Russia's Monster Plane That Actually Flew | Kalinin K-7 [Aircraft Overview #11]

Everything about the Kalinin K-7 is big. Big engines, big wings, big weight, big bombload, not to mention the colossal balls of the pilots that got behind the controls of this thing.
The K-7 was born in a time when aircraft manufacturers were trying to build a new generation of massive transports, able to carry over 100 passengers or troops across large distances. Konstantin Kalinin proposed his design, the K-7, and to gain Soviet government support he also designed it to operate as a bomber that could carry an impressive 19,000kg bombload.
Over the years a few myths have sprung up about this aircraft, like the fact that it was designed to carry battleship guns...but I discuss that in this video, so enjoy! :D
***
Producing these videos is a hobby of mine. I have a passion for history, and personally own a large collection of books, journals and other texts, and endeavor to do as much research as possible. However if there are any mistakes, please don't hesitate to reach out and correct anything :)

[@Dr_Jebus]

... It's landing gear strut was a staircase. That's some pulp sci-fi insanity right there and I love it

[@Peorhum]

It reminds me of the separatist landing ships from Star wars pre-sequels and clone wars.

[@donjones4719]

I'd love to see the cockpit controls. I have fun picturing some steampunk version of a ship's bridge, complete with brass engine telegraph.

[@philiptownsend4026]

Dual porpoise

[@donjones4719]

@@philiptownsend4026 Aargh. And on Christmas Day!

[@thatfeeble-mindedboy]

@@donjones4719

[@Christallanda]

Can we please have a playlist of "things that had no right to being able to fly as well as they did" I love this.

[@Alexander_Haplington]

Yes please!😀

[@ofacid3439]

Shorts Skyvan, for instance

[@turgidbanana]

I think you can make your own play lists

[@MonkeyJedi99]

That beast looks like a machine designed to somehow maximize drag while still getting airborne.

[@thefreedomguyuk]

Apart from the undercarriage, this aircraft does seem quite well designed. Any wing is designed to induce drag, and depending on shape, a thick wing can work perfectly well.

[@twokool4skool129]

@@thefreedomguyuk But those insanely large sponsons. And the irregularly shaped flat bulbous nose. And all those flat open manholes for machine gunners? The sponsons alone add a huge amount of drag and dead weight.

[@brianedwards7142]

"Challenge accepted!"

[@diamondflaw]

Add maximum instability and that’s a decent description of the F-117

[@Grimpy970]

Just like in KSP. If it doesn't get off the ground, it needs more boosters! If it doesn't hold together, it needs more structure! You can go back and forth with this balancing act until you have a flying skyscraper that moves at 80 miles per hour

[@donjones4719]

At the very end of the video - this plane flew 30 years after the wright brothers' first flight. Incredible. The first flight could have taken off from one end of the wing and landed at the other end with room to spare (120' vs 173 '). Mind blowing.

[@Bialy_1]

More mind blowing is how Bolsheviks were lying about everything... even the name of the Bolshevik faction is a solid prove of that, Lenin faction was only a small minority so he called his faction Bolsheviks->"bolshoy"="bigger" and the real majority of communists were called by him Mensheviks=>minority(and this is the official name of them to this day and thx to the ignorance of Russians Lenin faction was in the end a majority...). Only picture of this plane in air is super small resolution and of very bad quality it is safe to assume that only the pictures that are sharp are real and all of them were made on the ground. Pilot and the whole crew died before anyone was able to see this plane in the air and the designer of the plane was executed for no good reason apparently...

[@rancidpitts8243]

@@Bialy_1 Stalin loved keeping the People off balance by Executing totally loyal, innocent, and needed followers. Everyone knew that many who died or sent to the Gulags were just random people with no crimes or political opinions. The NKVD was tasked with totals of people to exile and to execute; men, women, and children. Sometimes the NKVD were given a list of names and what to do with them.

[@EneTheGene]

@@Bialy_1 I think you go a bit far in assuming the plane never flew. Perhaps an approach from a more neutral point of view is better. I mean, we have the design, someone would have certainly already pointed out if it wasn't airworthy. Don't assume everything soviet is false, but also don't assume what they say is true. Judge on a case-by-case basis.

[@vykopanypes5495]

@@Bialy_1 what was the quality of the recording media then? was it just as difficult to take pictures of a static and take pictures of a dynamic object at that time?

[@slome815]

@@Bialy_1 Why wouldn't it have flown? It's not like building an airplane that crashes during tests from structural problems is good propaganda. Less then a year later the ANT-20 "Maxim Gorky" would fly, a plane that fully loaded, was 10 tons heavier, and it would fly for almost a decade. And while there are very few pictures of the K-7, there are loads of pictures of the ANT-20 in flight.

