TU-95 (Bear) Operational Range

[kevinkins]

The Cold War DB gives a strike radius of 2225 nm (without re-fueling) when loaded with the Kh-20M nuclear cruise missile. (Edit: The one-way distance to Murmansk is 3650 nm.) The Bear will take on fuel from a TU-16N, but it uses up the tanker - i.e., one tanker per Bear to get to and from Iceland. But I can’t see how this bomber was a threat to the US in large numbers during the early Cold War era. Poking around the internet gives a differing combat radius of about 3800 nm. (Edit: This range would be enough.) Does anyone have a Cold War scenario from around 1960 that I can look at that has the Bear bomb Washington DC and return to home base? I believe that was Murmansk. 3800 nm is enough for a one-way trip to DC without refueling. Seems impossible for all but a hand full of Bears to return given the USSR’s lack of refueling capacity. And the Bear had the longest range of all their bombers. Do suicide missions come into play early on before ICBMs became available?

https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2019/02/1 ... u-95-bear/

Kevin

[Nikel]

Hi. I found the following information, hope it is useful:

"The Tu-95A was capable of attacking continental American targets via two-way unrefuelled missions." Reference book: Soviet Strategic Bombers by JS Moore.

And this was the Tu-95 that dropped atomic bombs. Then the one launching missiles should have even less problems reaching Washington DC.

So those ranges must be wrong. Just the wikipedia gives one range for each variant, but always more than 10000 kms.

Uzyn in Ukraine was the nearest airbase to USA.

According to the wiki, from here "a pair of Tu-95 aircraft surpassed the official flight range record, flying 17150 and 16950 km respectively."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzyn_(air_base)


And the distance from Uzyn to Washington is around 7860 kms (Google maps).


Edit: I just read that: "Ad hoc tactical airfields were setup in tundra areas around the North Polar regions, placing the bombers within practical striking distance of strategic U.S. targets."

Must have been something similar to what is displayed in this pic in modern times:





Taken from this article.

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... overeignty

[kevinkins]

Thanks for looking into this. There are several things: either the Cold War DB is incorrect or I have the wrong one since I am surprised that the ranges went under the radar since 2013. Do me a favor and check the Command numbers on your end. They can't be so far off even coming from a variety of sources. I can't get them back to Murmansk, let alone Ukraine.
The Bear crashes at the Greenland border 1900 nm from Murmansk on the way back. The blue range ring collapses quickly over Newfoundland on the way to DC.

Kevin

[Nikel]

I also see the same number, 2225 nm strike radius for a Tu-95KM Bear C with 1 Kh-20M 800kT Nuclear.

2225 nm are 4121 kms, two-way, 8242 kms. I'd say it is wrong.


Just in case, I had edited the post above, and though the nearest base was Uzyn they had, like now, those Northern tactical bases, I do not know whether they are the same or not.

[Nikel]

The Bear crashes at the Greenland border 1900 nm from Murmansk on the way back. The blue range ring collapses quickly over Newfoundland on the way to DC.

Try with the Bear A with the hydrogen bomb or the RN-28, it will arrive but will not come back , 2295 nm.

[SunlitZelkova]

Thanks for looking into this. There are several things: either the Cold War DB is incorrect or I have the wrong one since I am surprised that the ranges went under the radar since 2013. Do me a favor and check the Command numbers on your end. They can't be so far off even coming from a variety of sources. I can't get them back to Murmansk, let alone Ukraine.
The Bear crashes at the Greenland border 1900 nm from Murmansk on the way back. The blue range ring collapses quickly over Newfoundland on the way to DC.

Kevin

The R-16 ICBM has had a range of a mere 1700 some nautical miles for awhile (at least four years).

Not only is the range of the Tu-95 incorrect, basically all of the loadouts are inaccurate and most actual Soviet nuclear bombs are missing. This is the case for the Tu-4A and Tu-16 too.

———

To anyone who sees this I ask that you refrain from making a DB update request as I plan to do this in a few hours. I have several books with the necessary info, although if you also have the info it would not be an issue of course.

[SunlitZelkova]

I have submitted an update request. I will provide the links here in case anyone is interested in what all was incorrect.

Corrections to the Tu-95 series- https://github.com/PygmalionOfCyprus/cm ... ssues/1485

For the Tu-95, it is missing 200 kiloton and 2.9 megaton bombs-

https://github.com/PygmalionOfCyprus/cm ... ssues/1493

https://github.com/PygmalionOfCyprus/cm ... ssues/1495

[kevinkins]

Very comprehensive and well done. Thank you.

