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Originally posted by Mr. Pockets
I understand that. My point was just that I've never seen any other country put them there. The Soviets also built other transport aircraft with the engines in the same place - probably for remote unpaved runways and such.
Man they built some weird stuff. Check out that v-tail on top of the rudder. I swear they intentionally designed their military hardware to look alien so it would scare the hell out of us.
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Amazing what a lousy diet and lots of vodka will do to an engineer isn't it?
I recall seeing a show discussing the Mig fighter aircraft. A couple of things intrigued the Americans. In the early models of the Mig the radios and avionics were run with tubes instead of transistors and ICs. The reason, after some thought by the Americans, was that in a nuclear war the pulses from detonating warheads would have little affect on the tubes while the "solid state" stuff would become inoperable. Basically the Soviet aircraft would continue to fly. Ours? Parked at the bottom of craters.
The other thing that intrigued the Americans is the placement of jet intakes on the fighters. They placed them high up on the wings. The Soviet's reasoning was that during a conflict it would be likely that the planes would be flying out of less than desirable locations (most Russian military airstrips have weeds growing up between the cracks!!) so the engines would be tempted to suck up whatever debris was on the ground. Putting the intakes on the top of the wings would reduce the likelihood of this happening. In the States a crew of guys walks the runway before launching a fighter, removing bits of crud and pebbles to protect the engines.
When we think about it the ugly stuff they made had a certain elegant usefulness about it. But ugly it was/is