[@ian_b]

I get the feeling it should have been able to split into 5 smaller aircraft, each piloted by a colour coded teenager.

[@beckettman42]

Wrap that in a Girls und Panzer like plot and I'm in for at least 7 seasons and movie.

[@scootergeorge7089]

- And if it were built in Germany, Hitler Youth would fly it, eh jax?

[@RidinDirtyRollinBurnouts]

Voltronski

[@UniversalChallenge4454]

the pace of aviation development in the 1920s and 30s is incredible

[@cnfuzz]

Nothing compared to the advances in late 1940s early 50s

[@andrej8413]

The pace if aviation development from the 1920s to the 1990s was incredible tbh

[@geigertec5921]

The pace of development of air travel between 1 AD-1800 AD was fascinating, I memorized every heavier than air flight made and the name of every pilot during this time period. Here is the list:

[@scootergeorge7089]

1935 to 1945 saw biplane fighters evolve into turbojet monoplanes.

[@volatile100]

The pace of aviation in general is incredible. You could be born in 1890s, and live to see aa man on the moon. Only 66 years between the first powered flight, 1903, and the moon landing in 1969. Like, sure, having a Civil War veteran stand next to a F-100 Super Saber is cool, but imagine being just a kid when planes were created, and seeing all developments culminate in a man on another planet.

[@francisconikotian2326]

the fact that it managed to fly with those giant wheels dangling and that backward propeller is astonishing

[@DrDeuteron]

Well, I think it spun backwards, too. Making it act like a forward propeller. I hope.

[@paulhaynes8045]

Interesting how the accepted design of previous means of transport so heavily influence the initial designs of the following inovations. For instance, early cars were literally 'horseless' carriages, and the first passenger cars/carriages on trains were pretty much road coaches on railway wheels. And here we see it again, with early passenger planes adopting the expectations and norms of ocean-going transport. But that phase is only short-lived - once the new method of transport stops being seen as a replacement for the earier type and finds its own purpose, then the design evolves into something unique and much more fitting to the role of the new means of transport..

[@12gauge_shawtyy]

love how you put this. I think the same will happen with electric cars. they will stop mimicking the appearance of normal cars and choose something entirely new

[@paulhaynes8045]

@@12gauge_shawtyy I was thinking exactly that the other day! I tried to imagine how it would evolve, but didn't get far. If you imagine a car with batteries underneath and motors on the wheels, there is no need for an engine compartment, so you just get rid of the front of the car? We've got used to that being there, so would we feel safe without it in front of us? Maybe use it as s boot/trunk instead - but then what do you do with the back of the car? As you can see, I couldn't get the traditional shape/idea of a car out of my mind! Or maybe, after 100 years, we're so used to that form that this will be the exception to the 'rule' and we'll stick to the three box design?

[@JamecBond]

@@paulhaynes8045 the front is still necessary as a crumble zone Incase of accident

[@jimrobcoyle]

​@@paulhaynes8045 and Crimea is still what it should be.

[@grantm6514]

Great observation! This thing is basically an airship with the gas envelope replaced by a wing. There's a very similar process of evolution when new materials appear. The Iron Bridge in Telford was the world's first cast iron structure, and as such there was no precedent for how to make connections and joints in the new material. The designers turned to what they knew, wood, so the cast iron bridge was assembled with dovetail joints and tenons. A similar thing happened when carbon fibre was first used in bicycle frames - builders retained traditional lugged construction and just replaced alloy tubes with carbon ones. It took a while before the entire frame was made all in one continuous piece, taking full advantage of carbon's benefits.

[@kringe700]

Your channel is certainly underrated. I hope you will covered more of the cursed Soviet prototypes like the one with two 150 mm guns, or the conjoined flying boats.

[@raytastic2461]

How is this prototype called? :o Never heard of something like this before :D

[@kringe700]

@@raytastic2461 Tupolev ANT-29 for the plane with 150 mm and Tupolev ANT-22 for the twin flying boat.

[@bobgibb2781]

You obviously didn't watch to the end .