Kevin

[Nikel]

Indeed, that you SunlitZelkova.

[Tcao]

Thanks for looking into this. There are several things: either the Cold War DB is incorrect

A lot of CWDB's range info are not correct, at least they are not match with the A/C's performance in CMO

[Easy301]

I have submitted an update request. I will provide the links here in case anyone is interested in what all was incorrect.

Corrections to the Tu-95 series- https://github.com/PygmalionOfCyprus/cm ... ssues/1485

For the Tu-95, it is missing 200 kiloton and 2.9 megaton bombs-

https://github.com/PygmalionOfCyprus/cm ... ssues/1493

https://github.com/PygmalionOfCyprus/cm ... ssues/1495

Thanks a ton for taking the time to gather all the info and make the DB requests for us. These will be pretty big positive changes.

[thewood1]

From "Tupolev Bombers" by David Donald...

Screenshot 2022-06-29 115432.jpg (163.16 KiB) Viewed 1492 times

Thats only 4600 nm. Of course this is well after the SU shifted the Bear from bomber role to cruise missile carrier so redesigns might have sacrificed range for throw weight.

[SunlitZelkova]

From "Tupolev Bombers" by David Donald...

Screenshot 2022-06-29 115432.jpg


Thats only 4600 nm. Of course this is well after the SU shifted the Bear from bomber role to cruise missile carrier so redesigns might have sacrificed range for throw weight.

Another thing to note is that Tu-95s were always intended to fly towards forward operating locations in the north before making their way to North America, not fly directly from their bases deeper in the USSR.

One of them, called Anadyr, is available as an import/export file that comes with the base game (for DB3000). If you load it up, you will notice that that airfield gets the Tu-95s (with their correct range) all the way out to British Columbia (or so, it’s been awhile since I checked), and from then the range of the Kh-55 or Kh-102 would allow striking much of the West Coast.

These bombers would have/will have it hard though. They face NORAD coming from both Alaska and the F-15s in Oregon, while those taking off from the Kola Peninsula have to make their way around Scandinavia and then past NATO naval forces, and then past NORAD in the northeast to launch their weapons.

These challenges are part of why the Soviet nuclear force was so ICBM dependent compared with that of the US.

[kevinkins]

I have submitted an update request. I will provide the links here in case anyone is interested in what all was incorrect.

Hi SunlitZelkova ... Did you receive any feedback on this from the keepers of the CWDB? Just curious.

Kevin

[SunlitZelkova]

I have submitted an update request. I will provide the links here in case anyone is interested in what all was incorrect.

Hi SunlitZelkova ... Did you receive any feedback on this from the keepers of the CWDB? Just curious.

Kevin

I have not. I suspect modifications to aircraft performance take quite a bit of time compared to ships or facilities. For comparison, several weeks ago I made a request for three different things- corrections to the cancelled Soviet capital ships, two missing Soviet ballistic missiles, and a correction to the MiG-17’s performance. The ships have been fixed and the missiles are in the latest DB version, but the MiG-17 remains a work in progress.

Also, around the time I made the request for the Tu-95, I also made a request for corrections to the Tu-4’s performance, and separately requested missing loadouts for the Tu-4. The loadouts are in the latest DB version, they simply consisted of existing bombs in the DB, but the performance corrections for either bomber have not been implemented yet.

By the way, if you are curious, I also requested corrections to the Tu-95’s jet powered counterpart, the Myasishchev M-4. It also lacks the range it had, among other things- https://github.com/PygmalionOfCyprus/cm ... ssues/1655

Correction requests for the early Tu-16s will be coming soon.

Along with the aforementioned missing ballistic missiles, the incorrect ranges for the R-16 and R-7 ICBMs have been fixed after I made a request, another indicator of how aircraft are more complex.

I’m looking forward to some epic late 50s/early 60s nuclear war scenarios once everything is implemented though

[kevinkins]

Thanks for the update. The Bear is an important part of strategic CW scenarios so I hope any changes are made sooner rather than later.

Kevin

[SunlitZelkova]

Correction requests for the early Tu-16s will be coming soon.

Little bit of an update. I have decided not to request changes to the Tu-16s. While there are historical issues, none of them are game breaking, so to lessen the workload I won’t be making such a request until after the M-4/3M and Tu-95 are fixed.

Two tips though for using the Tu-16A-

1. The bomb rack loadouts are inaccurate, only later 1970s Tu-16 missile carriers had these. It should only have internal bomb loadouts.
2. Not every Tu-16A had refueling, most were upgraded to have it but some 90~ or so remained without it. Turning off refueling in doctrine could replicate this.