aircraft at the
Shchyolkovo airfield in 1936. Photo by Mikhail Kalashnikov.
Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute Tupolev was a leading figure of the
Moscow-based
Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI; ) from 1929 until his death in 1972. The Central Design Office or TsKB () based there produced
bombers for the
Soviet Air Force and some
airliners, which in the years before
World War II and especially in his 1930s-era designs, were based partially on the all-metal aircraft design concepts pioneered by
Hugo Junkers. In 1925, Tupolev designed a twin-engine bomber, the
TB-1, which was considered one of the most advanced designs of the time. By 1934, Tupolev had led the design bureau that designed the largest aircraft flying in the world at the time, the 63-meter wingspan, eight-engined
Maksim Gorki, again built with the Junkers metal structure airframe concepts. In 1937, an improved version of the earlier TB-1, the four-engined
TB-3, made a landing at the
North Pole. As the number of qualified aircraft designers increased, Tupolev set up his own office, producing a number of designs designated with the prefix ANT () from his initials.
Sharashka However, on 21 October 1937, Tupolev was arrested together with
Vladimir Petlyakov and the entire directorate of the TsAGI and EDO during the
Great Purge on trumped up charges of
sabotage,
espionage and of aiding the
Russian Fascist Party. Many of his colleagues were executed but Tupolev himself was imprisoned. In 1939, Tupolev was moved from a prison to an
NKVD sharashka for aircraft designers in
Bolshevo near Moscow, where many surviving ex-TsAGI people had already been sent to work. The
sharashka soon moved to Moscow and was dubbed "Tupolevka" after Tupolev, its most prominent inmate. In 1940, Tupolev was tried and convicted with a ten-year sentence, and during this time he developed the
Tupolev Tu-2 which would become one of the most important aircraft of World War II. Tupolev was released in July 1941 around the time of the
German invasion of the Soviet Union to "conduct important defence work" but was not fully
rehabilitated by the Soviet state until 1955, two years after
Joseph Stalin's death.
Post-war Tupolev headed the B-4 project, as it was initially designated, to
reverse engineer the American
Boeing B-29 Superfortress strategic bomber, which had been the first aircraft to deliver a
nuclear weapon. The Soviet Union had repeatedly asked for B-29s through the World War II
Lend Lease program but these requests were all denied by the US. Tupolev succeeded in the complex task of re-engineering the design with Russian engines, weapons, equipment and airfoil sections, while using available metric sheetmetal which required a nearly complete redesign as the original had been built to imperial measurements, while new alloys also had to be brought into production. They used four B-29s which had come down in Soviet controlled territory as references, after having sustained light damage while bombing
Japan in 1945. Tupolev's own design for the role had been ignored in the interest of getting the new long range bomber into service as rapidly as possible to respond to the multiple illegal American overflights, mostly with
Martin PBM-5 Mariners that had already begun, and the overt threat of nuclear attack. Tupolev had several examples of the resulting
Tu-4 flying in time for the 1947
May Day parade. By the time of his rehabilitation on 9 April 1955, Tupolev had designed and was about to start testing his unique
turboprop strategic bomber, the
Tu-95. In the following years, Tupolev overcame competition from
Vladimir Myasishchev and his M-4 series of
jet-powered strategic bombers, to get the
Tu-16 design into service. This was in part thanks to Tupolev's close rapport with
Nikita Khrushchev, the new leader of the Soviet Union who had denounced Stalin's terror, of which Tupolev had been a victim. At about the same time, Tupolev introduced into service the
Tu-104, the world's second operational production
jet airliner. ==Later years and death==