Andrei Tupolev

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The Russian aeronautical engineer and army officer Andrei Nikolaevich Tupolev (1888-1972) was the leading designer of large and heavy aircraft in the former U.S.S.R.

Andrei Tupolev was born on Nov. 10, 1888, in the village of Pustomazovo (now Kalinin Oblast). In 1909 he entered the Moscow Higher Technical College, studied under Nikolai Egorovich Zhukovskii, the "father of Russian aviation, " built wind tunnels as a student, and participated in the college's aeronautical club. It is believed that he received further training under Hugo Junkers, who set up an aircraft construction facility in Fili, a suburb outside of Moscow, under a 1922 Russo-German agreement. After graduation Tupolev assisted Zhukovskii in organizing the Central Aerohydrodynamics Institute, where he was assistant director from 1918 to 1935 and headed its design bureau beginning in 1922.

Tupolev's early work centered on wind tunnels and training gliders. He became a pioneer in the construction of all-metal aircraft fabricated out of Duralumin. In the course of his career Tupolev designed well over 100 planes, from his first, the ANT-1, a light transport made mainly of wood, to the supersonic jet transport, the TU-144, the world's most sophisticated commercial aircraft. Some of his more significant earlier designs are the two-seater ANT-2, constructed in 1924 completely out of Duralumin; the TB-1, a two-engine bomber with a range of 625 miles and a speed of 138 miles an hour; and the highly successful four-engine heavy bomber, the TB-3, weighing over 43, 000 pounds and capable of carrying over 2 tons.

Tupolev headed the design bureau that produced an unusual 40-ton plane, the Maksim Gorkii, which carried six engines mounted on its wings and two atop the fuselage. Within the plane provision was made for a telephone switchboard, telegraph center, radio station, printing facilities, photographic laboratory, and motion picture projectors. With much fanfare the Maksim Gorkii made a trial flight in June 1934. The following year it collided with another craft, resulting in the death of 35 people; it was never replaced.

In 1936 Tupolev visited the United States and Germany to study methods of aircraft construction, and the following year he was accused of selling to Germany blueprints of a plane that supposedly became the Messerschmitt 109 fighter. He was subsequently labeled an "enemy of the people" and sentenced to be executed. While in prison he designed the TU-2, a twin-engine dive bomber. For his role in producing the Soviet Union's sole new bomber of World War II, he was released from prison. In 1944 he was the Soviet Union's chief designer of heavy bombers. After the forced landing of three Boeing B-29 Superfortresses in 1944 in the Soviet Far Eastern Territory, Tupolev produced a Russian version of this American bomber.

In the postwar period, Tupolev's best designs include the TU-104, a twin-jet transport used extensively in the U.S.S.R.; the TU-114, a double-deck, four-engine turbo-prop passenger plane; and the TU-144, the Soviet entry in the supersonic-transport field. On Dec. 31, 1968, the TU-144 lifted off in a test flight - the first supersonic transport to become airborne. It was capable of speeds up to 1500 miles an hour with a range of 4000 miles.

Tupolev was made a lieutenant general in the technical branch of the Red Army during World War II. He became a full member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1953 and served on many governmental agencies.

He died in 1972.

Further Reading

There is no definitive work on Tupolev in Russian or English. Scattered references in Soviet newspapers, aviation journals and surveys of Soviet aviation provide some information on his contributions. However, a fine section on the history of Soviet military aviation appears in William Green and John Fricker, The Air Forces of the World: The History, Development and Present Strength (1958). Material on Tupolev's aircraft can be found in Robert A. Kilmarx, A History of Soviet Air Power (1962), and Asher Lee, The Soviet Air Force (1962).

(1888 - 1972), patriarch of Soviet aircraft design.

Andrei Tupolev was one of the most important aircraft designers in the Soviet Union during the interwar period and was awarded the honor of "Hero of Socialist Labor" three times in his career. Tupolev is considered by many to be the father of Soviet nonferrous metal aircraft construction, and he developed more than fifty original aircraft designs and over 100 modifications. In addition to fighter aircraft and heavy long-range bomber aircraft, Tupolev also designed aero-sleighs, dirigibles, and torpedo boats. Educated at the prestigious Bauman Technical School in Moscow, he was one of the founders of the Central Aviation Institute in 1918 and created a design bureau within it. He spent most of his career at the design bureau and in 1936 received orders from the Heavy Industry Commissariat to transfer to GUAP (State Directorate of Aviation Industry) as their chief engineer who oversaw aircraft production. In May 1937, Tupolev's ANT-7 flew to the North Pole successfully. One month later, he was accused of being an enemy of the state and was arrested for his alleged role in espionage. After serving one year in regular prison, Tupolev was permitted to continue his design work in a special prison as a means of avoiding hard labor. Although his name was temporarily withdrawn from public, his stature was restored in the post-Stalin era.

Bibliography

Saukke, M. B. (1993). The Little-Known Tupolev (Neizvestnyi Tupolev). Moscow: Original.

Yakovlev, A.S. (1982). Soviet Aircraft (Sovetskiye samolety). Moscow: Nauka.

—SALLY W. STOECKER

Andrei Nikolayevich Tupolev (Russian: Андрей Николаевич Туполев; November 10, 1888 – December 23, 1972) was a pioneering Soviet aircraft designer.

