Soviet engineering took flight with the Tu-144, the world’s first passenger supersonic airliner. First flying in December 1968, this aircraft stunned the aviation world, reaching speeds over Mach 2 ...

Unlike the French-Anglo Concorde, the Soviet Tu-144’ landing gear had a whopping 12 wheels. The Soviet-built plane used synthetic rubber for its tires, which was structurally weaker and more ...

Unlike the French-Anglo Concorde, the Soviet Tu-144’ landing gear had a whopping 12 wheels. The Soviet-built plane used synthetic rubber for its tires, which was structurally weaker and more ...

The Tupolev Tu-144 is one amazing machine ... They're super-thin and produce low lift at slow speeds, which made landing very tricky. Tupolev engineers weren't able to figure a the conical ...

(Both airplanes leveled their noses out during supersonic cruise.) The landing gear remained down, and even though the Tu-144 had forward canards—small wings that extend from behind the cockpit ...

The jet was forced to do an emergency landing and two flight engineers lost their lives, prompting a ban on passenger flights. The 17 Tu-144 jets, some of them prototypes, were retired quietly a ...

The Tu-144 was a troubled aircraft ... One, Sergei Pavlov, was arrested in Paris with blueprints of Concorde’s landing gear and anti-lock brakes found among his belongings.

Concorde took to the skies first without a hitch and determined not to be outdone, the Tu-144 went for a more audacious show. As it approached the runway as if to make a landing it then climbed ...

For a little while there was one more, and most people have never heard of it. It was the Tupolev Tu-144, it was Soviet, and it was loud as hell. If you're wondering why you've never heard of the ...

Allocated a display slot to fly after Concorde on 3 June, the Tu-144 was supposed to perform an 11min sequence, taking off from runway 03 and accelerating for a return pass, before a slower second ...

Not to be outdone by their aviation rivals in the west, the Soviet Union built and briefly flew its own supersonic commercial jet, the Tupolev Tu-144. Sixteen were built and a handful remain.