When talking about giant aircraft or advanced machines for their era, we cannot overlook the Tupolev ANT-20 Maksim Gorky, another of the great monoplanes built in the former Soviet Union. Designed in 1934 as a passenger transport and a propaganda vehicle, this aircraft also met a tragic fate, crashing within a year of its maiden flight during an air show.
Design and Specifications
The Tupolev ANT-20 Maksim Gorky, designed by Andrei Tupolev, was built by the Soviet Union to impress the rest of the world. Its name was a tribute to the writer Maksim Gorky, and it had the honor of being the largest aircraft in operation for the short time it flew. Put into service on 17 June 1934, this monoplane required eight enormous M-34FRN engines of 900 hp each to fly. Six of them were distributed along the main wing —63 meters long— and the remaining two were mounted “astride” the fuselage.
Conceived as a means of passenger transport and, like almost all the great Russian aircraft of the time, as a propaganda tool, the Tupolev ANT-20 had a maximum takeoff weight of 42 tons and could fly at 245 kilometers per hour. It required a crew of twenty men to operate and had seats for 64 passengers. Its wings were so large that bunks were arranged inside them so that those on board could rest better.
Given its use as a political propaganda element, the aircraft carried a printing press for proclamations, a film projector, a substantial library, a photographic laboratory, and a powerful radio station known as “The Voice of the Sky”. Over several months, it traveled the skies of Russia, astonishing occasional spectators who, of course, had never seen anything like it.
The Fatal Collision
But on 18 May 1935, during an air show in which it participated alongside other aircraft, the Tupolev ANT-20 Maksim Gorky collided in mid-flight with a Polikarpov I-5 fighter that was escorting it. The government quickly accused the fighter pilot of having performed a reckless and unscheduled maneuver, blaming him for the tragedy. However, it has been suggested that this maneuver was actually a routine part of the show. As it was, both Nikolai Blagin (the fighter pilot) and all those on board the giant aircraft —crew members and 33 relatives of some of its builders— lost their lives when it plunged to the ground. It fell in a residential area west of the current Sokol Station, leaving 45 dead in total.
The ANT-20bis and Its End
The Russian government was not willing to go without its propaganda vehicle, so it quickly announced the construction of 16 more giant aircraft. In practice, only one was actually built, baptized as the Tupolev ANT-20bis. This aircraft, not very similar to the original and with only six AM-34FNRV engines of 1,200 hp each, began flying in 1939. It was often called PS-124 or L-760 (its civil registration), and had redesigned wings, fuselage, and stabilizers.
It was part of the Aeroflot fleet and covered the route between Russia and Uzbekistan. On 14 December 1942, it made its last flight, as the pilot on duty let a passenger take his place for a few minutes, who inadvertently disconnected the autopilot and put the aircraft into a dive from 500 meters. In the accident, the Tupolev ANT-20bis was destroyed, and all 36 people on board died. Unable to escape the troubled tradition of its predecessors, the ANT series of aircraft was definitively abandoned.
For more information, see the Tupolev ANT-20 on Wikipedia.
