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That’s because it was an almost exact copy of the VC-10, thanks to the Soviet Union’s extensive industrial espionage department. The only visible difference is the undercarriage pods in the wings to give a wider stance (for dodgy Russian runways) and the sawtooth leading edge on the wings.
jj72-
it was an almost exact copy of the VC-10, thanks to the Soviet Union’s extensive industrial espionage
This accusation has been made many times about various superficially similar developments, but very rarely supported by any actual evidence of the supposed espionage or a properly detailed examination of the engineering.
There were a lot of tail mounted engines in those days, and it's not surprising that the VC-10 and Il-62 looked similar since the laws of physics are unaffected by the iron curtain, just as Buran and STS were bound to bear a superficial resemblance despite the massive differences in detail once both teams had decided on vertical launch and runway recovery.
There are genuine examples, the most obvious being the Tu-4 which was literally reverse engineered from the B-29 by dismantling captured samples, but most of the real examples of espionage are related to detailed technical matters which don't materialise as the so-called copycat aircraft.
In general, most such accusations are little more than racism by people who are either ignorantly or wilfully blind to the fact that aeronautical engineers in the former Russian and Soviet empires have often been the global leaders in their fields rather than the followers.
In certain aerodynamic details, the VC-10 became more like the Il-62 when upgraded to Super spec, not necessarily because Vickers owned a camera but more likely because they were simply years behind TsAGI in their understanding of the finer details and took a while to arrive independently at similar conclusion
gbj_tester
Those Russian planes remind me of the Vickers VC 10 from my youth....