Yu. A. Nagaev. From the designer to the organizer of the air show

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Golden time of domestic aviation - 1958 year. The place is the airfield of the Flight Research Institute in Zhukovsky. Two are suitable for the UTI MiG-15LL flying laboratory: test parachutist Valery Golovin and test pilot, twice Hero of the Soviet Union Sultan Amet-Khan. It is necessary to check the operation of the latest means of salvation - the KS-4 catapult, designed for the Su-7. The back cabin, where Golovin settles in, without a flashlight: he was removed in advance so as not to get confused with him before bailout. In the front cabin is the Sultan. Test flight, the highest category of complexity.

At the command "went," Golovin, as usual, grouped and pressed on the grab bars. The squib is triggered, but the armchair, when it reaches the middle of its turn, is wedged along the telescope. The smoke from the actuated squib is instantly deflated, but a cloud appears in the parachutist's cabin and lashes kerosene from below. Turning around, Golovin sees behind the plane a thick white train, obviously, also kerosene. The picture is creepy. The paratrooper at half of the body is pushed out of the cabin into the stream, and around is the fuel that can break out at any moment.

For this flying laboratory, a young leading engineer, Yura Nagaev, wrote the necessary instructions, seemingly for all occasions, but it was impossible to foresee what happened to Golovin. There were a variety of cases, but this is always either in the event of a catapult failure, or after it has triggered.

Yu. A. Nagaev. From the designer to the organizer of the air show


It is known that the coldest time in the stratosphere is November-December. The flight took place in late November, and even with very high humidity. Maybe that's why kerosene did not catch fire. But the main thing that Golovin was lucky about is that in the front cockpit Amet-Khan-Sultan was sitting - a wonderful pilot. According to the instructions Nagaev wrote, if the catapult does not work, the pilot lowers the speed and the test parachutist leaves the plane with a parachute “over the side”. But that the ejection will occur "half" - this instruction was not provided. At the KDP, nothing was yet known what happened on board the ill-fated MiG, when Sultan’s characteristic voice with an Oriental accent was heard on the air: “Fire, nurse at the beginning of the band, remove everyone else! I'm going to the forced”!

When Amet-Khan realized that Golovin stayed on the plane after giving the command “Go”, he was lashing kerosene from everywhere, he reduced the temperature to the maximum, removed the speed and did everything that was necessary according to the landing instructions with the engine not working. Masterfully calculating the approach, he sat down with the engine off.

The pilots were taken out of the plane, taken to a bath, and in the evening, at Nagaev, his young wife found her first gray hair. As always, they formed an emergency commission. By the time of its first meeting, Nagaev, who had been dealing with distorted details for several days, had put forward an assumption. What happened was that the developer (chief designer Kartukov) made a seemingly insignificant drawback to the standard shooting mechanism that stood on all the catapults of the Soviet Air Force, which had never appeared before the LII.

But the fact is that when the cartridge ignites, gases press the heel of the firing mechanism, the ball lock opens, pressure increases, the telescope tubes move apart and the chair flies out with the last tube of this telescope. In this case, there was no tightness between the heel and the heel pad. Therefore, the brass wad from the cartridge of hot gases instantly melted, and some droplet from this wad hit the ball lock, which wedged a little while at first there was a slight pressure of gases.

The gases passed under the heel, there was created a back pressure and instead of pushing the chair, the gases tore off the tail part of the telescope. She rushed down with incredible force, piercing the cabin floor and the walls of the fuel tank. So, the leakage is to blame, which is not specified in the drawings of the Kartukov design bureau. The Commission understands that this can happen with any aircraft on which such a system stands. This means that hundreds of aircraft need to be improved. "There is no other way out," said Nagaev, "while flights with these catapults must be stopped."

The necessary improvements were completed, the right place was sealed, so that the gases could never get into the ill-fated space under the heel, and for the wad they made a special grate so that it could not fly down. More than forty years have passed, there have been hundreds of catapults, but the defect has never been repeated.

Nagayev 16 was born on December 1930 of the year in Alma-Ata in the family of a regular soldier. The family often changed their place of residence and, accordingly, it is possible to find out where the head of the family served in the places of birth of the brothers. I finished school with a silver medal, although I had all the indicators for gold, but I gave gold to a Kazakh.

There was one circumstance. The fact is that during the war the Moscow Aviation Institute was evacuated to Almaty. And it left the residents of the city a lot of memories, and some of the “Mayevites” remained forever in the Kazakh capital. In addition, Alma-Ata was the capital of Soviet climbers, and at MAI, traditionally mountaineering was one of the favorite sports. Older brother Victor, Honored Master of Sports, was one of the prominent Soviet climbers who went to the Pamirs. In the MAI, he, as they say, "came to the court." What is matting - do not say. So he was for many years the deputy head of this department. Therefore, Yuri did not have a question about where to go to study.

