The Little World

Just when you start to think that they have no imagination, they come out with a new one and all you can do is scratch your head.

Consider the heading image. I have assembled the engine for the Sukhoi following the diagrams as faithfully as can be. There’s the two rows of cylinders, like a radial engine should have. A mounting at the rear of the crankcase and a gearbox out the front…but what a gearbox. it seems twice the length of similar parts on American or British engines.

Then there is a triangular set of struts that meet up with the edges of the engine cowling – I assume to support the extremely deep cowling. Quite why this extra length has been engineered in and then coped with in all the other parts is unclear. It looks good, but it is oddly engineered.

Then there is the oxygen bottle mounted right up behind the pilot’s seat in the unarmoured canopy. Positioned perfectly so that a stray machine gun bullet can explode it and blow the pilot’s head off. Great thinkin’, Pavel…

The Soviet flying wheel flap is the final touch.

Seen on Polikarpov fighters as well as other aircraft, It presumably opens automatically when the wheels go down – probably with an elastic rubber actuator. Then it flaps shut when the rest of the landing gear leg is housed. Other countries’ designers made separate doors in the wings or fuselages or just left the thing open anyway without affecting their plane’s performance. This is complexity for the sake of it…