During his career, he designed and oversaw the design of more than 100 types of aircraft, some of which set 78 world records. In recognition of his work, he was made an honorary member of Britain's Royal Aeronautical Society and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

He was honoured in his own country by being made an academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1953), Colonel-General (1968), and three times a Hero of Socialist Labor (1945, 1957, 1972).^[1]

Contents 1 Early life 2 Work at TsAGI 3 Design of the Tu-95 4 Commercial aviation 5 Loss of power in the Soviet Union 6 References 7 External links

Early life

Tupolev was born in the village of Pustomazovo (Russian: Пустомазово), near the city of Kimry, Tver region, Russia.^[2]

Andrei was the sixth of seven children born to his parents. After first being educated at home, he studied at the Gymnasium in Tver and graduated in 1908. He then applied for courses at two Russian universities and was accepted at both: Imperial Moscow Technical School (IMTU Russian: ИМТУ) and the Institute of Railway Engineers. He accepted the place at IMTU.

In 1909, he began studying aerodynamics under the Russian aviation pioneer N.E. Zhukovski. During this time he built one of the world's first wind tunnels which led to the formation of an aerodynamic laboratory at IMTU.

In 1911 he was accused of being involved with revolutionaries and arrested. He was later released on condition that he stay at his family home in Pustomazovo and was only allowed to return to IMTU in 1914. He completed his studies in 1918 and was awarded the degree of Engineer-Mechanic when he presented his thesis on the development of seaplanes.

By 1920 the IMTU had been renamed the Moscow Higher Technical School (MVTU) and Tupolev was teaching a course there on the basics of aerodynamic calculations.^[3]

Work at TsAGI

Tupolev was a leading light of the Moscow-based Central Aero and Hydrodynamics Institute (TsAGI; (Russian: Центральный аэро-гидродинамический институт; ЦАГИ)) from 1929 until his death in 1972. The Central Design Office or TsKB (Russian: Центральное конструкторское бюро; ЦКБ) based there produced bombers and some airliners, which in the years before World War II were based partially, especially in his 1930s-era designs, on the all-metal aircraft design concepts pioneered by Hugo Junkers. As the number of qualified aircraft designers increased, Tupolev set up his own office, producing a number of designs designated with the prefix ANT (Russian: АНТ) from his initials. However, in 1937, Tupolev was arrested together with Vladimir Petlyakov on trumped up charges of plotting a "Russian Fascist Party." In 1939, he was moved from a prison to an NKVD sharashka for aircraft designers in Bol'shevo near Moscow, with many ex-TsAGI people already set to work. The sharashka soon moved to Moscow and was dubbed "Tupolevka" after its most eminent inmate. Tupolev was tried and convicted in 1940 with a ten year sentence, but was released in 1944 "to conduct important defence work." (He was not to be rehabilitated fully until two years after Stalin's 1953 death.)

Tupolev headed the major project of reverse engineering the American Boeing B-29 strategic bomber. The USSR had repeatedly asked, and been denied, lend-lease B-29s. Using three machines which landed in Siberia after bombing Japan in 1945, Tupolev succeeded in replicating the world's first nuclear delivery platform down to trivial detail. Moreover, he got it into volume production, with crews fully trained in time for the 1947 May Day parade. The copy was designated Tu-4, with many subsequent Tu aircraft having the number 4 in their designations.

Design of the Tu-95

By the time of his rehabilitation in 1955, Tupolev had designed and was about to start testing his unique turboprop strategic bomber, the Tu-95. In the years to come, he beat off able competition from Vladimir Myasishchev and his M-4 series of jet-powered strategic bombers. This was in part thanks to Tupolev's close rapport with Nikita Khrushchev who had denounced Stalin's terror, a victim of which Tupolev had been.

Commercial aviation

At about the same time, Tupolev introduced into service the world's second jet airliner, the Tu-104. The aeroplane was the first jet transport to stay in uninterrupted service, and the only one in service anywhere in the world for two years until late 1958. It was followed by a series of Tu passenger jets, including the supersonic Tu-144, designed by Tupolev's son Alexei Tupolev (1925–2001).

Loss of power in the Soviet Union

After Khruschev's removal from office in late 1964, the ageing Tupolev gradually lost positions at the centres of power to rivals. Though the prestige Tu-144 programme enjoyed top level support until 1973, as did the important Tu-154, these positions were never recovered, being largely taken up by Ilyushin.

To his contemporaries, Tupolev was known as a witty but crude master of mat (a rapid-fire Russian male-speak infused with obscenity) who invariably and energetically insisted on fast and adequate technical fixes at the expense of scholastic ideal solutions. A hallmark of his was to get an aeroplane into service very rapidly; then began an often interminable process of improving the shortcomings of the "quick and dirty" initial design. To his competitors among the Soviet aircraft design community, he was known above all as politically astute; a shrewd and unforgiving rival.

Tupolev was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

References

1. ^ Central Museum of the Military Air Forces of the Russian Federation
2. ^ Tupolev Company Website
3. ^ Tupolev: The Man and His Aircraft, P. Duffy & A.I. Kandalov, 1996, page 9

External links

• biography

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