Laville PS-89

Laville PS-89
Type:	Airliner
Design country:	Soviet Union
Manufacturer:	Plant No. 89
First flight:	November 29, 1935
Commissioning:	1938
Production time:	1937/38
Number of pieces:	7th

Laville PS-89 ( Russian Лявил ПС-89 ) was a Soviet airliner of the 1930s. PS stands for Passaschirski Samoljot (Пассажирский самолёт, Passenger Airplane), 89 for the number of the manufacturer. The project name was SIG-1 , which means Sawod imeni Golzmana (Завод имени Голцмана, Golzmann-Werk) and paid tribute to the director of Plant No. 89, who died before the construction work began. The PS-89 was only built in small numbers in favor of the Li-2 .

prehistory

At the invitation of the Soviet government, around ten French designers traveled to the USSR in August 1928. They hoped to be able to realize their own designs that they had brought with them, but received a rejection from the Soviet authorities because they were only supposed to concentrate on the implementation of local projects. The majority of the experts therefore left again and only a small group remained, consisting of Richard, Laville and Oger, for whom the Sea Test Aircraft Construction Department of the All Union Aviation Association (MOS WAO) was set up in Plant No. 28 . The design office, which was headed by Paul Richard, soon concentrated on the planning of the TOM-1 torpedo aircraft . After flight testing, which was completed in August 1931, it was decided to put a float version of the TB-1P bomber into production instead of the TOM-1 . Richard and Oger, whose group had not received any further orders since the spring of 1930, returned to France at the end of the year. Only André Laville stayed and moved to the office for new constructions (BNK), which had been set up in the summer of 1930 on the site of the Moscow plant No. 89. Here he was involved in the development of the two-seat DI-4 fighter aircraft. In 1933 he moved to the Scientific Research Institute of the Civil Air Fleet (NII GWF), where he was commissioned to develop a twin-engine passenger aircraft.

development

At the suggestion of higher authorities, Laville orientated himself roughly on the Dewoitine D.332 , with which a French delegation had toured the Soviet Union in 1933 and which had been flown to some government representatives. He took over the low wing arrangement and the clad main landing gear, but kept the fuselage construction rounder and more aerodynamic. Shortly before the completion of the first prototype , Laville left the project for unknown reasons in 1935 and became a correspondent for French newspapers in Moscow. In 1939 he also returned to his homeland. A. Kuljew took over his position as chief designer.

Construction of the first SIG-1 was completed in autumn 1935. On November 29, 1935, she took off on her maiden flight, which ended in a crash. Among the victims was also the designer Kuljew, whereupon P. Ebersin continued work on the machine now called PS-89. After the revision, including the omission of the small end plates on the horizontal stabilizer, the aircraft took off for the first time on February 17, 1937. The trial was successful and was completed on March 13th. After the state acceptance, the civil air fleet ordered five copies and used them from 1938 on some Moscow routes, for example to Kharkov, Irkutsk, Simferopol and Sverdlovsk.

During the Finnish-Soviet winter war , the PS-89 were taken over by the air force for transport tasks and then flown again in civil service. With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War , four of the planes were again drafted by the military. No PS-89 survived the end of the war.

technical description

Mikulin M-17

The PS-89 was a cantilever low - wing aircraft in all-metal shell construction. The tail unit was braced, the rudder fabric-covered. In the wing there were six fuel tanks with a total volume of 1890 liters, a 56-liter reserve tank was housed in the fuselage. The rigid main landing gear was clad in a streamlined manner. It was powered by two Mikulin M-17 engines, licensed from the BMW VI .

Technical specifications

Parameter	Data
crew	2
Passengers	12
Wingspan	23.11 m
length	16.24 m
height	5.10 m
Wing area	72.0 m²
Empty mass	5000 kg
payload	1160 kg
Takeoff mass	7200 kg
Wing loading	98.6 kg / m²
Power load	7.1 kg / hp
drive	two liquid-cooled 4-stroke - 12-cylinder - V-engines M-17
Starting power	505 kW (687 hp) each
Top speed	285 km / h
Cruising speed	245 km / h
Minimum speed	115 km / h
Landing speed	95 km / h
Climb performance	2.9 m / s
Service ceiling	4250 m
Range	1300 km

literature

• Mikhail Maslow: Soviet aircraft with French roots. The unloved beauty . In: Aviation Classics . No. 7 . Motor Presse, Stuttgart 2012, p. 56-59 .
• Wilfried Copenhagen , Jochen K. Beeck: The large aircraft type book . Motorbuch, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-613-02522-1 , p. 508 .
• Heinz A. F. Schmidt: Soviet planes . Transpress, Berlin 1971, p. 61 .

Web links

Commons : PS-89 (ZIG-1)  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Development history and photos (Russian)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wadim B. Schawrow: On the history of Soviet aircraft construction - aircraft constructions in the years of socialist industrialization (4). In: Wolfgang Sellenthin (Hrsg.) Fliegerkalender der DDR 1982. Militärverlag der DDR, Berlin 1981, p. 179.