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Documentary History of the First Soviet Jet Plane BI
- Authors: Sobolev D.A.1
-
Affiliations:
- S. I. Vavilov Institute for the History of Science and Technology, Russian Academy of Sciences
- Issue: Vol 46, No 1 (2025)
- Pages: 9-23
- Section: In Commemoration of the 80th Anniversary of the Victory
- URL: https://rjonco.com/0205-9606/article/view/684638
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.31857/S0205960625010012
- EDN: https://elibrary.ru/COFQZH
- ID: 684638
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Abstract
The article examines the history of the creation and testing of the first aircraft with rocket engine in the USSR. The events took place during World War II and the aircraft was from the start designed as a battleplane. A series of these aircrafts, intended to defend critical facilities from enemy bombers, was produced simultaneously with flight tests. On its seventh flight, the plane crashed and, for reasons still unclear, its test pilot, G. Ya. Bakhchivandzhi, was killed. This forced the decision to abandon the adoption of the BI interceptor for service use.
The article is based on the documents from three Moscow archives. Examination of these document sources allowed clarification of some issues, in particular, to put forward a new hypothesis concerning the causes of the plane crash in 1943
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About the authors
Dmitrii A. Sobolev
S. I. Vavilov Institute for the History of Science and Technology, Russian Academy of Sciences
Author for correspondence.
Email: daso1152@mail.ru
Russian Federation, Ul. Baltiyskaya, 14, Moscow, 125315
References
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- Pyshnov, V. (1972) 30 let so dnia pervogo poleta sovetskogo raketnogo istrebitelia BI-1 [30th Anniversary of the First Flight of the Soviet Rocket Fighter BI-1], Iz istorii aviatsii i kosmonavtiki, no. 14, pp. 53–56.
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