Tupolev ANT-20

ANT-20
ANT-20 "Maxim Gorky"
Role	Propaganda aircraft/Transport
National origin	Soviet Union
Manufacturer	Tupolev
First flight	1934
Introduction	1934
Retired	1942
Primary user	Soviet Union
Number built	2
Developed from	Tupolev TB-4

The Tupolev ANT-20 Maxim Gorky (Russian: Туполев АНТ-20 "Максим Горький") was a Soviet eight-engine aircraft, the largest in the 1930s. Only the Dornier Do X flying boat of a few years earlier was heavier (at 56 metric tons maximum takeoff weight) than the ANT-20 in the "inter-war" years, but the Do X needed twelve engines to get it off the water, versus the eight powerplants of the ANT-20 landplane.

Overview

The ANT-20 was designed by Andrei 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 ever 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 ever 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" ("Голос с неба", golos s neba), 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 giant aircraft set a number of 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.

Maxim Gorky crash

Vasily Kuptsov, Maxim Gorky ANT-20 (1934), Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

On May 18, 1935, the Maxim Gorky (pilots - I. V. Mikheyev and I. S. Zhurov) and three more planes (Tupolev ANT-14, R-5 and I-5) took off for a demonstration flight over Moscow. The main purpose of the other three planes flying so close was to make evident the difference in size. 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. The day before the crash, French pilot and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 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'.

ANT-20bis

Aeroflot's ANT-20bis.

A replacement aircraft, designated ANT-20bis had begun production 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 14, 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 m (1,500 ft) and killing all 36 on board.

Plans to build a fleet of ANT-20bis aircraft were abandoned in 1939 as Joseph Stalin's purges of the aviation industry had resulted in a shortage of qualified engineers.^{[citation needed]}

Operators

Soviet Union

Specifications

Data from The Osprey Encyclopedia of Russian Aircraft 1875-1995

General characteristics

• Crew: 8
• Capacity: 72
• Length: 32.90 m (107 ft 11¼ in)
• Wingspan: 63.00 m (206 ft 8¼ in)
• Height: 10.6 m (34 ft 9¼ in)
• Wing area: 488 m² (5,251 ft²)
• Empty weight: 28,500 kg (62,700 lb)
• Loaded weight: 42,000 kg (92,400 lb)
• Max. takeoff weight: 53,000 kg (116,600 lb)
• Powerplant: 8 × Mikulin AM-34FRN V-12 liquid cooled, 671 kW (900 hp) each

Performance

• Maximum speed: 220 km/h (119 kn, 137 mph) at sea level
• Range: 1,200 km (652 nmi, 750 mi)
• Service ceiling: 4,500 m (14,764 ft)

See also

Related development

• Tupolev TB-4
  

Aircraft of comparable role, configuration and era

• Junkers G.38
  

• Dornier Do X
• Kalinin K-7

References

• Gunston, Bill (1995). The Osprey Encyclopedia of Russian Aircraft 1975-1995. London: Osprey. ISBN 1-85532-405-9. 
• Shavrov V.B. (1985) (in Russian). Istoriia konstruktskii samoletov v SSSR do 1938 g. (3 izd.). Mashinostroenie. ISBN 5-217-03112-3. 

External links

• Crash memorial at Find-A-Grave
• Russian: Nikolai Blagin, biography Babelfish rough English translation here
• Short article on the ANT-20 (formerly linked video clip is no longer accessible)
• Catastrophe of Maxim Gorky Babelfish rough English translation from Russian History of Aviation, Publ Young Guards (1936)