In 1953, he graduated from MAI with honors, and he was sent to the 30 plant (now RSK "MiG"). There, after three years, he made a career and became deputy head of a workshop. Then the plant produced IL-28, then switched to IL-18. There was a lot of difficult, associated with the Khrushchev acceleration of aviation: the plant stood for several months. And then Yuri was lucky. His old friend Guy Ilyich Severin, who was already the head of the laboratory of tools for emergency escape of aircraft at LII, invited him to work at the institute. It was in September 1956.



Yuri Nagaev did not jump over the steps, he walked along the usual path: an engineer, a senior engineer, a sector head, a deputy head of the second section, then a head of the 12 section, who was engaged in means of life support. After 10, Yuri was invited to the position of deputy head of the institute - chief engineer. Nagaev refused this in every way, but Mironov said: "Do you really refuse to help me in difficult times?" Nothing left to do, how to agree. In this position, he worked for 12 for years.

Yury came to LII in 1956 right away to the laboratory of Guy Ilyich Severin, whose subject was supervised by Nikolay Sergeevich Stroyev, the creator of the first domestic ejection devices, later the head of the LII and later the first deputy of the Military Industrial Commission. At that time, the main task of Severin’s laboratory was the subject of ejecting a pilot from a new generation of aircraft and, in particular, from C-1 and T-3 (later Su-7 and Su-9). Severin instructed the new employee to deal with P.O. Sukhoi as a lead engineer. The task was to create an all-mode ejection installation. There were many accidents and catastrophes with Sukhoi aircraft. It should have saved the pilots. After all, the jump "over the side" was completely excluded, and landing with the engine off, as a rule, led to the death of the pilot.

The rescue device — the catapult looked rather primitive: the curtain covered the face, the speed limit was 600 km / h, and the need for ejection was, as a rule, either at high speed or at a very low altitude.

And then each company made their homegrown catapult. For the all-mode ejection device, the Severin laboratory made recommendations: in addition to the usual telescopic firing mechanism, use the jet method of ejecting the pilot from an airplane. The scheme is as follows: first, a conventional telescopic firing mechanism is triggered, and then the jet engine turns on and the pilot's seat turns into an independent aircraft, which lifts the flight path to an altitude of about 100 m.

Once the seat becomes a separate aircraft, it needs a special stabilization system, rather complicated, since it is necessary to ensure the rescue of the pilot at low altitudes, and at large, reliable automation system, a special parachute system. By the way, when Nagaev expressed all these ideas in a conversation to Pavel Osipovich Sukhoi, he listened to him attentively and remarked: "This is all right, but young man, do not forget that we are building a combat vehicle not only to carry the rescue chair."

But such a system was extremely necessary, as the machines were already in mass production, and the group of specialists, which included Nagaev, literally worked day and night. Beginning with the 1964 year, such all-mode ejection seats began to be introduced on all aircraft of three KB: A.I. Mikoyan, A.N. Tupolev and, of course, P.O. Dry. The only drawback of these chairs was that they were not united, and each company, using the general principles developed by LII, made such chairs by itself under its cabin. Sukhoi had a CS chair, Mikoyan had a CM, and Tupolev had a CT. Later, this defect was removed by itself when they created the unified chair K-36. After the introduction of these seats, the number of positive results with the ejection increased sharply. Crew rescue at extremely low altitudes, at speeds of about 1200 km / h at altitudes close to the flight ceiling, became a reality. The fact that the pilot is saved and in the event of a plane crash during the run and run was a revolution.



It must be said that the ejection seats of the Martin-Becker company, which provided aviation for 34 countries, had significant limitations on the ejection modes, the Americans were forced to catch up with us. In the meantime, our K-36 chair is a world leader. Moreover, the Americans at one time negotiated its purchases. IBP Aerospace President K. Shalai (director of the NASA Flight Research Center in 1990-1998) said: “A completely different approach was taken when creating the design of the ejection seat K-36. Western specialists focused on survival, that is, on ensuring the pilot left the plane, while Soviet developers were given another task - to achieve the absence of injuries so that the next day the pilot could start flying again. The latter also believed that the spacecraft should ensure that the pilot left the plane with a guarantee of safety throughout the entire range of flight regimes. Therefore, a completely different QC design was chosen, which does not allow for bodily harm, and all the additional features of QC led to a rather low level of damage in the conditions of ejection in the entire speed range. ”

By the 50 anniversary of Yuri Alexandrovich he was awarded the title "Honorary Citizen of the city of Zhukovsky." And when he was handed a certificate, they said, you need to pass on your knowledge to young people - go to college for teaching. First, he taught a course called “R & D Facilities”. This course was new, and students studied all the tools that are used in the testing and fine-tuning of aircraft. Another course of lectures that he was instructed to read was the quality and certification of civil aviation equipment.

