The Bartini A-57 was an experimental

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

bomber A bomber is a military combat aircraft designed to attack ground and naval targets by dropping air-to-ground weaponry (such as bombs), launching torpedoes, or deploying air-launched cruise missiles. The first use of bombs dropped from an air ...

of the mid-1950s that was designed by

Robert Ludvigovich Bartini Robert Ludvigovich Bartini (russian: Роберт Людвигович Бартини; 14 May 1897 – 6 December 1974) was an Hungarian-born Soviet aircraft designer and scientist, involved in the development of numerous successful and experime ...

to take off and land on water. The aircraft was never put into production. The A-57 was equipped with a

lift jet {{Unreferenced, date=July 2009 A lift jet is a jet engine angled to provide an aircraft with ''aerostatic'' (i.e. not requiring the movement of air over an airfoil) lift, instead of (or in addition to) thrust. On a fixed-wing aircraft, lift jets ...

(similar to

VTOL A vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft is one that can take off and land vertically without relying on a runway. This classification can include a variety of types of aircraft including helicopters as well as thrust-vectoring fixed-wi ...

aircraft today) facing downward to assist its take-off from the surface of the ocean. It was intended to refuel from submarines out at sea. The bomber had a long, slender delta wing called the Bartini Wing. A 1500 mph speed was planned. It was tested in wind tunnels, but the project was scrapped in 1957 before actual production could begin. Possibly because the Soviet Government after the launch of Sputnik 1 believed that the new R-7 ICBM made bombers less required and decided the

Tu-95 The Tupolev Tu-95 (russian: Туполев Ту-95; NATO reporting name: "Bear") is a large, four-engine turboprop-powered strategic bomber and missile platform. First flown in 1952, the Tu-95 entered service with the Long-Range Aviation of t ...

would do and that the A-57 project was too expensive along with the perspective that such an aircraft was not needed.

External links

Robert Ludvigovich Bartini information in Russian
Retrieved 14-Feb-2005.

* ttp://www.ctrl-c.liu.se/misc/ram/a-57.html A-57 strategic bomber page on ctrl-c.liu.se
Top Secret Soviet Bomber Project
* http://www.nocarnofun.com/meet-the-experimental-soviet-bomber-project-bartini-a-57-able-to-take-off-and-land-on-water/ 1950s Soviet bomber aircraft A-57 {{aero-1950s-stub