Andrei Nikolayevich Tupolev

Russian aeronautical engineer

• Born: November 10, 1888
• Birthplace: Pustomazovo, Russia
• Died: December 23, 1972
• Place of death: Moscow, Soviet Union (now in Russia)

Tupolev was among the world’s leading designers of military and civilian aircraft. He worked in the Soviet aircraft industry for half a century and designed more than 120 planes, many of which have held world records for being the heaviest, fastest, or largest built. He was first in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to build all-metal aircraft and was a member of the U.S.S.R.’s Academy of Sciences.

Early Life

Andrei Nikolayevich Tupolev (ahn-DRAY-ee neek-eh-LAY-yehv-yihch TEW-pohl-yihf) was born in Pustomazovo, Russia (modern Kalinin Oblast). He was the son of the village notary public. In 1908, he entered the Moscow Higher Technical College (MVTU), from which he was graduated in 1918. There, he studied under Nikolay Yegorovich Zhukovsky, a lecturer in mechanical engineering. Zhukovsky, also known as the “father” of Russian aviation, organized an aeronautical study group of interested students at MVTU, Tupolev being among them. While a student, Tupolev, working with Zhukovsky, was instrumental in developing the first wind tunnels. During the Russian Civil War, Leon Trotsky charged Tupolev and Zhukovsky with the task of creating a multiengine bomber to replace the very effective Il’ya Muromets. They designed a twin-engine triplane that failed, but the idea nevertheless did much to increase Soviet interest in building heavy bombers.

During his student years, Tupolev also worked on the Central Aero and Hydrodynamics Institute (TsAGI), established by Zhukovsky. From 1923 to 1938, he served as the chief engineer, and he continued an association with the institute during most of his career. In the early 1930’s, this was the only organization in the Soviet Union dealing with aeronautics. Tupolev’s first aircraft design, the ANT-1 (the letters were his initials), was a small, thirty-five-horsepower craft. It was built in 1922, the year that Zhukovsky died.

Life’s Work

Following his early research on wind tunnels and training gliders, Tupolev became involved in aerodynamics and the use of metal in aircraft construction. He was the first Soviet engineer to build an all-metal craft. In 1922, he organized a group at TsAGI for the purpose of working on all-metal planes and aerosleighs. In 1925, this group was named Aviation, Hydroaviation, and Special Design. The ANT-1 (1922) was made mostly of aluminum, and the ANT-2 (1924) was made entirely of metal. Both of these were single-engine monoplanes. These early aircraft were often used for propaganda purposes. The ANT-3, completed in 1926, received widespread acclaim when in late summer of that year Mikhail Gromov, in an ANT-3 named Proletari, made a forty-five-hundred-mile flight around various European capitals in approximately thirty-five hours of flying time. The next year, Semyon Shestakov flew Nash otvet (our reply) over Siberia to Tokyo.

Tupolev’s ANT-4 first flew in 1925 and, despite protests from the Germans regarding infringed patents, was quickly put into series production. In 1929, an ANT-4 known as Land of the Soviets flew from Moscow to San Francisco to New York, covering 13,600 miles in 153 flying hours. The wheels were replaced with floats before the flight across the Pacific. This twin-engine plane was developed by the military into a heavy bomber the TB-1. It was also designed as a naval torpedo plane, the MTB-1. These were being built in the Soviet Union in the early 1930’s, as were fighter planes, also designed by Tupolev. Having been instructed to design fighters in 1928, Tupolev produced the ANT-5 or I-4. The I-4 was in service to the Soviet air force until 1933. The ANT-6 or TB-3 was being produced by 1932, and by 1938 it had replaced the ANT-4 or TB-1 as the main Soviet bombing craft.

Tupolev was also a leader in developing planes for civilian transport, and several of his ANT designs were used for this purpose. The ANT-9 had three engines and carried nine passengers, and the ANT-14 had five engines and could seat thirty-six. The passenger plane of the early 1930’s was the ANT-20 named Maxim Gorky . It could carry fifty passengers, making it the largest civilian plane in the world, and could be converted into a bomber or a military transport quite easily. It was developed primarily for propaganda purposes and received much news coverage. It had eight engines and weighed forty tons. It included a radio station, a printing press, a photographic laboratory, loudspeakers, a telephone switchboard, illuminated signs, and recording and projection equipment. It was taken, in 1935, for a demonstration flight and was escorted by a fighter plane that was painted red so people on the ground could easily compare the size of the two planes. The pilot of the fighter plane was a famous stunt pilot who was going through various dives and loops and in the process miscalculated and hit the Maxim Gorky. The plane crashed, killing the forty-nine passengers, all award-winning workers who were on the flight in recognition of their achievement.

