The Soviet Concorde

The Tupolev Tu-144 (Russian: Ty????? ??-144; NATO reporting name: Charger) is a retired jet airliner and commercial supersonic transport aircraft (SST).[2] It is one of only two SSTs to enter commercial service; the first was the Anglo-French Concorde. The design was a product of the Tupolev design bureau, headed by Alexei Tupolev, of the Soviet Union and manufactured by the Voronezh Aircraft Production Association in Voronezh, Russia.[1] It conducted 55 passenger service flights, at an average service altitude of 16,000 metres (52,000 ft) and cruised at a speed of around 2,000 kilometres per hour (1,200 mph) (Mach 1.6).[3]

The prototype first flew on 31 December 1968 near Moscow[1] from Zhukovsky Airport[4], two months before the first flight of Concorde. The Tu-144 first went supersonic on 5 June 1969[5] (Concorde first went supersonic on 1 October 1969), and on 26 May 1970 became the first commercial transport to exceed Mach 2. A Tu-144 crashed in 1973 at the Paris Air Show, delaying its further development. The aircraft was introduced into passenger service on 1 November 1977, almost two years after Concorde, because of budget restrictions. In May 1978, another Tu-144 (an improved version, the Tu-144D) crashed on a test flight while being delivered, and the passenger fleet was permanently grounded after only 55 scheduled flights. The aircraft remained in use as a cargo aircraft until 1983, by which point a total of 102 commercial flights had been completed. The Tu-144 was later used by the Soviet space program to train pilots of the Buran spacecraft, and by NASA for supersonic research.

The Tu-144 and the NATO prototype lined up on the runway

A Tu-144 in a parking space with a Lockheed L-188 Electra in the background.

The Tu-144 flying at supersonic speeds

A landing Tu-144

Controls

Ag1+VTOL Down lowers the nose
Ag2+VTOL Down packs in the canards
Ag3 Triggers the parachutes

IMPORTANT NOTES MUST READ

When the plane starts to stall, the plane starts to turn violently when falling. Please avoid doing this. We already had one accident on a test flight!

One More Thing

Thank you all for all these wonderful times and simpleplanes, and with that, I have successfully reached gold rank. Thank you all!!