OKB-1 EF 131
| EF-131 | |
|---|---|
| Role | Bomber |
| National origin | USSR |
| Manufacturer | GOZ-1 |
| Designer | Dr. Brunolf Baade |
| First flight | 1946 (Germany) 23 May 1947 (USSR) |
| Number built | 2 |
| Developed from | Junkers Ju 287 |
| Variants | OKB-1 140 |
The OKB-1/Junkers EF-131 was a jet bomber produced in Germany and the USSR from 1944.
The EF-131 was, in essence, a hybrid airframe built from the components of the Junkers Ju 287 V2 and V3, the second and third prototypes (V – Versuchs – test/research/prototype) of the Luftwaffe's radical forward-swept-wing jet bomber. The V2 was nearly complete at the time of its capture by Soviet forces in 1945, and was taken into Red Air Force hands under military intelligence supervision along with the skeletal airframe of the barely-started V3. The V3 was to have been the first 287 to be made to pre-production model specifications, and the eventual EF-131 was almost identical to it in terms of overall design. The airplane was completed and briefly test flown, in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, before being dismantled and transported to GOZ-1, (Gosudarstvenny Optniy Zavod – state experimental plant), at Dubna near Moscow. OKB-1 at GOZ-1 was formed with Dr. Brunolf Baade as the chief designer, and a very talented team of German engineers seconded by the Soviet government. Extreme pressure was applied to get the aircraft ready to appear in the 1947 Aviation Day fly-past at Tushino airfield, but several factors combined to prevent the EF-131 from appearing.
Flight testing in the USSR began on 23 May 1947, at the LII airfield, after the airframe had been strengthened to meet the requirements of a TsAGI(Tsentralniy Aerodinamicheskiy i Gidrodinamicheskiy Institut- central aerodynamics and hydrodynamics institute) structural survey, which revealed major weaknesses of the airframe. The first flight resulted in the port undercarriage collapsing due to a bolt failure, subsequent flight tests revealed major deficiencies such as nosewheel shimmy and tail surface vibration. Rectification of the defects caused many delays but the worst delays were caused by bureaucracy when it was decreed that foreign workers could not work at the LII airfield.
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