Tupolev visited England in 1934 with other Soviet air force officers. In 1935, he completed designs for the ANT-22, a flying boat that set a record by reaching 6,370 feet carrying 22,000 pounds. His ANT-25, also designed in 1935, flew from Moscow to California by crossing the North Pole, traveling 6,262 miles in sixty-two hours and two minutes. The plane brought glory to the Soviet Union but never became the long-range bomber as had been intended.

Between 1933 and 1938, there were two aircraft design establishments serving the Soviet air force: Tupolev’s Experimental Aero-Design Division and Sergey Ilyushin’s Central Design Bureau. There was much rivalry and jealousy between these two establishments. Nikolai Polikarpov, who headed the Central Design Bureau, was, like Tupolev, an uncompromising person. Polikarpov modeled his management style after that of Joseph Stalin, who worked with a small group of loyal followers, while Tupolev insisted that only a large organization could effectively use the talent and have the experience necessary to succeed in the world of complex design. Polikarpov wanted to create aircraft that were superior to those in the West. That was the only way he would feel successful. Tupolev believed that such competition was pointless and that success was measured by designing a craft that served a function required by the Soviet air force.

Tupolev visited the United States and Germany in 1936. In the United States, he studied industrial design at both the Douglas plant in Santa Monica, California, and the Ford plant in Detroit, Michigan. Later that year, he was arrested during the Stalinist purges and was sentenced to five years in prison. He was charged with having sold plans for fighter planes to Germany. Supposedly the Germans used these plans for the construction of the Messerschmidt-109. Tupolev was also said to have opposed the purge trials, during which millions were held without evidence, implying that he was willing to testify against Stalin. Tupolev was followed to prison by most of his senior staff; it is estimated that 450 aircraft designers from his bureau were arrested between 1934 and 1941, 50 being executed and 100 dying in labor camps. Tupolev himself was originally sentenced to death, but Stalin recognized his value to the Soviet Union and established a design bureau in prison so he could continue to work for the good of his country. He later obtained his freedom for having produced a successful attack bomber, the TU-2, which was used extensively during World War II. For this he received a Stalin Prize in 1943. Later when Stalin wanted him to design an attack bomber that could reach the United States and return to the Soviet Union without refueling, Tupolev refused. While his stay in prison silenced his earlier criticism of the Soviet government and philosophy, he still dared to defy Stalin when he knew that he was being requested to perform an impossible task given the existing limits of technology. The arrest bothered Tupolev, and, after Nikita S. Khrushchev became head of the party, Tupolev asked him if it would be possible to remove his arrest record as it was a black mark on the careers of his children as well as his own. Khrushchev, who considered Tupolev to be his country’s greatest airplane designer, agreed. In 1953, after Stalin’s death, Tupolev was given full membership in the Academy of Sciences.

After being released from prison in 1941, Tupolev served as a lieutenant general of the Engineering Technical Forces. In 1944, when three B-29’s were impounded after being forced to land near Vladivostok following raids over Japan, Tupolev was assigned the task of producing a similar plane. In response, he designed the TU-4, which was put into production in less than a year. The Soviets built around fifteen hundred of these planes before they stopped production in 1954. The TU-4’s could reach the United States and return to the Soviet Union if they were refueled in the air. Yet despite the superiority of the B-29 during World War II, by the time the TU-4 was in use it was outdated as the United States was already producing superior models.

Tupolev was a very practical person. Sometimes his airplanes did not turn out to be good for their intended use. The TU-95 was a turboprop bomber that could fly around 850 kilometers per hour and could not go higher than eighteen thousand meters. It had an excellent range, but its speed and altitude limitations would make it very easy to shoot down. Tupolev suggested that he be allowed to modify it for civilian uses. The TU-95 thus became the TU-114, the first nonstop passenger plane between Moscow and Washington.

