The answer is 1913.
Imperial Russia beat everyone to the punch on this, by years and years, with the Ilya Muromets Type B heavy bomber.
Four engines? Check. Heavy bomb load (for the day)? Check (the plane could carry 800 kg of bombs, and the Russian Air Force heavy bombers dropped 65 tons of bombs on the Germans during the Great War). Long range? Check (the plane set records for distance before the opening of hostilities). Large crew? Check (it had a tail gunner, and hatches that allowed mechanics to walk out onto the lower wings to service the engines in flight).
And defensive armament? Check, double check, and triple check. The only bomber lost to enemy action was one that was jumped by four German Albatros fighters. It shot three of them down before going down itself. Yowzer.
So how did Imperial Russia design and field squadrons of aircraft that were at least 15 years ahead of their day, back when that represented 2 or 3 generations of military aircraft? It was an Igor Sikorsky design. 'Nuff said.
8 comments:
And then he moved to America and became even more awesome!
My dad translated KN Finne's biography of Sikorsky. It's available at Amazon, and really fascinating stuff.
Despite the Russian's early lead in heavy bomber tech, by WWII they had essentially no strategic bombing capability whatsoever. At the end of the war, they reverse-engineered a few B-29s that had landed at Soviet air fields (because of mechanical difficulties on bombing runs over Japan) and that became the Tupolev Tu-4. Made in the USSR
That thing was like a flying locomotive!
Awesome. Excellent post, Borepatch.
hatches that allowed mechanics to walk out onto the lower wings to service the engines in flight
So it wasn't just the first strategic bomber, it was also the first flying craft to have Jeffries tubes?
Wow. I looked at that date again.
1913.
It only just now clicked with me that the first ever airplane flight in the entire world, ever, was in 1903.
Ten years.
Ten years after our first powered air flight ever, we managed to set aloft a flying fortress, with four engines, a full crew, and a payload approaching that of modern 3/4 ton pickup trucks.
We humans are a pretty impressive species when we set our minds to it, and just as massively dissappointing when we don't.
"hatches that allowed mechanics to walk out onto the lower wings to service the engines in flight"
That's awesome. I must have one. I don't want to fly it, I want to be an in-flight engine mechanic. Who could possibly be cooler than a guy who fixes engines in flight!
The Curtis NC4 Navy planes that flew around the world in 1919 had an open valve train that some crew-member had to go out and periodically oil with a long-spout can. Engines back then were maintenance intensive and a little thing like actually running and spinning and twirling and flying was no impediment to a work-schedule.
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