The True Story of Soviet Valkyrie Sukhoi T-4 Sotka

It was a unique Soviet machine, which was capable to reach the speed of up to 3200 km/h or Mach 3. At the same time, it had a relatively small weight, about 100 tons. This gave the aircraft its unofficial name “sotka”, which means “a hundred“, it was also called the “Project 100“, while its name, the T-4 was classified immediately after the work on the plane had begun. So many names for just one plane. Eventually, this caused even more confusion with the name of the aircraft. Since the T-4 was developed by the Sukhoi Design Bureau, it’s sometimes called the SU-100, although it’s not quite accurate. Traditionally, Sukhoi divided the design programs into two groups: “program T”, which meant “triangular wing” and “program S” which stood for “swept wing”; and this is where the indices of the experimental aircrafts come from, while the index SU was received only by the serial models. Most of the components and structural elements of the aircraft were invented by its creators. Aro