Tupolev

22 hrs. 27 min.

Language Russian

Author Nikolay Bodrikhin

Narrator Elizaveta Krupina

Description

Andrei Nikolaevich Tupolev was an outstanding Russian aircraft designer who led the design and production of one hundred types of aircraft that, in many ways, shaped the face of world aviation in the 20th century. He also developed torpedo boats, hydrofoils, amphibians, air-sleds, and airships. A student of N.E. Zhukovsky, together with him he was one of the founders of the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI)—a powerful aviation scientific center—and later headed his own design bureau. The key to Tupolev’s successful work was his talent and deep knowledge, large-scale thinking, and attention to the smallest details, along with exceptional single-mindedness and complete self-dedication, the ability to lead and to make the only correct decision at his personal responsibility. He enjoyed immense authority in the state that, thanks to his efforts, gained powerful strategic aviation. He is the only person in the history of aviation whose first aircraft—a small biplane—took off into the air back in 1923, and in 1968, almost half a century later, he took his first supersonic passenger liner into flight—the Tu-144.