Many years back I was given a photocopy of a Soviet journal article describing a Soviet version of the WWII-era “Silverbird.” The Silverbird was the brainchild of Austrian rocket engineer Eugen Sanger and was a concept for a hypersonic rocket powered “spaceplane” capable of dropping bombs halfway around the world. In the years immediately after the war, the report Sanger wrote proved to be influential on policymakers and engineers, especially in the USSR.
This article describes a Silverbird modified with sizable ramjet engines mounted to the wingtips. Sadly, I can’t read a single word of Russian, so I can’t make heads or tails of it apart from the illustrations. One notation indicates that this may date from 1947. The vehicle described would seem to be the “Keldysh Bomber.”
I have scanned the article and posted it as a PDF on my Patreon for patrons at the $1.50 level (c’mon… that’s $1.50 a month! Mere pennies a day!).