[@EneTheGene]

@hey it's pete I've been thinking the same thing. YT removed ratings ages ago :D

[@OlegMilitaryHistory]

@@kringe700 the Tupolev ANT-29 / DIP-1 carried a single Kurchevsky APK-8 102mm recoilless rifle in its fuselage - it was the largest-caliber Kurchevsky gun to actually be tested on Soviet aircraft. There were also flown prototypes with two Kurchevsky guns, one under each wing, like the Grigorovich I-Z, which carried two APK-4 76.2mm recoilless guns, and there was also the Kurchevsky MK-1 152mm recoilless gun he tested on G-5 Motor Torpedo Boats, but there were no 152mm recoilless guns that were actually flown on an aircraft.

[@RatPfink66]

the initial pic with the klunky pentagonal engine cowlings is obviously an artist's conception...even tho Kalinin and his team can't have been very worried about drag.

[@tesznye6992]

Yeah I was searching for this comment. I can barely find any real photos of this thing, most of them are clearly fake. It looks bigger than the AN-225 even though based on real life stats, it's shorter than a 737 and has about as big of a wingspan as a 767.

[@stevewilson5546]

25 Tons was heavy for its day. Today, a single F-15 Eagle weighs 20 tons by itself. It has 26 tons thrust with afterburners, so it can climb vertically. That's progress.

[@EternallyDisappointed]

Huge carbon emissions though. Not such good progress.

[@stevewilson5546]

@@EternallyDisappointed Same as any jet. Also NOx, particle emissions and sulphur. Jets are really bad news, but people gotta go places:)

[@cedriceric9730]

Good to know

[@filonin2]

@@EternallyDisappointed Carbon emissions aren't a factor in war vehicles. They are made to fuck things up, not make them better. Would a zero emissions drone strike be more moral?

[@EternallyDisappointed]

@@filonin2 No.

[@arbjful]

Konstantin Alekseevich Kalinin was such a brilliant and talented engineer of his time, a deep and tragic loss to the aviation world….RIP

[@richardstrachmesserschmiti4979]

But an excellent victory to the political landscape.

[@None-zc5vg]

Kalinin was purged in 1938

[@workonesabs]

@@None-zc5vg ...happening today under Putin's regime , somethings never change.

[@PeterNebelung]

Sort of makes you wonder what he could have produced if he'd skipped town and ended up in the UK or US.

[@markforster4984]

It looks like it was designed to maximise drag.

[@TycoonTitian01]

Just like a ship

[@ZaJaClt]

We should be grateful for wind tunnels

[@andrewszigeti2174]

To be fair, they were still figuring such things out back then.

[@mytube001]

@@andrewszigeti2174 There were nicely streamlined designs flying years before this monstrosity was designed. Just look at the Supermarine raceplanes of the mid and late 1920s.

[@Rollanotheronemyfriend]

Howard Hughes said hold my box of Kleenex. I've got a Spuce Goose.

[@cal-native]

I've often fantasized about flying around in a fully realized civilian version of this monster. Would have been amazing looking through those leading edge cabin windows in flight!

[@annakeye]

Can you imagine how insane those vibrations would've felt, whilst also the amount of noise those engines would've created. Terrifying and exciting.

[@kev3d]

You would have a great view of the ground rushing towards you.

[@FarmerDrew]

You can do that in the here and now with a Ford TriStar. There's one still flying near Lake Erie, in Port Clinton, Ohio. Like $80/ticket

[@RichardFStripeRendezvous]

@@FarmerDrew I think you mean the Ford Trimotor, which doesn't make sense as you can't ride in the wings or see out the front unless you're in the cockpit...

[@ashakydd1]

Another aircraft that I'd love to see someone recreate with modern materials and engines.

[@Red-rl1xx]

I thought I knew just about every plane that ever flew. Channels like this one keep proving me wrong! Interesting video!

[@opopopop6286]

all the worlds a stage, this is surely one of the stranger examples.

[@ScottWipf]

So Stalin was basically Darth Vader..."now the design of the new aircraft is up to you...ADMIRAL."

[@Demun1649]

Amazing the number of great big aircraft that the Russians did build. I've always loved the Ekranoplan, such a beautiful concept.

[@58singleman]

I would like to see a report on my favorite weird Soviet aircraft. The Nikitin-Sevchenko IS-1 This was 1939 biplane fighter. The landing gear retracted into the lower wing. Then... the lower wing retracted into the upper wing. Soooo...after all the retracting what was left was high wing monoplane fighter with only the tail wheel still showing. My info source is: "War Planes of the Second World War" (Fighters) by, William Green. p. 150

[@mrat5000]

Ahahha this plane actually look really nice! There was also an IS2 variant with a new engine

[@Diwana71]

Fantastic. Thanks. Will check it out.

