Tu144 Archives - Aviation Wings

The first airliner to reach supersonic flight was not the Soviet-built Tupolev Tu-144 or the well-known Concorde, which wouldn’t break the sound barrier until a test flight in October 1969. Instead, it was a modest DC-8

The DC-8 was the first aircraft powered by a Douglas jet. On September 18, 1959, it went into service concurrently with United Airlines and Delta Air Lines. The DC-8 could reach speeds of over 600 mph (966 km/h) as it was powered by four jet turbine engines. The DC-8 saw seven distinct versions throughout its 14-year production run, totaling 556 aircraft in all.

Even more, a DC-8 became the first airliner to fly supersonic on August 21, 1961. It was a modest DC-8, specifically no. N9604Z, rather than the renowned Concorde, which wouldn’t break the sound barrier until an October ’69 test flight, or the Soviet-built Tupolev Tu-144.

William Magruder, a Douglas test pilot, planned the test flight, which was scheduled to depart from Edwards Air Force Base (AFB). As flight test engineer Richard Edwards told Air & Space Magazine, the idea was to “get it out there, show the airplane can survive this and not fall apart.” Commercial carriers had been using the DC-8 for roughly three years, competing with the Boeing 707 at the time. The DC-8 wasn’t intended to reach supersonic speed, but the importance of being the first to do so made the effort worthwhile.

The jet needed to be in a dive to reach Mach 1. This entailed taking it up to 52,000 feet, a record altitude, according to Mentalfloss.com.

As Edwards tells Air & Space Magazine, “We took it up to 10 miles up… and put it in a half-a-G pushover. Bill maintained about 50 pounds of push. He didn’t trim it for the dive so that it would want to pull out by itself. In the dive, at about 45,000 feet, it went to Mach 1.01 for maybe 16 seconds, then he recovered. But the recovery was a little scary.”

The stabilizer was overloaded, and the plane stalled when Magruder tried to pull it back.

“What he did, because he was smart, is something that no other pilot would do,” explains Edwards. “He pushed over into the dive more, which relieved the load on the stabilizer. He was able to run the [stabilizer] motor…and he recovered at about 35,000 feet.” The crew successfully turned a mass-produced airliner into the world’s supersonic commuter jet. (Right by their side the entire time? Chuck Yeager, the first person to ever go supersonic in 1947. He escorted the DC-8 during its test in an F-104.)

“That’s an unofficial supersonic record, payload record, and of course an altitude record for a commercial transport,” Edwards points out.

Following the test, Canadian Pacific Air Lines received DC-8 no. N9604Z, which it operated for over twenty years until retiring. Unfortunately, this piece of aviation history isn’t housed in a museum. Following its decommissioning, Canadian Pacific sold DC-8 number N9604Z for scrap.

Photo by Douglas and Eduard Marmet via Wikipedia

The outside of the Tu-144 was finished, but work has not yet started on the aircraft inside.

The first phase of the restoration of the Tupolev Tu-144 supersonic transport aircraft (SST) was finished, according to News in Flight. In Russia’s Chetaeva Street, the Kazan Aviation Institute (KAI) building, which will be on display for educational purposes, is seen in the background of the photo in this post, which shows the aircraft standing close to it.

The work on the aircraft exterior has been finished, but work on the aircraft cabin has not yet started, as stated by a spokeswoman for the business in charge of the project during the ceremony that marked the conclusion of the first stage of the restoration.

The Tupolev Tu-144 (Russian: Tyолев y-144; NATO reporting name: Charger) is a decommissioned jet aircraft and commercial SST. The Anglo-French Concorde is the other of the two SSTs that have entered commercial service. The Alexei Tupolev by Tupolev design bureau created the plane during the Cold War, and the Voronezh Aircraft Production Association in Voronezh, Russia, built it. At an average operating height of 16,000 meters (52,000 ft), it flew 55 passenger flights while traveling at a speed of about 2,000 kph (1,200 mph, or Mach 1.6).

Two months before the Concorde’s inaugural flight, on December 31, 1968, the prototype made its first flight close to Moscow. On June 5, 1969, the Tu-144 achieved supersonic flight for the first time, and on May 26, 1970, it became the first commercial vehicle to reach Mach 2. The development of the Tu-144 was halted when one crashed at the Paris Air Show in 1973. On November 1, 1977, the aircraft entered passenger service, nearly two years after Concorde.

After only 55 planned flights, the passenger fleet of the Tu-144 was permanently grounded in May 1978 due to the crash of another Tu-144 (an enhanced version known as Tu-144D). Up until 1983, the plane was still in use as a cargo carrier. Later, the Tu-144 was employed by NASA for supersonic research and by the Soviet space program to train Buran spacecraft pilots.

The Tu-144 had a wingspan of 94 feet, 6 inches, and measured 215 feet, 6 inches long, and 42 feet, 2 inches high. The majority of the aircraft’s structure was made of a light aluminum alloy, with titanium and stainless steel used for the rudder, elevons, and underside of the rear fuselage.

Photo by News in Flight

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Tu144

The DC-8 was the first commercial aircraft to go supersonic flight before the Concorde

The first airliner to reach supersonic flight was not the Soviet-built Tupolev Tu-144 or the well-known Concorde, which wouldn’t break the sound barrier until a test flight in October 1969. Instead, it was a modest DC-8

The restored Tupolev Tu-144 supersonic transport aircraft

The outside of the Tu-144 was finished, but work has not yet started on the aircraft inside.