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Astounding Firepower and Flaws Combined To Create The Most Bizarre WWII Bomber

Featuring 88 submachineguns and a lot of manpower

Grant Piper
4 min readMar 30, 2022
Tupolev Tu-2 (CC BY 3.0)

The Tupolev Tu-2 was the extremely versatile backbone of the Soviet airforce throughout World War II. There were over 2,000 Tu-2s built and they served in militaries all over the world. What made the Tupolev Tu-2 so interesting was that it was able to be reconfigured in a variety of different ways to serve in a variety of different combat roles.

Unsurprisingly, the Russians managed to create a variant that was mind-boggling in its audacity. The Russians are no strangers to odd weaponry. They created a flash-bulb pistol to blind enemy astronauts. The USSR designed a fully functional assault rifle for use in underwater combat. They even invented massive remote controlled tanks for use on the battlefields of World War II.

But this idea was possibly even crazier than those.

The Tupolev Tu-2Sh

PPSh-41 (Wikipedia)

The Tu-2Sh was a variant of the traditional Tupolev bomber that featured 88 separate PPSh-41 machineguns bolted to its underside. The iconic PPSh-41 machinegun is…

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Grant Piper
Grant Piper

Written by Grant Piper

Professional writer. Amateur historian. Husband, father, Christian.

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