[@theoneandonlyartyom]

what kind of madness is this

[@Alexander_Haplington]

@@theoneandonlyartyom Agreed. Soviet prototypes, whilst being poor in quality, I find often explore the recesses of "what if I do THIS?" which more stabilized manufacturers have long since learned not to do. That's what makes Soviet Aircraft very interesting to look a and learn about.

[@robertoroberto9798]

Oh god... The IS-1 and 2 were already scary on the ground, but in the air?

[@deepwoods_dave7368]

What a machine! Would have loved to be a person on the ground watching this behemoth go from cold start to full power takeoff! Must have shook the ground for quite a ways around it.

[@davidelliott5843]

The potential for harmonic vibration is enormous. Oh hang on, 12:00 covers just that. It’s almost certainly why it failed especially as stiffening weak areas usually makes the problem even worse.

[@grahamsmith2022]

That's not an aircraft,it's a block of flats that somehow left the ground.

[@jiyushugi1085]

Imagine that thing with retractable gear..... Looks pretty good then. I believe one of the giant Tupolevs (sic) was destroyed in flight when an accompanying fighter attempted to perform a loop around it, killing all aboard.

[@larslarsman]

I think it got too close to the wingtip and got caught in the wingtip vortex, which drew the fighter toward it like a vacuum cleaner.

[@twizz420]

"hold my vodka, comrade"

[@zxbzxbzxb1]

It was called Maxim Gorky, a sort of TB-3 derivative with 10 engines and it crashed killed 35 on board. Nikolai Blagin was the fighter pilot and wasn't especially popular afterwards, it's probably just as well he perished in the collision.

[@thekinginyellow1744]

@@larslarsman I think that was the American XB70

[@billwilson3609]

@@zxbzxbzxb1 The giant aircraft held a printing press that was used to print propaganda leaflets that were dropped as the aircraft circled cities.

[@oldschool8798]

Fascinating design, to say the least. Kalinin: "Hey, guys, what kind of configuration would give an airplane the maximum amount of drag possible? Turn the fuselage sideways and also use it as a wing? Sounds good to me".

[@williamchamberlain2263]

"But what we really need is a couple of bridge supports as landing struts."

[@grantm6514]

"It'll have lots of engines, of course, but with such silly little propellers that they'll essentially be desk fans trying to pull a garden wall by blowing at it." "Makes sense. Let's do it!"

[@yann5427]

I just found this video in my recommendations and I gotta say, this channel is amazing.

[@NV..V]

This is my new favorite aviation channel. Thank you for another excellent video!

[@harbl99]

Ivan: "We have lost the trail boom!" Vasili: "Relax, we have spare."

[@rabbitramen]

Very good! Yuri- We going to crash, we get killed! Yakov- Not to worry, we not crash and die. Yuri- Is wanting to know, why not? Yakov- Because Party will deny everything. Then tell people we had slight hiccup and now resting somewhere in Siberia.

[@boomstickbelgian2775]

Imagine calmly eating your caviar in the state of the art k-7, when suddenly *BIRD STRIKE*

[@johncunningham4820]

How GLORIOUSLY Steam Punk . And it Actually FLEW .

[@The_Str4nger]

*Dieselpunk

[@johncunningham4820]

@@The_Str4nger . Steampunk is a Manga Genre . No such thing as Dieselpunk .

[@The_Str4nger]

@@johncunningham4820 What? no? Steampunk isn't just a Manga genre. It even has not originated in japan. it's a general art style like Cyberpunk, punk, or goth. And Dieselpunk exits also a an general artstyle like Steampunk

[@yetti423]

That thing was cool. Someone should make another.

[@theairstig9164]

Nope. Let the past be the past

[@yetti423]

@@theairstig9164 I have nails. Do you have wood and fabric?

[@ronaldlebeck9577]

Another weirdly insane Russian design. One has to wonder what they were smokin' or mixed with their vodka, or if their rye bread had ergot in it. Even today, their designs are still funky compared to the rest of the world.

