The ever expanding Red Star series has #31 now out and it is on one of the most impressive airliners ever built, the Tu-114. A development of the Tu-95 'Bear', it is really more than just a simple bomber to airliner conversion as it initially appears. In the early 1950s, the Soviet Union developed their first jet airliner, the Tu-104, from the Tu-16 'Badger' bomber. The Tu-104 was an aircraft that had a rather rocky career, but it did provide speedy service, though it was somewhat short ranged and did not possess true intercontinental range. What was needed, was something else, but it also had to be fast and fuel efficient.

This is where the idea of transforming the Tu-95 into an airliner came into being. The first aircraft to be so developed was the Tu-116, itself little more than a 'Bear' with the area aft of the wings turned into a passenger compartment. It was not designed for paying passenger service, but as a fast transport for VIPs. It looked like a converted bomber because it was, two Tu-95s were taken from the production lines and had all the various offensive and defensive materials removed. It made for a very fast airliner, operating at near jet speeds and having good range. It was also plagues by early Kuznetsov NK-12 turboprops, with their propensity towards high oil consumption and tendency to throw lots of hydraulic fluid. Needless to say these two planes paved the way to the Tu-114.

A whole new fuselage was needed for this 220 passenger airliner. It kept the basic flying surfaces of the Tu-95, but placed the wing low on the fuselage. As clearance was needed to keep the big turboprops from kicking up a lot of debris, the airframe was rather high in the air, adding a most unique look to the aircraft. With such stalky landing gear, it was inevitable that there would be some problems and those did happen, but were cured during prolonged testing, which put the aircraft behind schedule by two years.

Eventually it got into service and was everything that was expected of it. The Tu-114 also had one of the most hazardous routes ever flown by an airliner. During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 it was the Tu-114 that flew Soviet specialists to help set up the missile sites. As pressure from the US prevented the normal African airports from being used by Soviet airliners, a non-stop route was all that was available. This started from Murmansk and then flew down Greenland and the east coast of Canada and the US into Cuba. There were no areas to safely land in case of trouble and this route was flown for several years until tensions eased and the African airfields were again open to them. Eventually, it was the IL-62 that doomed the Tu-114 and by 1975, airframe fatigue resulted in the eventual demise of the aircraft. Some were saved as memorials or in museums, but with typical stupidity, many of these airframes were sold as scrap by hard pressed officials of the towns and airports where they were displayed. Today, only one or two are still extant.

This book is very much like others in the series with sections on the design and development of the aircraft, variants and project aircraft, a history of operation, a nice detail section, drawings and a large color section, including many from brochures of the time showing how elegant an aircraft this really was.

Overall a superb presentation and if you are as fond of these sorts of aircraft as am I, then this is a book you simply have to have.

April 2007

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