never would have worked in war. Then there was that whole "Dead Hand" thing that would have completely upended the American deterrence strategies.

For weapons systems there were lots of misunderstandings. The Soviets built the MiG-25 and the SA-5 missile to counter the B-70 bomber, which was already canceled. The Americans had the bomber gap and then the missile gap, and then in the later 1960s there were American generals claiming that the Soviet Union was building a big ABM system so the US needed one too. Lots of different explanations for these things, but a common one was US military officers wanting to justify bigger budgets. You can ask Bill Sweetman about the Air Force generals insisting that the Tu-22M Backfire had really long range (the CIA's estimate was lower), and how Sweetman did some calculations of his own that predicted the range within about 5% of the real range--the Air Force generals were lying.

And then there are the secondary issues, like why Eisenhower insisted that strategic reconnaissance, and intelligence analysis, be done by the CIA. He didn't trust military intelligence to tell the truth. (See above, Backfire.)
 
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It’s also multi-faceted - how the USSR wanted to be perceived and their own intentional and unintentional misdirections, combined with the prism various US “audiences” saw things (as references by various contributors above). So various “panics” emerge and unintended consequences are triggered; all more interesting than some potential paths of grinding old ideological grievances and prejudices (but also without any need to withhold justified criticisms of relevant parties).
 
blackstar said:
You can ask Bill Sweetman about the Air Force generals insisting that the Tu-22M Backfire had really long range (the CIA's estimate was lower), and how Sweetman did some calculations of his own that predicted the range within about 5% of the real range--the Air Force generals were lying.
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I wonder if this was an artefact from programmes like ERSA, LAMP and AMPSS as well as AMSA itself that seemed to favour VG wings as a means to attain long range? Although the excessive range of ERSA was found unfeasible, it might have seemed to the USAF that the Tu-22M would only have had VG wings to extend its range. For some reason they seemed to think it closer to the B-1 (until the Tu-160 came to light of course).

blackstar said:
And then there are the secondary issues, like why Eisenhower insisted that strategic reconnaissance, and intelligence analysis, be done by the CIA. He didn't trust military intelligence to tell the truth.
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Well being a military man he probably had first hand experience of that!
Besides that the CIA had open ears in the Eisenhower administration so it wasn't easy to get leverage over reconnaissance (eg. U-2 programme adopted over the USAF's X-16 etc.).
 
Hood said:
blackstar said:
You can ask Bill Sweetman about the Air Force generals insisting that the Tu-22M Backfire had really long range (the CIA's estimate was lower), and how Sweetman did some calculations of his own that predicted the range within about 5% of the real range--the Air Force generals were lying.
Click to expand...
I wonder if this was an artefact from programmes like ERSA, LAMP and AMPSS as well as AMSA itself that seemed to favour VG wings as a means to attain long range? Although the excessive range of ERSA was found unfeasible, it might have seemed to the USAF that the Tu-22M would only have had VG wings to extend its range. For some reason they seemed to think it closer to the B-1 (until the Tu-160 came to light of course).
Click to expand...

USAF assessed the Backfire as having longer range because then they could call it a strategic bomber rather than an intermediate (or medium) range bomber. This factored into arms control negotiations. But apparently you had to be practically blind to come to that conclusion, because, as Sweetman likes to point out to this day, it was not all that difficult to figure out how much fuel the Backfire held. He wrote about that in the bottom part of this article:
www.airspacemag.com

Spying on the Soviets, With Graph Paper and a Calculator

Figuring out the specs of Cold War Soviet airplanes was educated guesswork, if you had the right tools.
www.airspacemag.com www.airspacemag.com

The CIA vs. USAF estimate for the Backfire's range was something that I think even made it into the press in the 1970s. I've gone through old CIA documents but have not found much useful info on it. One of my interests is disagreements within the US intelligence community during the Cold War concerning Soviet weapons. This was one of the more notorious examples, but there were many others.
 
Best Seller:)



Soviet Fakes, Failures and Copycats. War Secrets - Volume Three: The Soviet Aggressor, November 1936 - June 1941 Kindle Edition

by Justo Miranda (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

Book 3 of 3: War Secrets

Product details

 

Product details​


  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09MP1M5F9
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 27, 2021
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 124209 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 367 pages
  • Lending ‏ : ‎ Enabled

 

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