[@ZaJaClt]

They had ridiculous quotas and ideas, it was all about bigger, better etc. Obviously by 1930s standarts, plus you just had the civil war which wiped off most of intelligent people who were either dead, emigrated (sikorsky) or scared into submission. Free thinking wasn't a thing so everything was redwashed

[@timgosling6189]

I enjoyed this but I offer a few notes: The B-17 could indeed carry an additional 4000lb bomb under each wing root, but the performance penalty of any external stores was very significant and they were hardly ever used. 8000lb internal capacity of later marks was really the maximum effective load, and even that slowed the aircraft by 70mph compared to earlier aircraft limited to 4200lb. The B-29 was used for testing the US super-Grand Slam, the T-12 Cloudmaker, which weighed in at 43,000lb, (19,500kg). The use of Soviet steel is important, not only because it was likely of poor quality for its intended use, but also because steel as an airframe material only usually makes sense when you have a surfeit of power, which the K-7 did not. As a result the airframe was significantly heavier than it could have been if aluminium had been available. But that was both expensive and in short supply as the 1930s Soviet centralised 5-year plans took their toll on industrial growth. I agree that the 19,000kg bomb load is fanciful. Of course all the numbers are propaganda figures as the aircraft was never actually laden with anything in its 7 flights. It may also be a wiki-ism that has been perpetuated. A figure of 9.600kg of bombs also appears in wiki and is at least more in line with the pax and cargo numbers. I'd also have made less use of the CGI images except at the end where you specifically explain why they're silly. But fun, and nice delivery.

[@neiloflongbeck5705]

You're right the B-17 could carry 8,000lb externally along with it's full internal bomb load. It could do only 790 miles if you wanted to get to the normal cruising altitude (around 25,000ft. But if you didn't mind everyone with a rifle being able to shoot at you (your cruising altitude would be 6,000ft), you could fly about1,170 miles.

[@strakhovandrri]

5-year plans took their toll on industrial growth? What? Last time I checked, these plans built the industry.

[@ПучеглазыйГрибожуй-е8я]

не гунди!

[@timgosling6189]

@@ПучеглазыйГрибожуй-е8я это правда

[@wolf310ii]

120 passengers a 80kg are already 9600kg, if the civilian version of the K7 would have to be able to carry 120 passengers plus 7 tons of cargo, the bomber version should be able to carry more than 9600kg of bombs, alone the 120 seats that are not needed in a bomber make up a few tons

[@caralho5237]

If the airframe split on its own then imagine how it would hold under heavy fire

[@opopopop6286]

matrix minions unite (jk they are already clones), this is one of the sillier examples of the world being a stage.

[@epiening]

Looks like something out of wolfenstien!!! I wish this was successful its so absurd its awesome!!

[@allangibson2408]

It flew for over a two months until they decided to modify it. That pretty much says it was functional… The similarly sized ANT-20 that replaced it flew for eight years.

[@johnhughes2653]

I have a 1/72 model kit of this plane. The wing stretches from my neck to my fingertips!

[@burtbacarach5034]

Where did you find the model?Sounds very interesting.

[@SQSNSQ]

@@burtbacarach5034 The model was designed by a Russian manufacturer. You can find it all over the Internet. I believe, the wing is formed from fiberglass. And you don't want to know, how much they ask for it. :-)

[@OlegMilitaryHistory]

Minor clarification on the "battleship gun" for the K-7 - as described in the 2018 Issue 14 of "Tehnika Molodezhy" Russian historical magazine - the original, real proposal was to arm the K-7 with six of Kurchevsky's 305mm recoilless rifles, one version of which were tested earlier on a Soviet Navy destroyer (to find photos just look up "Engels 305mm Kurchevsky" - without quotes). In the short-barrel version, Kurchevsky's 305mm "recoilless howitzer" weighed 5.5 tons, so it was light enough to mount even on a 3-axle cargo truck, and since the exhaust gases were vented out the back, there was basically no recoil (earlier Kurchevsky had more or less successfully tested his 76mm and 100mm recoilless guns on single-engine fighters like the Grigorovich I-Z and twin-engine heavy fighters like the Tupolev DIP). Mounting the 305mm recoilless gun on the K-7 would still have been an immensely foolish idea, and the plane would not have been able to carry six of them, but it was seriously proposed by Kurchevsky, who was much too obsessed with his recoilless guns, and was eventually executed for "wasting government resources" on "impractical weapon systems"

[@GaryBickford]

One wonders why it had those heavy, complex, aerodynamically bad structures for the wheels. It seems that a much smaller wheel carriage that carried the plane much closer to the ground would have worked much better. Maybe put a stairway in the center line, that drops down when on the ground.

[@stevenborham1584]

Perhaps they thought that ground effect would cause this aircrafts enormous wing to behave too unpredictably if it were any nearer to the ground. Although I think of the Bristol Brabazon with its similarly deep wing and it seemed to do OK on its fairly low undercarriage.

[@BlazerExists]

"Catastrophic structural failure after the first discharge" Damn, why do you have to call me out like that?

[@jeffhopkins5704]

The Lancaster was the only plane that dropped the Grand Slam bombs not the B29. Apart from that it`s an interesting piece.

