TUPOLEV, ANDREY NIKOLAYEVICH

born Oct. 29 [Nov. 10, New Style], 1888, Pustomazovo, Russia died Dec. 23, 1972, Moscow one of the Soviet Union's foremost aircraft designers, whose bureau produced a number of military bombers and civilian airlinersincluding the world's first supersonic passenger plane. In 1909 Tupolev entered the Moscow Imperial Technical School (now Moscow N.E. Bauman State Technical University), where he became a student and disciple of Nikolay Y. Zhukovsky, the Father of Russian Aviation. In 1918 they organized the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute, of which Tupolev became assistant director in 1918. He became head of the institute's design bureau in 1922 and supervised the work of various designersincluding Pavel O. Sukhoy, Vladimir M. Myasischev, and Vladimir M. Petlyakovwho later became notable in their own right. This bureau, in producing military and civilian planes that were designated by Tupolev's initials, ANT, made all-metal construction a standard feature of Soviet aviation. In 1936 Tupolev was accused of selling secrets to Germany. In common with many Soviet designers at the time, he was arrested and placed in charge of a team that was to design military aircraft. From this came the Tu-2, a twin-engine bomber that saw wide use in World War II and, in 1943, earned Tupolev his freedom and a Stalin Prize. In 1944 he was given the job of copying the United States' B-29 Superfortress, three of which had force-landed in the Soviet Far East. This project resulted in the Tu-4, which first flew in 1947 and was the Soviets' principal strategic bomber until the mid-1950s. After adapting jet propulsion to several piston-engine airframes, Tupolev in 1952 came up with the Tu-16, a medium-range bomber that featured swept wings and light alloy construction. A team under Aleksandr A. Arkhangelsky, Tupolev's longtime associate, designed the Tu-95, a huge turboprop bomber that first flew in 1954 and became one of the most durable military aircraft ever built. Two civilian aircraft were derived from these; the Tu-104, which appeared in 1955 and became one of the first jet transports to provide regular passenger service; and the Tu-114 long-range passenger plane, the largest propeller-driven aircraft ever in regular service. In 1963 Tupolev's son Alexey became chief designer of a team that produced the Tu-144 supersonic transport. Intended to shorten travel time between Moscow and Central Asia or the Far East, the Tu-144 broke the sound barrier on a test flight in 1969 and reached twice the speed of sound a year later, but it was plagued by design problems and mismanagement and had only a short life as a passenger jet in the 1970s. After Andrey Tupolev's death, Alexey became chief of the design bureau. He oversaw the introduction in the 1970s and '80s of a new generation of variable-wing bombers, the medium-range Tu-26 and the long-range Tu-160the latter bearing features derived from the supersonic transport.