(Tupolev) ANT-20 Maxime Gorky @·AIRCRAFTUBE

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    Tupolev ANT-20 Maxim Gorky - 1935
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    Tupolev ANT-20
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    Tupolev ANT-20 Maxim Gorky
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    Maxim Gorky - 1934
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    Tupolev ANT-20 Maxim Gorky
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    Tupolev ANT-20 Maxim Gorky
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    ANT-20
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    Vasily Kuptsov - 1934
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    Tupolev ANT-20bis
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    ANT-20bis
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    Tupolev ANT-20bis

Tupolev ANT-20 "Maxim Gorky"

The Tupolev ANT-20 was a Soviet 8-engine aircraft, the largest in the 1930s.

Overview

The ANT-20 was designed by AndreÏ Tupolev, using the all-metal airframe technologies devised by German engineer Hugo Junkers during the World War I years, and constructed between July 4, 1933 and April 3, 1934. It was one of two aircraft of its kind built by the Soviets. The aircraft was named after Maxim Gorky and dedicated to the 40th anniversary of his literary and public activities. The ANT-20 was the largest known aircraft to have used the Junkers design philosophy of corrugated sheet metal for many of the airframe's key components, especially the corrugated sheet metal skinning of the airframe.

It was intended for Stalinist propaganda purposes and was equipped with a powerful radio set called "Voice from the sky", printing machinery, library, radiostations, photographic laboratory, and a film projector with sound for showing movies in flight. For the first time in aviation history, this aircraft was equipped with a ladder, which would fold itself and become a part of the floor.

Also, for the first time in aviation history, the aircraft used not only direct current, but alternating current of 120 volts, as well. The aircraft could be disassembled and transported by railroad if needed. The aircraft set several carrying capacity world records and is also the subject of a 1934 painting by Vasily Kuptsov, in the collection of the Russian Museum at St. Petersburg.

The crash

On May 18, 1935 the Maxim Gorky (with pilots Mikheyev and Zhurov) and three more planes (a Tupolev ANT-14, R-5 and I-5) took off for a demonstration flight over Moscow. As a result of a poorly executed loop maneuver (a third such stunt on this flight) around the plane performed by an accompanying I-5 fighter (pilot - Nikolai Blagin), both planes collided and the Maxim Gorky crashed into a low-rise residential neighborhood west of present-day Sokol station. Forty-five people were killed in the crash, including crew members and 33 family members of some of those who had built the aircraft. (While authorities announced that the fatal maneuver was impromptu and reckless, it has been recently suggested that it might have been a planned part of the show.) Also killed was the fighter pilot, Blagin, who was made a scapegoat in the crash and subsequently had his name used eponymously (Blaginism) to mean, roughly, a "cocky disregard of authority." However, Blagin was given a state funeral at Novodevichy Cemetery together with ANT-20 victims. That same year, Warsaw newspapers published an alleged suicide letter by Blagin, with clear anti-communist messages, which modern authors consider to be a fake.

ANT-20bis

A replacement aircraft, designated ANT-20bis was begun the following year and first flew in 1938. It was largely identical in design but with only six, more powerful engines. This plane, renumbered PS-124, served with Aeroflot on transport routes in Russia and Uzbekistan. On December 12, 1942, it too crashed after the pilot allowed a passenger to take his seat momentarily and the passenger apparently disengaged the automatic pilot, sending the ship into a nosedive from an altitude of 500 meters (or 1,500 ft) and killing all 36 on board.

Plans to build a fleet of ANT-20bis aircraft were abandoned in 1939 as Stalin's purges of the aviation industry had resulted in a shortage of qualified engineers.

Trivia

  • The plane's wings were so large they were fitted with bunk beds.
  • The day before the crash, French pilot and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery, visiting the Soviet Union for the French newspaper Paris-Soir, was the only foreign pilot authorized to board the plane. After the crash Saint-Exupéry mourned the loss of this giant with its 'gangways, the salon, the cabins, the on-board telephone'.
  • The crash was apparently the inspiration for the Symphony No. 16 by Nikolai Myaskovsky, sketched immediately after the disaster and premiered in Moscow on 24 October 1936. This symphony includes a big funeral march as its slow movement, and the finale is built on Myaskovsky's own song for the Red Air Force, 'The Aeroplanes are Flying'; the work was known during the Soviet era as the 'Aviation Symphony'.
  • The plane is also the subject of a 1934 painting by Vasily Kuptsov, in the collection of the Russian Museum at St. Petersburg.

Maxim Gorky

Aleksey Maksimovich Peshkov, (March 1868 - June 1936), better known as Maxim Gorky, was a Russian author, a founder of the socialist realism literary method and a political activist. From 1906 to 1913 and from 1921 to 1929 he lived abroad, mostly in Capri, Italy; after his return to the Soviet Union he accepted the cultural policies of the time, although he was not permitted to leave the country.

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This text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License
Source : Article Tupolev ANT-20 of Wikipedia ( authors )

Specifications (ANT-20)

  • Crew: 8.
  • Capacity: 72.
  • Length: 32.90 meters (or 107 ft 11 in).
  • Height: 10.6 meters ((or 34 ft 9 in).
  • Wingspan: 63 meters (or 206 ft 8 in).
  • Wing area: 488 m² (or 5,250 ft²).
  • Empty weight: 28,500 kg (or 62,700 lb).
  • Loaded weight: 42,000 kg (or 92,400 lb).
  • Max takeoff weight: 53,000 kg (or 116,600 lb).
  • Maximum speed: 220 km/h (or 119 knots, or 137 mph) at sea level.
  • Range: 1,200 km (or 652 NM, or 750 mi).
  • Service ceiling: 4,500 meters (or 14,760 ft).
  • Powerplant: Eight Mikulin AM-34FRN V-12 liquid cooled engines.
  • Power: 900 hp (or 671 kW) each.

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This text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License
Source : Article Tupolev ANT-20 of Wikipedia ( authors )
Tupolev ANT-20 Maxime Gorky : Your comments on this subject
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