[@mpetersen6]

In combat. Trials of a copy of the grand slam were undertaken with a modified B-29. Bomb hung on an underwing pylon.

[@tommyfred6180]

@@mpetersen6 mate the b-29 never dropped a proper grand slam. only mockups. the british refused to give the US a real one as they had none to waste. if japan had stayed in the war. the Lancaster's the british sent down to be used to drop fat man and little boy. would have been used to drop any grand slams on japan. the b-29 was supposedly found to be unstable when dropping grand slam mockups. the bomb seems to have messed with the airflow over the tail. this was the exact issue reported after dropping fat man and when dropping some of the first X craft to.

[@Bialy_1]

@@tommyfred6180 @tommy fred mate he never said that they droped the bomb the whole point is that the plane was capable of taking two grand slams at once and you can easly find picture of the B-29 in the air with two grand slams under the wing and the description of the picture is that the B-29 never droped them in combat. And even if the plane was using some non live version of the bomb for the test its safe to assume that the "mockups" was identical in the size and most importantly the mass. Doing test like that with some wooden mockups would be just silly excercise and waste of fuel. B-29 droped two much more powerfull payloads during WW2 and in comparison to the two type of devices that B-29 droped the Grand Slam looks like a toy (Grand Slam got inside only 4,309 kg of torpex D1 and the uncertainty of power of the two devices droped Hiroshima and Nagasaki is in multiple hundereds of tones of TNT...).

[@tommyfred6180]

@@Bialy_1 i get your point and your sadly failed to get my point. the photo showing a b-29 with grand slam payload was, and is something people getting confused over. they are just mockup bombs. the test was to see if the bomb would "fly" nothing more. not one person involved questioned if the b-29 could take the load. but the aerodynamics was a different thing. as it was it was found that the grand slam messed big time with the aircrafts stability. so the test, even if the British had been willing to give them real bombs to play with, was bind. the fact is the b-29 could not safely carry the bomb type and never carried a real grand slam. just mockup models. as for your point about the b-29 carrying the fat man and little boy. that again is off point and irrelevant. remember Lancaster's carried test mock ups of both the fat man and little boy. it was also intended for them to carry them to target at one point and three Lancaster's got converted and sent down to stand by to do the job. but no one makes the jump people are making over the grand slam thing. by saying that Lancaster's carried nukes'. hope you now get the point mate. have a good new year.

[@Plainview200]

It's kind of sad if anyone, other than a child, who saw the Photoshopped version with turrets would actually be so ignorant as to think it was real.

[@scootergeorge7089]

750 HP was impressive in the early thirties but the K-7 probably needed at least 1,750 HP engines. Probably enough to ditch the pusher prop.

[@MrGadfly772]

It must have been an astonishing sight.

[@Ccnut-kv2od]

Bruh your voice is clear and your content is cool. U popped up on my recommended and I’m surprised ur not a bigger channel. Keep it up and you’ll grow. Every time I try to film I sound like I’ve smoked a pack a day dice I was born and I havnt slept in a week, do u have any advice?

[@RexsHangar]

Keep a lot of fluid nearby. I record with a giant bottle of water and a cup of tea/coffee!

[@Ccnut-kv2od]

@@RexsHangar Thanks! 😀

[@jasmijnariel]

Now that is the true flying fortress❤

[@Full_Throttle_no_Brakes]

Your channel is underrated and the quality of your videos are great. That said, please add metric conversions when possible. Thanks and keep going!

[@rogersthilaire8179]

Great stuff as usual ! Thanks for sharing !! Keep up the good work !

[@MCMinerHQ]

imagine building this with modern materials like carbon fiber and slapping turbo props on it.....

[@DarkSideChess]

Engineers: How big should the wings be? Kalinin: Yes!

[@johnfontana7256]

As soon as I saw this aircraft the Ukrainian “Ekranoplan” came to mind, albeit not a true plane, but both nostalgic in their early soviet design. Thank you for posting this rare bit of history!

[@burtbacarach5034]

That Stalin,such a nice guy. subbed!

[@monsieurcommissaire1628]

"An oddity of massive proportions" You have a gift for understatement...

[@williamscoggin1509]

Where technology was at the time it took sharp minds and good imagination to come up with something like this and it actually fly. Kudos to these men. 👍🏻

[@richardstrachmesserschmiti4979]

Funding, it’s all about funding $$$ Is anyone interested in my jet powered turbo for a electro magnetic 🧲 3rd stroke both applied to a flathead v8 idea 💡 ? I think about $300, 000 in research and development can get it done. 700hp from 240 cubic inches and no compounding computers needed How about a two stroke Vtwin air cooled Diesel for a motorcycle- ? Might have enough money left over from first project. Yes, I can bolt either engine to an airframe.

