This is the Link-SPB system using two Polikarpov I-16 fighters under the wings of a Tupolev TB-3 bomber.
Basically a 1930s flying aircraft carrier, this system of carrying fighter planes on a heavy bomber was developed by engineer Vladimir Sergevich Vakhmistrov. Various numbers of planes and arrangements were tried. The main purpose of the system was to deliver dive bomber strikes on important targets behind enemy lines which were out of range of conventional heavy bombers but they also could be used as a fighter escort as needed. It's unclear whether they then returned to the mothership or simply ran for home. The program had been abandoned by WW2. More here.
2 comments:
Follows on from the airship aircraft carriers at the end of WW1. Interesting that the concept lived on even after this variant.
rdguy
It lived on long after these with US Parasite fighters into the 1950s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasite_aircraft
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