Andrei Nikolaevich Tupolev

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
signature

Andrei Tupolev ( Russian Андрей Николаевич Туполев ., Scientific transliteration Andrei Nikolaevich Tupolev ; born October 29 . Jul / 10. November  1888 greg. In Pustomasowo , Tver Oblast ; † 23. December 1972 in Moscow ) was a Soviet aircraft designer.

Life

Tupolev was born in Pustomasowo, a village in Korchevsky district , as the son of the notary Nikolai Ivanovich Tupolev. He received his first school lessons at home, and later he attended grammar school in Tver . In 1908 he graduated from high school and in the same year began studying at the Technical University in Moscow . Tupolev was very interested in aviation, which is why he became a member of the institute's own aviation circle. It was there that he first came into contact with the aerodynamicist Nikolai Schukowski , who was a professor at the university and who headed the circle. Tupolev became Zhukovsky's pupil. In 1910 Tupolev constructed a wind tunnel for the university under his guidance , then he was appointed head of the newly established laboratory for aerodynamic tests. On March 14, 1911, Tupolev was arrested on the grounds that he belonged to a banned political association. The accusation was not confirmed, but Tupolev was exiled to his home village and was only allowed to return to Moscow in February 1914 and continue his studies. In 1915 he designed a wind tunnel for the Petrograd scientific and technical laboratory, this time completely independently.

A year later, Tupolev was appointed head of the seaplane division within the Moscow Duks Works . After the October Revolution of 1917, he was given a managerial post in a design department at the Aviation Headquarters.

At the end of his studies he chose experience in the development of seaplanes on the basis of wind tunnel tests as a diploma subject due to his work at the Duks plant . On June 11, 1918, he received his diploma as an engineer-mechanic. On Zhukovsky's recommendation, he then became a lecturer at the Moscow Technical University. Together with Nikolai Yegorowitsch Schukowski , he founded an institute on October 30, 1918, which soon after became known as ZAGI .

In the autumn of 1919 Tupolev went to a sanatorium in the Crimea because of pleurisy in connection with the onset of tuberculosis . He stayed there for about a year and returned to Moscow in the fall of 1920. During this time she married the nurse Julija Nikolajewna Scheljatkowa.

In January 1921, the development of the ZAGI's first aircraft, the Tupolev ANT-1 , began, the basic design of which Tupolev had made first notes in 1911. In 1925 he succeeded in creating an epoch-making design with the world's first twin-engine cantilever all-metal bomber , the Tupolev ANT-4 .

In addition to airplanes, Tupolev also developed several snowmobiles and speedboats in the 1920s . He was also involved in the development of airships ; He designed the gondola for the airship "Moskowski Chimik-Resinschtschik" from 1926.

The best-known types in the 1930s were the Tupolev ANT-9 and Tupolev ANT-20 Maxim Gorki passenger aircraft as well as the ANT-6 bomber aircraft , which also became known through the Sweno project, and the Tupolev ANT-25 , the latter also being international due to its long-distance flights Caused a stir.

Postage stamp with Tupolev

In 1934 he began to work with Alexander Alexandrovich Archangelsky on the construction of the advanced twin-engined Tupolev ANT-40 bomber , with which the change from corrugated sheet to sheet metal planking was made. A civilian advancement, the Tupolev PS-35 , flew in autumn 1936 after Tupolev had founded his own OKB -156 in June 1936 .

On October 21, 1937, Tupolev was arrested during the Great Terror . The trigger was probably a failed record attempt with an ANT-25 on August 3, 1935, after the failure of which he was accused of sabotage by the pilot Sigismund Lewanewski . He was sentenced on May 28, 1940 in absentia to 15 years imprisonment and five years of deprivation of all civil rights on the charge that he had committed high treason and that he had given the French original plans for bombers and fighter planes during a trip to France in 1935. Another charge was membership in a fascist party. There were also rumors that he had sold plans to the German Messerschmitt factory , from which the Messerschmitt Bf 109 was developed. While he was in prison, his projects were stopped or were supervised by other OKBs. The aircraft types developed by him could no longer be designated with the abbreviation "ANT" and were renamed "ZAGI". Then from 1940 he was forced to work in the Central Development Office 29 of the NKVD together with other imprisoned engineers, u. a. Sergei Korolev to develop a twin-engine dive bomber. The developments led to the advanced Tupolev Tu-2 . After the pattern had proven itself at the front during the Great Patriotic War , Tupolev and his surviving fellow sufferers were released. In December 1943 he was appointed to see Stalin, who is said to have apologized to him. A process that is not used a second time. However, he was not acquitted of all allegations until two years after Stalin's death.

After his release he went to Omsk and founded OKB-166 there, until he finally moved back to Moscow in 1943 and took over his original OKB again.

During the war he was given another task of copying the Boeing B-29 in order to catch up on the USSR's deficit in strategic bombers. He managed the feat of revising the entire design in just 18 months. The result was the Tupolev Tu-4 , which, due to its motorization and slightly higher weight, did not quite match the performance of the original, but represented a significant advance compared to the last strategic bomber, the Petlyakov Pe-8 (originally also a Tupolev design) . Ultimately, it was this machine that made the USSR a nuclear power in the late 1940s .

Tupolev developed other Soviet fighter aircraft, but also important and large commercial and long-haul aircraft, mainly the Tupolev Tu-104 , which in its basic design reached about the performance of the Boeing 707 . Together with Sergei Wladimirowitsch Ilyushin, he played a key role in shaping the aircraft and space industry in the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s.

Numerous passenger planes in many air fleets around the world use Tupolev planes today . He was involved in more than a hundred aircraft projects, and many of his machines set world records. His son, Alexei Andreevich Tupolev , continued his father's engineering career.

Awards and honors

literature

Web links

Commons : Andrei Tupolew  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Heinz A. F. Schmidt (ed.): Andrej Nikolajewitsch Tupolew - the portrait of an aircraft designer . In: Flieger-Jahrbuch 1960. Transpress. Berlin, 1960. pp. 47-53
  2. ↑ Asif Azam Siddiqi: Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945–1974 . Ed .: NASA . Washington, DC 2000 (English, 1028 pp.).
  3. ^ About Andrei Tupolev on the website of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. Retrieved June 7, 2018 (Russian).
personal data
SURNAME Tupolev, Andrei Nikolaevich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Туполев, Андрей Николаевич (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian aircraft designer
DATE OF BIRTH November 10, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Pustomasowo
DATE OF DEATH December 23, 1972
Place of death Moscow