White Swan or Ugly Duckling? Harbin's SH-5 Flying Boat.
The newest addition to my site is the Harbin SH-5 anti-ship/anti-submarine flying boat. This rather large and impressive aircraft is extant at the China Aviation Museum at Xiaotingshan and is one of only five to have been built. A contemporary source hints that this aircraft, devoid of its principal submarine detection equipment in the missing Magnetic Anomaly Detector (MAD) stinger in the tail, might be the prototype, despite being marked Red '02'. A grainy picture in a book is captioned showing the prototype similarly marked. Conceived as a replacement for the Beriev Be-6, re-engined in China with WJ-6 turboprops as the Qing-6, The SH-5 is an entirely indigenous flying boat (not an amphibian, as its retractable undercarriage is for self-beaching only and does not enable the aircraft to land on a runway) designed as a long range anti-shipping strike aircraft capable of carrying the YJ-1, or C-101 supersonic cruise missile, as well as an anti-submarine aircraft. First flying on 3 April 1976, more than five years after its completion, development and production of the 'boat was slow, with the last example being completed in 1984. The various reasons for its lengthy gestation and meagre numbers include the after-effects of the disastrous Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, which left the Chinese aviation industry (and industry as a whole) decimated and set back several generations. Attempting to design an entirely new aircraft - no one in China had built a successful indigenous flying boat before - under such conditions would have been challenging, to say the least. One of the principal reasons behind the small number of SH-5s was that the ramjet powered YJ-1 proved to be a difficult proposition, not being able to match its desired range, which led the navy to abandon plans to equip the SH-5 with the weapon in 1980, thus depriving it of its principal role and weapon system. This confined it to the low altitude attack role with torpedoes, depth charges and free-fall bombs, although it is capable of mine laying. On completion of service trials in 1985, the four production examples entered military service with the 3rd Independent Naval Air Regiment at Qingdao. It was rumoured that these were to be equipped with the sensor suite from the Breguet Atlantic maritime patrol aircraft, but it is not confirmed that this has taken place. Powered by four 2,900 shp WJ-5A-1 turboprops (a Chinese derivative of the Ivchenko AI-24V, built in China and fitted to the Shaanxi Y-8, or licence built Antonov An-12 transport), its maximum speed is reported as 556.6 km/h (345.86 mph), with a maximum ceiling of 7,000 m, (22,965 ft) and a maximum range of 4,906 km (3,048 mi). Despite this, the SH-5 is considered underpowered for the tasks required by the Chinese - it is likely that the figures offered here were obtained during trials only. Nevertheless, the SH-5 is an impressive machine in the flesh and sightings of it in its element are rare. Click on the image below to go to its walkaround page:
