Andrey Nikolaevich Tupolev (1888 - 1972) is one of the most outstanding designers in the history of world aviation. He created dozens of a wide variety of military and civil aircraft. The name “Tu” has become a world famous brand. Tupolev's planes were designed so well that some of them continue to work almost half a century after the death of the creator. In the rapidly changing world of aviation, this speaks volumes.
Professor Toportsov, a character in Lev Kassil's novel, was largely copied from A. N. Tupolev. The writer met the aircraft designer during the transfer of the ANT-14 aircraft to the Gorky squadron, and was delighted with Tupolev's erudition and wit. The aircraft designer was not only a genius in his field, but also versed in literature and theater. In music, his tastes were unpretentious. Once, after a pompous jubilee banquet, combined with a concert, he, without lowering his voice, called the employees to him, they say, we will sing folk songs.
Designer Tupolev was always a little ahead of customers, be it the civilian fleet or the Air Force. That is, he did not wait for the task “to create an aircraft of such and such a capacity with such and such high-speed data”, or “a bomber capable of carrying N bombs over a distance of NN kilometers”. He began designing airplanes when the need for them was far from obvious. His foresight is proved by the following figure: out of over 100 aircraft created at TsAGI and Tupolev Central Design Bureau, 70 were mass-produced.
Andrei Nikolaevich, which was a rarity, combined both the talent of a designer and the ability of an organizer. He considered the latter a kind of punishment for himself. He complained to his comrades: he wanted to pick up a pencil and go to the drawing board. And you have to hang on the phone, sneeze subcontractors and industrialists, knock out the necessary from the commissariats. But after the evacuation of the Tupolev design bureau to Omsk, life in it was barely flickering until the arrival of Andrei Nikolaevich. There are no cranes - I begged the river workers, it's winter anyway, navigation is over. It's cold in the workshops and hostels - they brought two faulty locomotives from the locomotive repair plant. We got warm, and the electric generator was also started. 
Delays were another Tupolev's trademark. Moreover, he was late only where he did not feel the need to be present, and only in peacetime. Expression "Yes, you are not a Tupolev to be late!" sounded in the corridors of the People's Commissariat, and then the Ministry of Aviation Industry both before the war, and after, before Andrei Nikolaevich's landing, and after it.
However, what could be better? than his works, tell about the character of a talented person,?
1. The first vehicle manufactured under the guidance of the aircraft designer Tupolev was ... a boat. It was called ANT-1, like the future aircraft. And also ANT-1 is a snowmobile, also built by Andrey Nikolaevich. Such strange shudders have a simple reason - Tupolev experimented with metals suitable for use in aviation. At TsAGI, he headed the commission on metal aircraft construction. But even the status of Zhukovsky's deputy did not help break the mistrust of most TsAGI employees, who believed that aircraft should be built from cheap and affordable wood. So I had to deal with palliatives in limited funds, cost a snowmobile and a boat. All these vehicles, including the ANT-1 aircraft, can be called composite: they consisted of wood and chain mail (as duralumin was initially called in the USSR) in different proportions.
2. The fate of a design development does not always depend on how good the product is. After the Tu-16 went to the troops, Tupolev had to listen to a lot of behind-the-scenes complaints from the military. They had to move airfields and infrastructure deep into the territory of the USSR. From the equipped border airfields, the units were transferred to the taiga and open fields. Families fell apart, discipline fell. Then Tupolev gave the task to make a less powerful aircraft armed with unguided rockets. So the Tu-91 unexpectedly appeared. When, during the first tests, a new aircraft launched missiles over a group of ships of the Black Sea Fleet in the Feodosia region, panic telegrams about an attack by unknown persons were sent from the ships. The aircraft turned out to be effective and went into production. True, not for long. S. Khrushchev, seeing at the next exhibition a propeller-driven aircraft next to the jet beauties, ordered to withdraw it from production.
3. Tupolev had to fight with Junkers back in 1923, though not in the sky yet. In 1923, Andrey Nikolaevich and his group designed the ANT-3. At the same time, the Soviet Union, under an agreement with the Junkers company, received an aluminum plant and a number of technologies from Germany. Among them was the technology of metal corrugation to increase its strength. Tupolev and his assistants saw neither the production nor the results of the use of his product, but decided to corrugate the metal on their own. It turned out that the strength of the corrugated metal was 20% higher. “Junkers” did not like this amateur performance - the company owned a worldwide patent for this invention. A lawsuit followed in the Hague court, but the Soviet experts were at their best. They were able to prove that Tupolev corrugated metal using a different technology, and the resulting product is 5% stronger than the German one. And Tupolev's principles of joining corrugated parts were different. Junkers' claim was dismissed.