Toward the end of World War II, Tupolev became concerned with developing jet-propulsion engines. He used British and German engines on his TU-2’s to create a prop-jet. This was called a TU-2A and first appeared in 1947. Within two years, Tupolev was made a Hero of Socialism and received the Order of Lenin and two more Stalin Prizes. In 1948, his tactical jet bomber, TU-10, appeared, and in three years this plane was being used at bases in Eastern Europe. By the early 1950’s Tupolev had developed a long-range strategic bomber, the TU-75, used in the Far East. In 1952, this brought Tupolev and his associates another Stalin Prize. His TxAGI-428 was similar to the B-52 and could deliver a hydrogen bomb . In 1956, his TU-104 transport was flown to England. It had a capacity of fifty persons and was considered well in advance of anything likely to be developed soon in the West. Tupolev visited England in 1956 with Khrushchev and announced that he was in the process of completing designs for a jet airliner. In September, 1957, his TU-114, capable of carrying 220 persons, was in operation. The culmination of his career came in 1968, when the supersonic TU-144 made its first flight. By 1971, it was in production. Foreign engineers had started work on the Concorde two and a half years before Tupolev began the project. On May 25, 1971, a TU-144 landed in Paris on its first flight West with its designer on board. A little more than a year later, at age eighty-four, Tupolev died.

Significance

Born before the advent of flight, Tupolev lived to witness and be a primary contributor to spectacular advances in aviation history. Having devoted more than fifty years of his life to keeping his country on the leading edge of aeronautical technology, he, more than anyone, made a greater impact on the development of Russian aviation. Tupolev had special problems as a Soviet designer. Not only did his planes have to be able to operate in and withstand the fierce winters of Siberia, but also, as late as 1960, there were still runways in major cities that were unpaved. However, from monoplanes to fighters to supersonic jet transport, Tupolev’s design bureau led the way. Because of his efforts, within a decade after the end of World War II, the Soviets had considerably diminished the United States’ lead in air power.

Tupolev loved to travel to air shows in the West to obtain ideas to help him in his work. His last visit was to Paris in 1967. He also served as host to foreign visitors in his own country, graciously showing them his facilities near Moscow. Neil Armstrong was among the last of such guests, visiting with Tupolev in 1970. In a time when the Soviet Union remained quite isolated from capitalist societies, Tupolev did much to improve communications. Khrushchev, always an admirer of Tupolev for his enormous technical achievements, his passionate commitment to his work, and his personal warmth and humor, believed that while “there were other talented designers, Andrei Nikolayevich was head and shoulders above” the rest.

Bibliography

Bailes, K. E. “Technology and Legitimacy: Soviet Aviation and Stalinism in the 1930’s.” Technology and Culture 17 (January, 1976): 55-81. Discusses Stalin’s use of the aircraft industry for propaganda purposes and his establishment of a special design bureau in prison camp. Tupolev’s work figures prominently in the article.

Boyd, Alexander. The Soviet Air Force Since 1918. London: Macdonald and Jane’s, 1977. Includes considerable information about Tupolev but puts him in the context of the development of the Soviet air force, indicating the significance of his contribution in relation to the many other engineers and designers who were working during the same period.

Gordon, Yefim, and Vladimir Rigmant. Tupolev Tu-144: Russia’s Concorde. Translated by Dmitry Komissarov. Hinckley, England: Midland, 2005. Relates how the Soviet government commissioned Tupolev to build a supersonic transport jet at the same time that France and Britain were constructing the Concorde. Tupolev’s Tu-144 beat out the competition and became the first supersonic transport plane. The book explains the plane’s design, why it was withdrawn from use, and how its design was adapted to build other airplanes.

Higham, Robin, and Jacob W. Kipp, eds. Soviet Aviation and Air Power: A Historical Review. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1978. This is perhaps the best volume existing on the subject of Soviet air power, and it contains articles covering all aspects of Soviet aviation from the creation of the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute to missile and cosmic research. Puts Tupolev’s work in perspective.

Khrushchev, Nikita. Khrushchev Remembers. 2 vols. Translated and edited by Strobe Talbott. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970, 1974. In volume 2, chapter 3, Khrushchev gives a personal account of his association with Tupolev and discusses the accomplishments of the person he considers to be the Soviet Union’s greatest aircraft designer. This is a very useful discussion.

Taylor, John W. R., ed. Combat Aircraft of the World: From 1909 to the Present. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1977. Allows comparisons of Tupolev’s military craft designs with those of other Soviet and world designers, beginning with the ANT-3, the first mass-produced Soviet craft.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft, 1970-1971. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970. This volume includes complete descriptions and pictures of all aircraft designed by Tupolev from the TU-16 (Badger) in 1954 to the TU-154 (Careless), which went into production in the late 1960’s.