Giclee Art Print
Su-7 Fitter
A5 £15
A4 £21
A3 £35
A6 Greeting Card £4
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Giclée fine art print of an original highly detailed A2 graphite drawing of a Czechoslovakian Su-7BM, based on a photo taken by the artist.
Nato designated as the "Fitter-A" this supersonic fighter was developed in the Soviet Union in 1955. Seemingly it was not successful in this application and by 1959 production of the Mig-21 was prioritised for the fighter role. In the meantime Sukhoi had been tasked with developing a ground attack variant of the Fitter. The soon Introduced Su-7B and its variants went on to serve as the main ground attack aircraft of the 1960s for the Soviet Union. Including all variants approximately 2000 were built and numerous countries operated them (691 exported).
The Czechoslovak Air Force was the first foreign operator of the Su-7 in 1963 procuring close to 100 aircraft of the BM and BKM variants as seen here. Distinguishable by the upgraded fuel system with external piping on either side of the fuselage spine, this variant had an upgraded AL-7F-1 engine, fuel tanks installed in the wings, "wet" underwing hardpoints for carrying external fuel tanks, and was capable of carrying tactical nuclear bombs.
On design: the aircraft had both merits and draw backs. On the one hand it had a rugged simplicity, docile flight characteristics and was easy to maintain. It was the first Soviet aircraft to utilize the all-moving tailplane and a movable inlet cone in the air intake. The prototype also set the soviet speed record in 1956 flying at Mach 2.04.
On the other hand, its Lyulka AL-7 engine had a notoriously high fuel consumption which limited combat radius, and this had a knock on effect of reducing the ordnance load since even on short missions drop tanks were needed. Whilst the highly swept wings allowed the jet considerable speed even at low level, the drawback was the need for long runways.
There may be some familiarity about the aircraft and that's because these problems were progressively addressed eventually evolving into the Su-17 fitter.
