Sheremetev Sh-5

The Sheremetev Sh-5 (Шереметьев Ш-5) was a two-seat sailplane designed by Boris Nikolayevich Sheremetev and produced in the Soviet Union in the 1930s.[1] It was an unorthodox design, with a pod-and-boom layout and a cruciform tail that had its horizontal stabiliser mounted atop the boom with a large ventral fin extending below it.[2] The monoplane wing was mounted high, on a pylon above the fuselage pod, and braced to the fuselage with V-struts.[1] Two open cockpits were provided in tandem, with the rear cockpit located beneath the wing. The landing gear consisted of a single sprung skid under the fuselage and a small tailwheel on the ventral fin.[2]

The Sh-5 was used to establish several records during the decade, including distance records of 60 kilometres (37 mi) and 140 kilometres (87 mi) in 1933,[3] and an altitude record set by Dmitri Aleksandrovich Koshits in 1935.[4] On May 11 the same year, Koshits made a long-distance flight through the Caucasus mountains in a Sh-5 towed behind a Polikarpov R-5, covering 5,025 kilometres (3,122 mi) at altitudes up to 3,200 metres (10,500 ft) in 34 hours of flight.[5][6][7]

The Sh-5 was also produced in Turkey as an unlicensed copy by THK as the THK-9 and subsequently by MKEK as the MKEK-7 when the latter company took over the production facilities of the former in 1952.[8]