[@thomashowlett8295]

They say that if an aircraft design looks right, it will fly well. Well, that certainly applies here. It's unbelievable that this plane could fly at all.

[@robandcheryls]

Never heard of this plane, thank you for the History lesson.

[@gileswhitehead7437]

B29… grand slam? A great video regarding a aircraft i had no knowledge of!

[@ericmuschlitz7619]

There's a buffet, I'm sold.

[@pihermoso11]

10:52 that looks like an enemy boss from Ace Combat, Ace Combat should do a game where it's old tech and just propeller planes, this could be a boss plane, but the final boss could be an ME262

[@tracytrawick322]

There seemed to have been no end to creations such as this in the 20s and 30s. Kudos, however, to the creative minds that were made to overcome the seemingly impossible tasks they undertook. The creative ideas, both good and bad, helped form the next generation of high-quality designs. And they continue to this day.

[@eccod]

This looks like one of the ridiculous planes my friend and I dreamed up in a notebook in 6th grade, I love it!

[@EmazingGuitar]

There’s something about early model massive machines that gives dystopian vibes.

[@ll1881ll]

This design is ballsy for sure. So awesome.

[@kimrasmussen7188]

it reminds me of that old cartoon show with the carrier pidgeon and the flying circus. 19 tons of payload? its a miracle, that it actually got off the ground...

[@julesverne2509]

it's amazing we get some of this information at all

[@neboskii8756]

The ancestor of the Antanov AN-225

[@rjecsn]

thank you for a video very well done. That's a big airplane !!

[@grayharker6271]

Russians do love their sponsons. Interesting, the passengers along the wing rather than down the fuselage.

[@hellerart]

The gunners are maybe a bit unprotected... LOL

[@mikepette4422]

wow that one float plane had TWELVE ....12... 1 dozen ! Engines

[@madmandan1935]

If you want to look into it more, it is called the Dornier Do-X. Built by Germany during the interwar period. pretty cool one.

[@CreatureOutOfTime]

Some of these aircrafts look like they came from Tailspin cartoon. Somebody draws a restaurant, then draws 4 small propellers on top and, boom, its an aircraft now!

[@DBowen-os2cv]

Thanks for the information on this aircraft. I’ve never heard of it before.

[@kennethwebber1896]

Kalan 19000kg , B17 7800kg, B29 10,000kg something wrong somewhere !

[@jirja3192]

4:57 I actually saw this particular model with my own eyes and talked with guy who build it.

[@Kroggnagch]

"Alright, we've got schematics for a Spitfire, a P-38, a B-17, a tugboat, and a zeppelin. Shuffle 'em like a deck of cards, and get going, gentlemen. We've got an abomination to bastardize into existence." 😂

[@jthablaidd]

The military:”I don’t know, I’m on the fence about your plane” “We can duct tape some bombs to it” The military:”sold”

[@mengo0456]

This is some metal slug boss thing

[@jamesfrost7465]

At 1:25. That's why we "roll" charts and plans. There's a old saying, "If it looks like it can fly, it will fly." I guess it depends on what angle you look at this one?

[@HamiltonStandard]

wonderful examination of an esoteric aircraft. . .

[@SJR_Media_Group]

Know how we know K7 was a Russian Design ? .... because it was HUGE. Russians never shied away from big, bold, and beyond imagination projects. Oh ya Antonov An-225 Mriya is Russian too.

[@geraldtrudeau3223]

Everybody: Nothing that big can fly! Constantine Kalinin: Hold my vodka!

[@randallfabian6640]

It looks so cool with the turrets though!

[@raphaelklaussen1951]

If the Bolshevics hadn't expelled the great structural engineer Stephen Timoshenko - the father of modern mechanical engineering and the guy who developed the theory of structural vibrations- from the Soviet Union, this plane wouldn't have crashed.

[@МаксимДеревишов]

the Bolsheviks did not expel scientists from the country! many writers, scientists, designers stayed in the country! White Guards, criminals and people with low morale fled! Lenin in 1917 tried to create good conditions for scientists!

[@antonmeshcheryakov5068]

@@МаксимДеревишов C'mon dude, who are you trying to deceive? Do not the words "philosopher's ship" ring a bell to you?