4. In 1937 Tupolev was arrested. Like many technical specialists in those years, he was almost immediately transferred to a closed design bureau, in common parlance, "sharashka". In the “sharashka” Bolshevo, where Tupolev became the leader, there was no suitable room for creating a full-size model of the aircraft “Project 103” (later this aircraft would be called ANT-58, even later Tu-2). They found a seemingly simple solution: in the forest nearby, they found a suitable clearing and assembled a model on it. The very next day the forest was cordoned off by soldiers of the NKVD, and several vehicles of high-ranking comrades rushed into the clearing. It turned out that the flying pilot noticed the model and reported to the ground about the alleged crash. The situation seemed to be discharged, but then Tupolev hinted that this was a model of a new aircraft. NKVD-shniki, having heard this, demanded to immediately burn the model. Only the intervention of the “sharashka” leadership saved the pseudo-plane - it was only covered with a camouflage net.
Work in the "sharashka". Drawing by one of Tupolev's employees Alexei Cheryomukhin.
5. “Project 103” was called so not at all because 102 projects had been implemented before it. The aviation part of the sharashka was called “Special technical department” - service station. Then the abbreviation was changed into a number, and the projects were given the indices “101”, “102”, etc. “Project 103”, which became the Tu-2, is considered the best aircraft of the Second World War. It was in service with the Chinese Air Force back in the mid-1980s.
6. The names of Valery Chkalov, Mikhail Gromov and their comrades who made record-breaking flights from Moscow to the USA were known to the whole world. Ultra-long-range flights were performed on specially prepared ANT-25 aircraft. There was no Internet then, but there were enough young (due to the state of mind) whistleblowers. An article was published in the English magazine "Airplane", the author of which proved with figures that both flights are impossible with the declared starting weight, fuel consumption, etc. The whistleblower simply did not take into account the fact that in flight mode with an incomplete engine power, fuel consumption decreases, or even that the weight of the aircraft decreases as the fuel is used up. The editorial board of the magazine was bombarded with angry letters by the British themselves.
The plane of Mikhail Gromov in the United States
7. In 1959, N. Khrushchev paid a visit to the United States on a Tu-114 aircraft. The aircraft had already won several prestigious awards, but the KGB was still concerned about its reliability. It was decided to train high-ranking passengers to quickly leave the plane. A life-size mock-up of the passenger compartment was built inside the large pool in which members of the government swam. They put chairs in the model, equipped it with life jackets and rafts. At a signal, passengers put on vests, dropped rafts into the water and jumped themselves. Only the married couples of the Khrushchevs and Tupolevs were exempted from jumping (but not from training). Everyone else, including Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR Trofim Kozlov and member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee Anastas Mikoyan, unsinkable with all secretaries general, jumped into the water and climbed on rafts.
Tu-114 in the USA. If you look closely, you can see another feature of the Tu-114 - the door is too high. Passengers had to get to the gangway through a small staircase.
8. Tupolev and Polikarpov back in the 1930s were developing the supergiant aircraft ANT-26. It was supposed to have a maximum weight of 70 tons. The crew would be 20 people, this number included 8 shooters from machine guns and cannons. It was planned to install 12 M-34FRN engines on such a colossus. The wingspan was supposed to be 95 meters. It is not known whether the designers themselves realized the unreality of the project, or someone from above told them that it was not worth spending microscopic state resources on such a colossus, but the project was scrapped. No wonder - even the huge An-225 Mriya, created in 1988, has a wingspan of 88 meters.
9. The ANT-40 bomber, which was called the Sb-2 in the army, became the most massive Tupolev aircraft before the war. If before that the total circulation of all aircraft designed by Andrey Nikolayevich barely exceeded 2,000, then the Sb-2 alone was produced almost 7,000 pieces. These aircraft were also part of the Luftwaffe: the Czech Republic bought a license to manufacture the aircraft. They assembled 161 cars; after the capture of the country, they went to the Germans. At the outbreak of World War II, Sb-2 was the main bomber of the Red Army.
10. Two outstanding events at once marked the combat and labor path of the TB-7 aircraft. During the most difficult period of the Great Patriotic War, in August 1941, two TB-7 squadrons bombed Berlin. The material effect of the bombing was negligible, but the moral impact on the troops and the population was enormous. And in April 1942, the USSR People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov, during a visit to England and the United States, made an almost round-the-world trip on the TB-7, and part of the flight took place over the territory occupied by Nazi troops. After the war, it turned out that the German air defense did not detect the TB-7 flight.
Bombed Berlin and flew to the USA
11. When in 1944 - 1946 the American B-29 bomber was copied into the Soviet Tu-4, the problem of a conflict of measuring systems arose. In the United States, inches, pounds, etc. were used. In the Soviet Union, the metric system was in use. The problem was not solved by simple division or multiplication - the plane is too complex a system. I had to operate not only with the length and width, but also, for example, with the specific resistance of a wire of a certain section. Tupolev cut the Gordian knot by deciding to switch to American units. The plane was copied, and quite successfully. The echoes of this copying sounded for a long time in all parts of the USSR - dozens of allied enterprises had to go over square feet and cubic inches.
