The Alekseyev I-212 was a twin-engined jet fighter designed in the USSR in 1947 at the Alekseyev Design Bureau.
It was a twin-seat long-range variant of the I-211, modified in order to achieve better aerodynamical performance. It was intended to be used as an escort, reconnaissance and night fighter.
Even if it's unclear if a prototype was built or not, it's known that, even if it was built, it never was flown.
Designed by Semyon Alekseyev, chief of the newly founded OKB-21 Design Bureau which had the headquarters in Gorky. The aim of this Bureau was to create jet fighter using new, Soviet designed fighters using new engines instead of the old captured World War 2 German ones. The Alekseyev I-21 in every variant was the answer of that Bureau to the requirements of the VVS (Soviet Air Force).
The development of the I-212 began in 1947 as a twin-engined all-metal two-seat jet fighter which featured a round, streamlined fuselage designed to reduce the drag and host the considerable amount of fuel and equipment requested by the VVS. It featured also mid-mounted straight laminar flow wings with nacelles in the middle of the wing and the spars continued by banjo rings around the engines. The tail was cruciform and swept at 45º and, in order to save weight, the main-load bearing structures of the airframe were constructed out of V-95 alluminium alloy and high strength steel. A magnesium alloy, named Elektron, was used for many components and castings and the undercarriage had a trycicle undercarriage and also featured air brakes.
The pilot and the gunner/radio operator sat in tandem back to back in a single pressurized armoured cockpit which featured also ejection seats as well as bullet-proof windscreens. It was going to be powered by two Klimov VK-1 (the Soviet copy of the Rolls-Royce nene) engines but, as they weren't available yet, the Kuznetsov RD-45 were used. It also had a Toryii -1 radar for use by the gunner/radio operator.
It was armed with various guns and cannons, positioned in the nose and in the tail, in a remote-controlled barbette. The cannons placed in the barbette were either two 20mm Berezin B-20 or 23mm Nudelman-Suranov NS-23 and in the front, were either 23mm Nudelman-Suranov NS-23, 37mm Nudelman-Suranov NS-37 and 45mm Nudelman-Suranov NS-45 in the nose, this is it, two back-firing remote-controlled guns and three (up to four) forward firing one, so it could be safely said that the airplane was heavily armed.
It also featured a single hardpoint under each wing in order to carry either a 500kg bomb under each wing or a drop tank of 550kg of fuel.
A prototype was completed and even started taxiing tests in June 1948 but it seems that it never took-off. It's believed that a training version was also planned, the UTI-212 had it gone into production. It's also doubted that a prototype was even completed, however in a meeting at the Kremlin, Alexander Yakovlev, head designer of the Yakovlev design bureau, who saw the Alekseyev's Bureau as a threat for his own "bussiness" deemed the I-212 as "another copy of the Messerschmitt Me-262 and that comment may have influenced into the decission of Stalin about disbanding the OKB-21, because theoretically it wasn't achieving the objectives set.
Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alekseyev_I-212
2. Salamander Books - The complete book of fighters (inside the I-215 they refer to the I-212)
3. http://rufor.org/showthread.php?t=25308
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