Oldest Russian aircraft design bureau, Tupolev, turns 85
22 Oct 2007
"With the collapse of the USSR, like many others, we found ourselves in a crisis. But we have managed not only to survive but also to come up with the new prospective market proposals, like the further development of the TU-204 and TU-334 aircraft families," says Mikhail Aseev, the head of the design department.
To
start of with Andrey Tupolev''s major gamble, the ANT-2, a whole-metal plane, became
a flying success in 1924, just two years after he was granted his own design bureau.
It became the world''s second whole-metal plane and was followed by the ANT-20,
the largest plane of its time. The Tupolev bureau was destined for glory, however,
only in the post-war era. The
biggest technological triumph for the bureau was the "Concordsky" the
TU-144. The term supersonic passenger plane immediately brings the Concorde to
mind. But it was Tupolev''s and his son''s plane, the Tu-144 that flew two months
earlier than the Anglo-French version and with a maximum speed of over twice the
speed of sound it also remained the fastest civil airliner.