Tu-4. Contrary to the caustic remarks, time has shown - while copying, we learned to do our own
12. The operation of the Tu-114 airliner on international routes showed that with all the tyranny and stubbornness of N. Khrushchev was capable of adequate foreign policy decisions. When the United States began to indirectly block the flights of the Tu-114 from Moscow to Havana, Khrushchev did not go to the trouble. We went through several routes until we were convinced that the route Moscow - Murmansk - Havana is optimal. At the same time, the Americans did not protest if, in a headwind, Soviet aircraft landed for refueling at the airbase in Nassau. There was only one condition - cash payment. With Japan, with which there is still no peace agreement, a whole joint venture worked: the logo of the Japanese airline “Jal” was applied to 4 planes, Japanese women were flight attendants, and Soviet pilots were pilots. Then the passenger compartment of the Tu-114 was not continuous, but was divided into four-seater coupes.
13. Tu-154 has already gone into series and was produced in the amount of 120 pieces, when tests showed that the wings were designed and manufactured incorrectly. They could not withstand the prescribed 20,000 take-offs and landings. The wings were redesigned and installed on all manufactured aircraft.
Tu-154
14. The history of the Tu-160 "White Swan" bomber began with a couple of funny incidents. On the very first day, when the assembled plane was rolled out of the hangar, it was photographed by an American satellite. The photographs ended up in the KGB. Checks began in all directions. As usual, while the laboratories were analyzing the photos, at the airfield in Zhukovsky, the already proven personnel was shaken up dozens of times. Then, nevertheless, they understood the nature of the picture and forbade the planes to roll out during the day. US Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, who was allowed to sit in the cockpit, smashed his head on the dashboard, and has since been called the "Carlucci dashboard." But all these stories pale in front of the wild picture of the destruction of "White Swans" in Ukraine. Under the flashes of cameras, under the joyful smiles of the Ukrainian and American representatives, the new majestic machines, the heaviest and fastest among the mass-produced ones, were simply cut into pieces with huge hydraulic scissors.
Tu-160
15. The last aircraft developed and launched into series during the life of A. Tupolev was Tu-22M1, flight tests of which began in the summer of 1971. This plane did not go to the troops, only the M2 modification “served”, but the famous designer did not see it.
16. The Tupolev Central Design Bureau has successfully developed unmanned aerial vehicles. In 1972, the Tu-143 "Flight" began to enter the troops. The complex of the UAV itself, the transport-loading vehicle, the launcher and the control complex received positive characteristics. A total of about 1,000 flights were issued. A little later, the more powerful Tu-141 "Strizh" complex went into production. During the years of perestroika and the collapse of the USSR, the huge scientific and technological backlog that Soviet designers had was not just destroyed. Most of the Tupolev design bureau specialists left (and many not empty-handed) to Israel, providing this country with an explosive leap forward in the development of technologies for the creation and production of UAVs. In Russia, however, for almost 20 years, such studies were actually frozen.
17. Tu-144 is sometimes called an aircraft with a tragic fate. The machine, much ahead of its time, made a splash in the world of aviation. Even the terrible plane crash in France did not affect the positive reviews of the supersonic jet passenger aircraft. Then, for some unknown reason, the Tu-144 fell to the ground in front of tens of thousands of spectators. Not only those on board were killed, but also people who were not lucky enough to be at the site of the disaster on the ground. Tu-144 entered the Aeroflot line, but was quickly removed from them due to unprofitability - it consumed a lot of fuel and was expensive to maintain. Talk about profitability in the USSR in the late 1970s was very rare, and what kind of payback could we talk about operating the best aircraft in the world? Nevertheless, the handsome liner was first removed from flights, and then from production.
Tu-144 - ahead of time
18. The Tu-204 became the last relatively large-scale (43 aircraft in 28 years) aircraft of the Tu-brand. This aircraft, which began production in 1990, hit the wrong time.In those gloomy years, hundreds of airlines that emerged from nothing went along two paths: they either finished off the gigantic inheritance of Aeroflot into the trash, or bought cheap used models of foreign aircraft. For the Tu-204, with all its merits, there was no place in these layouts. And when the airlines strengthened and could afford to buy new aircraft, the market was taken over by Boeing and Airbus. The 204 is barely afloat thanks to government orders and irregular contracts with companies from third world countries.
Tu-204
19. The Tu-134 had a kind of agricultural modification, which was called that - Tu-134 CX. Instead of passenger seats, the cabin was packed with various equipment for aerial photography of the earth's surface. Due to high-quality equipment, the frames were clear and informative. However, the agricultural “carcass” was unpopular with the management of agricultural enterprises. She easily showed the size of the cultivated areas, and the collective farmers have been sensitive to this issue since the 1930s. Therefore, they refused to fly Tu-134SH as best they could. And then perestroika came, and the aviators had no time to help agriculture.
Tu-134SKh is easy to identify by hanging containers with equipment under the wings
20. Among Russian - Soviet designers, Andrey Tupolev ranks 6th in terms of the total number of serially produced aircraft. Tupolev Central Design Bureau is second only to the design bureaus of A. Yakovlev, N. Polikarpov, S. Ilyushin, Mikoyan and Gurevich, and S. Lavochkin. Comparing digital indicators, for example, almost 64,000 produced machines at Yakovlev and about 17,000 at Tupolev, it should be remembered that all the first five designers built fighters and attack aircraft. They are smaller, cheaper, and, unfortunately, are often lost together with the pilots, very quickly compared to the heavy aircraft that Tupolev preferred to create.
