Another Sukhoi, but much older!

While reading up on Russian fighters earlier today I was astonished to see that Russia came close to having a deplyable supersonic fighter before the US developed the F-100 Super Sabre!

It was called the Sukhoi Su-17 but bears no relation to the swing wing 'Fitter' that bore the designation much later, I haven't found a picture on the net yet but I did find a three view silhouette in a book at the library when I went to look afterwards (combat aircraft prototypes since 1945 by Robert Jackson). The best description I can think of is to imagine a MiG 15 stretched out to the length of a BAC Lighning with sharply swept wings (same sweep angle as the later Su-7 but with constant chord outboard and the canopy perched right up front.

This aircraft was to have flown at Mach 1.2 and the prototype was 85% complete when Stalin, in an irrational huff, shut down the Sukhoi bureau and banished Pavel Sukhoi into the wilderness in 1948, a year before North American even began work on the F-100. The design team was split up among the remaining Soviet design bureaux and the near complete aircraft was broken up for scrap. This remarkable action by Stalin apparently having its roots in the fact that he strongly objected to the fact that the Su-9 and Su-11 fighters of 1946/47 were an insult to Soviet design talent because they looked like the Me 262!

Sukhoi restarted his design bureau in 1953 when Stalin died, beginning his number sequence again from Su-1 hence the repetition of numbers in the Sukhoi fighter series and the first successful product of his second company was the Su-7 Fitter which owed a fair bit to his lost fighter.

I find it incredible that Stalins ego would allow him to throw away the opportunity for the Soviet AF to open up a real lead over the USA and have a supersonic fighter in service by, realistically, 1952 at the latest, amazing!

In fact Stalins actions are even more unbvelievably stupid if you look at the 'guilty' Su-9 and Su-11 (both are pictured in the book) you can see that the resemblance to the Me 262 is only superficial and only apparent in side elevation as both types were straight winged, with oval section fuselages and with their engines mounted 'mid-wing' as in the Meteor and Canberra. It is also noted in the book that the Su-11 in particular had a considerably better performance than the 'winning' MiG 9 and Yak 15 that were selected for service.

[edit on 23-9-2004 by waynos]