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M-3M2-2 ("Project 52")

The M-3M2-2 project was a prospective project for the air launch of a reusable air-space aircraft (VKS), based on the 3M aircraft. The the 3M2-2 featured jets integrated in wing and while the 3M2-3 had jets in underwing nacelles. Other related projects were designated 3M2-1, 3M2-3A, 3M2-4 and 3M2-5. Thre were seemingly dozens of such designs, with a variety apparently limited on by the imagination of artists. Like most Myasishchev programs, however, they never left the drawing board.

For the creation of the M4 and 3M aircraft, Myasishchev was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor in 1957, he and a number of key employees were awarded the Lenin and State Prizes. OKB-23 was awarded the Order of Lenin. Its employees were given dacha and garden plots, housing construction for OKB employees was increased.

In March 1956, flight tests of the improved 3M aircraft design began. And in the design bureau, the development of a system for refueling aircraft in the air was in full swing, the new machines were divided into two categories: tanker aircraft (M4 tanker) and refueling with a boom (3M).

The Mya 4 "Bison" bomber is a four-engine long-range bomber developed in the former Soviet Union. A total of more than 100 were produced, and nearly half of them were finally converted into tankers. During their service, they did not have any special performance.

During the Soviet period, due to the vast area and sparse population in the eastern region, there was no railway, and the traffic conditions were poor, so several Mya 4 bombers were refitted to transport natural gas. The modified Mya 4 was called BM-T.

An increase or decrease in the payload loads with variations in aircraft dimensions are determined mainly by a change in the relative weight of the structure, thus affecting the economic efficiency of the aircraft.The “square-cube” law, reflecting these patterns, has become famous. In accordance with it, the weight of the structure and the entire aircraft, depending on its volume, increases in proportion to the cube of the increase in linear dimensions while maintaining geometric similarity, while the lift, which depends on the wing area, increases in proportion to the square of the dimensions.

The increase in the weight of the aircraft, which is ahead of the growth in the lift force, must inevitably limit the maximum increase in its dimensions. To maintain flight and take-off and landing characteristics with an increase in the size of aircraft, it is necessary to ensure the constancy of the specific wing load Go / S (the ratio of take-off weight to wing area). But this is possible only on condition that the weight of the aircraft grows in proportion not to the cube, but to the square of the linear dimensions.

For the weight of the structure - the main component of the weight of the aircraft - this is practically impossible under the accepted conditions: grows in proportion to the square of the size. The increase in the weight of the aircraft, which is ahead of the growth in the lift force, must inevitably limit the maximum increase in its dimensions.

The first twin-fuselage aircraft was developed at the Tupolev Design Bureau. The country's leadership set the designers the task of creating an "ultra-long-range cargo system", since after the end of the Great Patriotic USSR, a war with the United States could await, and something completely special was required for the quick transfer of cargo to the territory of a potential enemy. Fortunately, the war did not happen, and the "incomprehensible" project for the "Tupolevites" was shelved. This aircraft did not have a chance to gather dust in the backyards of history for long: already in the 60s they began to work on a similar machine under the guidance of aircraft designer Vladimir Myasishchev. From the very beginning, the machine was conceived as a versatile jet "heavyweight", capable of carrying cargo that no other aircraft would take off the ground.

However, then the unexpected happens: Myasishchev is transferred to work at TsAGI, and his design bureau is closed and all work is transferred to another genius of Soviet industry - rocket scientist Vladimir Chelomey. He brings some of the projects to mass production, but the "rocketeer" solves strategic tasks differently than the "aviators", so some cars turn out to be frankly problematic. After a series of failures, Chelomey almost goes to the camps, and work on unique aircraft is returned to Myasishchev along with the team. And almost immediately, the genius of Soviet aviation wrote to Brezhnev: "There is a solution for delivering Soviet tanks and cargo to the doorstep of the enemy, but you won't like it."

After two weeks of deliberation, the skeptical Brezhnev, who summoned the Minister of Aviation Industry for consultations, gave Myasishchev the "green light" to work on the machine. After several years of hard work, by the mid-70s, the M-3M2-2 aircraft project was almost completed. It was a massive eight-engine machine, essentially consisting of two 3M bombers. Even at the stage of preliminary design, Myasishchev came up with the main idea of the project - in addition to the cargo compartments in the center of the fuselage, think over mounts for a missile with a nuclear warhead or a special-purpose spacecraft.

The huge aircraft was almost ready for production, and according to the plans, the car was supposed to make its first flight in 1972-1973. But suddenly the foreign policy of the USSR changed. In 1974, Leonid Brezhnev met with US President Ford and, as a gesture of goodwill, ordered about three dozen missile carriers, developed at the Myasishchev Design Bureau and long accepted into service, to be cut into metal.

Almost immediately after that, work on the unique "heavyweight" was also curtailed, for which there was neither money nor space left. Brezhnev considered that militarism should be put to an end, and the space air force programs, albeit for a short time, were put an end to. Myasishchev held the blow to the last and courageously continued to work on other projects, but in 1978 his nerves and health could not stand it: the legendary aircraft designer died, and with him the project of a unique missile carrier capable of delivering "on the doorstep" to the enemy anything - from several tanks and a battalion of soldiers to a nuclear warhead.

And two years later, the KB itself was gone. "Myasishchevtsev" was again transferred to another subordination, this time to NPO "Molniya" - the general contractor of the state on the topic of rocket and space technology. When the new leadership studied what they would have to work with, there was no limit to the astonishment of specialists - Myasishchev's plane fit perfectly into the new space concept of the USSR.