Produced in small quantities, this unusual aircraft was designed to use experimental engines and high rate of fire guns in it’s booms to deliver nasty hits to enemy aircraft, specifically ground attack aircraft and bombers. Due to their terrible range, they were usually regulated to point defense duties, intercepting and destroying as many aggressors they could find. Because of many mechanical issues of it’s powerplants, it’s rather complex construction, and it’s introduction later in the war, only two batches of these heavy fighters-interceptors were built. This particular one happens to be the prototype, which survives to this day flying at airshows around the world, albeit with less powerful engines than it’s original ones.

For the Dogfight Challenge, I decided to settle on an airplane with a similar configuration to the obscure Tupolev I-12, mostly because it had an interesting configuration and also used two engines in a smaller form factor. I made it a taildragger too, which has the tailwheel retract into a small faring in between the horizontal stabilizer. This is also the first plane where I had XML’ed a gun, as well as the first that I had completely made with high physics on the entire time (which may or may not cause problems to people with low physics on). It also features a half custom gear retraction system, and also a lot of power from both of its engines. It will probably lose early in in the challenge, but I do wonder how well it would do against the minigun equipped jets. Anyways, make sure to have high physics on, and enjoy flying this Soviet beast!

Flying tip: This plane performs better the faster it goes, but try to avoid getting too low.
Big thank you to @OneTwo for helping me with some of the aircraft’s testing!