SOVIET X - PLANES : Experimental and Prototype Aircraft, 1931 to 1989

Government secrecy is like the basement of an old house. When you're not sure what to do with something, it's easy to cart it down the stairs and stick it away in a corner. It is much harder to carry something back up the steps and clean it up, so what goes down there tends to stay down there. After a few years, even the most compulsive people tend to forget what is in the basement. When they do find something down there, they often have a difficult time remembering why they bought it in the first place.

The Soviet government archives are the biggest, messiest basement in the History of the world. If glasnost endures for fifty years, historians will be lucky to turn over the first layer of records, reports and files, microfiches, old computer tapes, punch cards and handwritten memos.

In the Soviet Union, between the revolution and the late 1980s, almost all aerospace research and development was, by definition, a military secret. Some information was released : When a new fighter entered service, for example, Tass or Novosti would issue a photograph of it ( usually distorted beyond recognition by a near - fisheye lens held at a peculiar angle ) but the aircraft would not be identified in the caption. In 1961 and 1967, the Soviet Ministry of Defense mounted big air shows near Moscow ; but they never invited skilled aviation photographers, and the pictures always seemed to be taken from a great distance on a rainy day.

Western intelligence usually had access to better raw data, but the best information was secret because it might compromise the source. But even the intelligence agencies often did not know what was happening until hardware turned up in East Germany, within telephoto range of N.A.T.O.'s Military Missions.

On the other hand, an informed Western reader knew much more about Soviet military developments than most Soviet officials did. ( ... ) This is why this collection of photos, ranging across four decades and many design bureaus and taken in many locations, is so unusual and valuable.

( ... ) This is not a comprehensive history of Soviet prototypes ; the documentation of the history of Soviet aviation has only just started. The reader will notice that the quality of the photographs is not up to Western standards. ( ... ) What is in this book is a small sample of the secret history of aviation in the Soviet Union. What it tells us in the West is, mostly, how little we knew.

Bill Sweetman