Andrei Tupolev - Work at TsAGI

Work At TsAGI

Tupolev was a leading light of the Moscow-based Central Aero and Hydrodynamics Institute (TsAGI; Russian: Центральный аэро-гидродинамический институт; ЦАГИ) from 1929 until his death in 1972. The Central Design Office or TsKB (Russian: Центральное конструкторское бюро; ЦКБ) based there produced bombers and some airliners, which in the years before World War II were based partially, especially in his 1930s-era designs, and on the all-metal aircraft design concepts pioneered by Hugo Junkers. In 1925, he designed a twin-engine bomber, the TB-1, which was considered one of the most advanced designs of the time. In 1937, an improved version designated the 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 (Russian: АНТ) from his initials.

However, on October 21, 1937, Tupolev was arrested together with Vladimir Petlyakov and the entire directorate of the TsAGI and EDO on trumped up charges of sabotage, espionage and of aiding the Russian Fascist Party. Many of his colleagues were executed. In 1939, Tupolev was moved from a prison to an NKVD sharashka for aircraft designers in Bolshevo near Moscow, where many ex-TsAGI people had already been sent to work. The sharashka soon moved to Moscow and was dubbed "Tupolevka" after its most eminent inmate. Tupolev was tried and convicted in 1940 with a ten year sentence, but was released in 1944 "to conduct important defence work." (He was not rehabilitated fully until two years after Joseph Stalin's death in 1953.)

Tupolev headed the major project of reverse engineering the American Boeing B-29 strategic bomber. The USSR had repeatedly asked unsuccessfully for lend-lease B-29s. Using three machines which landed in Siberia after bombing Japan in 1945, Tupolev succeeded in replicating the world's first nuclear delivery platform down to trivial detail. Moreover, he got it into volume production, with crews fully trained in time for the 1947 May Day parade. The copy was designated Tu-4, with many subsequent Tu aircraft having the number 4 in their designations.