Every Tupolev Aircraft Explained
Video from the channel The Military Record about Tupolev, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 8:38. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.
What it's about
A journey through the history of the Tupolev design bureau told through the figure of Andrei Tupolev: his early metal designs, his arrest during the Great Purge, his work in a prison laboratory (sharashka), and the bombers and airliners of the Cold War.
Historical context
According to the video, the 1922 ANT-1 was a small sporting aircraft of mixed materials, and the following year the ANT-2 became the first all-metal Soviet aircraft, made of corrugated duralumin. These were followed by the TB-1 bomber in 1925, the four-engined TB-3, and the giant ANT-20 Maxim Gorky. In 1937 Tupolev was arrested on false sabotage charges and, from the sharashka, designed the Tu-2 bomber. After the war, on Stalin's orders, the bureau copied the American B-29 to create the Tu-4.
Key facts
It covers, among others:
- the 1952 Tu-16 Badger and the Tu-104 airliner; - the turboprop Tu-95 Bear and the supersonic Tu-22; - the Tu-128 interceptor and the Tu-134 and Tu-154; - the Tu-144 airliner, which flew before the Concorde; - the Tu-123 drone, the variable-geometry Tu-22M, and the Tu-160, the largest supersonic aircraft ever built.
It ends with the Tu-204 and Tu-334, the Tu-300 drone, the PAK DA stealth bomber project, and the Tu-119 nuclear-powered bomber study.