[@Mercmad]

@@antonmeshcheryakov5068 I thought it was pretty weird for someone in the 21st Century,almost 30 years after the soviets got the boot,that anyone would still be spouting soviet era propaganda.... but then we have the great deceit .Covid.

[@МаксимДеревишов]

@@antonmeshcheryakov5068 На этот«философский корабль» сели те которые не смерились с тем, что недолюдю взяли власть в стране ! Да много гениальные людей бежали из страны но по человечески они были биомусором! ( Адекватные люди которые не запятнали себя в преступлениях против народа остались и работали на свой народ ( Горький , Федоров ,Павлов, Брусилов и многие другие !!!) Learn the history of Аnton and develop laggy thinking!

[@genevieve.annabelle3296]

Even though the naval guns on it is pure fantasy, it does look cool af.

[@peteleadlove9215]

When I was a Navy back in the 60s Russia had the plane was called the Big Bear the engines on that jet harbatah size of a semi it was huge

[@jwenting]

The Tu-95, NATO code name Bear, is still in use today as Russia's primary maritime patrol aircraft and cruise missile carrier. 4 turboprop engines driving 8 propellors make it one of the loudest aircraft ever built. It's also the aircraft that dropped the largest nuclear bomb ever tested, the 50MT device dubbed the "Czar bomba" in the west. They were used in action over Syria just a few years ago, bombing ISIS positions.

[@jarigustafsson7620]

That submerged submarines could hear without any problems

[@jwenting]

@@jarigustafsson7620 which is pretty much irrelevant. The mere presence of an ASW aircraft drives off a submarine, thus accomplishing the aircraft's mission as it makes the submarine inefficient. And of course once an aircraft knows you're there as a submarine, you're probably dead, especially in the areas where the Bear ASW missions take place which allow for rapid reinforcements and coordination with surface ships and submarines to join the hunt.

[@Thomasnmi]

Amazing that they could get lift with a wing's chord that large

[@jebise1126]

flying wing... or at least blended wing design.

[@ZfromC]

That lower bridge area is sooo cool.

[@rosevan5485]

Great and amazing channel. Cheers from Quebec, Canada.

[@RaminFakoor]

The last sentence was really impressive.

[@tonyraheja1]

Very interesting... Thanks

[@robryan2079]

Really enjoyed this, thanks for creating the video

[@markrowland1366]

The fantastic drawing was one of several pictures, in a 1970s edition of Playboy magazine. There were mock representations of some four giant planes, of various countries.

[@GereDJ2]

I wonder if Howard Hughes was aware of the K7 aircraft? The Hughes H-4 Hercules had a wingspan of 320 feet and 30,000 horsepower total.

[@chadakoin1]

Interesting stuff! One question. Instead of mounting the rear propeller set up, would they have been able to upgrade the 6 forward engines to solve the power issue? Seems like the more logical approach, but then again so would a roll up stairway to gain entrance.

[@Tallorian]

I'm sure it would have been a solution, but such engines/upgrades weren't available at the time. Notably better engines entered production only by the end of 1930s. But by that time there was no rationality in producing things of such an outdated design as K-7. But they were used on Pe-8, a heavy bomber which was smaller than K-7 but still impressive, larger than B-17 for instance.

[@bmjake]

“Geez Vlad, that doesn’t look very aerodynamic” “What is this.. how you say, airodynamik?”

[@javkhlanbaatarkhuu4271]

I always wondered, why Kalinin put such long “legs” for K7. It seems like it already has good ground clearance. Instead of putting 7th and 8th engine, he should’ve shortened the landing gear.

[@heirofaniu]

If Team ACES made a WWII game this would be a bossfight.

[@michaelwilson6483]

The Russians designed a monster plane in 1938 that would be a flying block of flats, an airborne permanent residence for 2000 people. Huge fleets of them would fly continually, being refuelled in flight, landing only occasionally. Unfortunately the project was cancelled when USSR entered WW2

[@brianwhite2104]

Lol

[@eskelmoser]

"collosal wingspan of 174 feet, which is about 72 mid-sized fridges, or about 86 2 inch planks (which are in turn about 5 sausages each), or in some areas it may relate more as 100 medium sized potholes, or about 300 high-pressure 10 gallon tanks, which are sized about thirty dinner plates wide, which are..." Or it is 53 meters.

[@davidmackie8552]

I really appreciate your work. Thankyou very much for the information and entertainment.

[@randyhavard6084]

Such an elegant design

[@jasonworden8209]

Love your vids. I am a sponge for facts. You even include blueprints which is amazing. Definitely subscribed

[@mixed_by_pgee]

You guys making videos like this are on another level 🙏