The volume of work at LII in 50-70-s is now amazing. In the 2 branch (Nagaev was the deputy there and was in charge of flight tests), about 2000 flights were made annually. Working in the 2 department, Nagaev successfully defended his thesis and was appointed a senior researcher. Working as the head of the 12 branch, Nagaev had to deal with a wide range of work. The department was engaged in all aircraft systems. Important works were on the creation of installations for determining icing conditions, on the study of life support systems in space and, in particular, on Buran.

The cosmonaut Yu.A. Nagaev for participation in the development, testing and commissioning of all-modular ejection rescue equipment with a parachute received (together with his staff) the Lenin Prize (the highest award in the USSR for scientific, technical and other creative achievements). The case was extraordinary. For the award, several very solid design teams struggled. In the lists of applicants, of course, the first places are the general designers, their deputies. . And only in the application from LII (the head of the institute, N.S. Stroyev insisted on it) in the list - only ordinary performers of very intense and extremely dangerous work. They were given a prize. When in the secretariat of the commission for awarding state prizes to Nagaev they prepared the documents, it turned out that he was the second youngest among the laureates of the Lenin Prize. Then he was 34 of the year. Only the son N.S. was younger. Khrushchev - Sergey Khrushchev.

Ejection seat astronaut.

The most interesting works were on the imitation of physical loads on the pilot during the air battle. Even then we used a centrifuge, but the concept changed. It used to be believed that an aircraft that can withstand (over its strength) large overloads will win in a dogfight. Today, another concept: that aircraft will win, the pilot of which will carry heavy overloads, i.e. today it all depends on the physical capabilities of the pilot. And the task of separating Nagaev was: to give recommendations on how the pilots should better endure the overload.

The first is the inclination of the seats, which is close to horizontal during air combat. The fact is that a person does not tolerate the head-pelvis overload (no more than 20) and even worse the head-pelvis (no more than 4-5). And if lying down, the overload can be up to 50. Second, anti-overload provision, i.e. special anti-overload suits and oxygen supply, supplying oxygen at the rate of change of the overload.

When Yury Alexandrovich became the deputy chief of the LII - chief engineer, he drew up a plan for the development of the institute for 15 years. There were a lot of ideas that, if not for the collapse of the economy, would have been implemented today. And when the Soviet Union began to take part in international aerospace showrooms, it became clear: the situation is completely abnormal. Our country meets all the requirements of a great aerospace power. Then the first time the idea to hold our air show. Of course, we used to have good aviation holidays in Tushino, Domodedovo ... But all this was far from the idea of ​​the cabin. A group of enthusiasts, where Nagaev was the ringleader, came up with the idea of ​​holding a full-fledged air show based at the LII airfield. They first turned to the minister, then to the government.

An authoritative commission was established, which was chaired by Nagaev. At the end of September 1991, at the extended board of the IAO, he, on behalf of the commission, made a report, which substantiated the feasibility of holding in the USSR international aerospace showrooms at the main test aerodrome of the country in Zhukovsky. I must say that the discussion was very sharp. Not everyone agreed with the idea of ​​an international salon at the country's secret enterprise. How to preserve the secrecy of the fact that all the years were hidden from ordinary citizens? How to ensure the smooth operation of numerous companies based at the airport?

It came almost to a fight. The military "pulled out" the cabin in Kubinka, civil aviation, citing the success of the aviation festival 1967, - in Domodedovo. However, perseverance and good reasoning, and then the carefully thought-out project eventually won. It was decided: in August 1992 of the year to hold Mosaeroshow-92 - the International Aerospace Exhibition. According to the results of Mosaeroshow-92, everyone acknowledged, including the world aviation press, that a new air show was born. He turned out to be truly international.



Zhukovsky today has become a city where the International Aviation and Space Salon - MAKS. Now the name of the “father of Russian aviation” sounds all over the world - just like Le Bourget, Farnborough ... Zhukovsky now, whether our enemies and competitors want or not, is known and popular. By the way, Nagaev is the only one among the leaders of the world air shows to have an academic title - a professor. For labor achievements Yuri Alexandrovich was awarded the Order of Labor Red Banner, Friendship of Peoples, Merit for the Fatherland, 4th degree and the Golden Star Order, five medals, many honorary signs and diplomas, including the sign of the Governor of the Moscow Region "For the useful." And if we are talking about the merits of the Russian MAKS, then this, of course, is also the merit of Yuri Nagayev.



In recent years, an honorary citizen of the city of Zhukovsky, Professor Yuri Alexandrovich Nagaev - scientific consultant for MAKS and LII.

Sources:
Berne L. MAKS-2001: Results and Lessons // Wings of the Motherland. 2001. No.9. C. 11-12.
Kitaev-Smyk L. Introduction to astronautics // Aviapanorama. 2013. No.5. C. 48-49.
Yakubovich N. From the catapult to MAKS // Wings of the Motherland. 2001. No.7. C. 29-30.
Fillipova A. Standing at the origins // Zhukovsky. 2009. September. C. 45-48.
Nagaev Y. MAKS in Russia. Roads of struggle and victories. Zhukovsky: PC Service, 2005. C.83-84.
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