High Flying Ideas

Early Soviet paratroopers jumping from a Tupolev TB-3. The Soviets were pioneers in paratrooper technology.

This is another early Soviet idea that didn't take off very well (yeah, I like puns....I know). It's a T-27 tankette slung under a TB-3. I'm not sure if this was dropped by parachute or if the TB-3 had to land for it to be taken off. Either way, the deployment of a single T-27 to the front lines probably wouldn't have made much of a difference in a battle.

Here's another interesting project. It was called the Zveno project. It was basically fighters that could dock with a bomber. Seen here are two Tupolev I-4s on a TB-1, making up what was called Zveno-1. Some bombers could hold up to 5 fighters. Some of the designs had the fighters take off with the bombers, others had them dock in fight.

This was Zveno-2. It was made up of a TB-3 and three Polikarpov I-5s. The ramp was for loading the aircraft on the wings, while the one in the center was lifted on by hand. Maybe there's a reason why the project failed....

And then there's the Antonov A-40 flying tank concept. This was actually built. It was a solution to the picture above with the T-27 slung under the TB-3. Basically, Oleg Antonov used wooden and cloth biplane wings to solve the problem of having to land the tanks on an airfield (or drop them from a few meters with their gear boxes in neutral). However, during the only test flight in September 1942, the TB-3 that was towing it had to ditch it early because of the extreme drag, even though the T-60s armament, along with almost everything else of combat value, had been removed. The pilot of the T-60 landed safely and drove it back to the airfield. After that, due to the lack of sufficiently powerful aircraft, the project was abandoned.