Not to be outdone by their aviation rivals in the west, the Soviet Union built and briefly flew its own supersonic commercial jet, the Tupolev Tu-144. Sixteen were built and a handful remain. Only one ...

When the first Tupolev Tu-144 thundered its way into aeronautical history 50 years ago, lifting off from Zhukovksy airfield on the last day of 1968, much of the supersonic programme remained cloaked ...

To many, when they think of supersonic airliners, they instantly think of Concorde. The joint Anglo-French aircraft that served for nearly 30 years, ferrying people across the Atlantic at Mach 2.

Here’s What You Need To Remember: The problems Concorde experienced were due to regulations and market forces, rather than shortcomings inherent to the airframe itself. The Soviet-built Tu-144 ...

Key Point: The Tu-144 was a fiasco, draining precious time and rubles from other projects. The Soviet-built Tu-144 actually flew before its supersonic rival Concorde, though it had a number of flaws ...

There is ample evidence of Soviet industrial espionage in the 1960s and 1970s, with the KGB specifically targeting the Anglo-French Concorde program. Networks of informants, typically mid-level ...