Odavno nisam vidjeo nesto bolje.

Див авио-К-7
'Modelist-Konstructor' December 1989 ; Члан В. Савин (Кхарков), 'Моделиран-Конструцтор' децембар 1989;

У раним 30-а ваздухопловства дизајн биро, Константин води Калинин, било је добро поставити екипе способно решити апсолутно нова неочекиваним проблемима у авиону дизајн.  На пример, 1929-1930 распоред КБ укључује производњу 3-мотора путничких авиона К-7, као и "К-Тјазхиолиј" (К-Јаке), за немачки 500хп БМУ "стршљен" мотора.  То је био дизајниран за ношење 22 путника.  Моцкуп прототип је испитан у ТсАГИ аеродинамички тунел у септембру 1928, а одобрен је за производњу од стране Научно-Тецницал Цоммеете ВВС у марту следеће године.
Али производња није почела, а ознака К-7 је касније коришћен за трансконтиненталне авиона пројекат је започео у 1928. "Идеја да се изграђена К-7, - КАКалинин уроте касније - дође ми давно, већ 1925.  1929 пројекат је формулисао и након две године од прецизирања почело да дође у животу ...  Током стварања нових огромни уредјаји нови путеви воде до нових схемес авиона, на коришћење од крила до куће идентификатор.  То значи да оне стазе воде на летеће крило, које је управо савршена авиона.

За завршетке транзиције у летеће крило потребно је изградити следеће равни концепт "све је у крило".
Оригинални дизајн авиона је цело дрво са 5-лонгероне крила.  Али то је претрпела од среће стренгх ресурс, а након дуге дебате Калинин одлучили пребацити на цијелом метала заварена грађевина са 3-лонгероне крила.




К-7 је била огромна елиптичан крило густе профил (спан 53м, површина 452м2) са два троугла сецтион таилбоомс, ношење таилфин те стабилисер са контролом механике.  Крила су готово присан центроплане (уидхт 6м, дужина 10м, висина 2.33м) где је соба за идентификатор и људима био је уређен.  Елиптичан конзоле гориво са 14 тенкова су били прикључени на центроплане.  Тхе центроплане био прекривен дуралуминиум, конзоле са тканина.  Није било таквих дебелим цевима у складу са захтевима централних лонгероне, тако да је направљен од две паралелне цеви.  Остатак крило'с оквир је такође направљен од заварених челичних цеви.



А корпа је протурбед од водећих руба, са цоцпите за два пилота, навигатор, радио-навигациони и главни механичар.  Још седам чланова посаде су се налазиле у другим деловима авиона и интерне комуникације путем телефона.
Авиона предвиђен је за 6 БМУ моторе, но касније је одлуку да инсталирате домаће АМ-34. Шесторице хлађен водом недостајало снаге мотора, те је био присиљен да Калинин додај 7. лактарош мотор на последњи ивица крила између таилбоомс.  Пројектант је био свестан да се овај мотор ће повећати проток ваздуха турбуленција и може довести до вибрација свих авиона, али он није имао другог избора.  Рано ујутро-34 мотори нису били опремљени са мјењача и имао је власт само 750хп.
Триангле таилбоомс су протурбед из посљедњег лонгероне на реп. Таилбоомс су опремљени досјетљивост пнеуматика, штитећи реп од повременог контакта са гроунг.
Оригинални дизајн главни зупчаник авиону дозвољено имати хоризонтални положај, док су на терену.

Главна геар састојала се од два широка ундерцарригес постављене од оквира дизајн са уљем-пнеуматски вешања точкова, први покушај у Совјетски тешки авиона.  Још једна новост за ову класу авиона су гуме са камерама "Гоодыеар".  Совјетске индустрије није имао таквих гума у производњи, и то је то старт у будућности за производњу авиона.




Ундерцарриагес имала свака 3 точка, те су биле прекривене фаирингс - металик 'панталоне' - лево од улаза, који је имао врата и степениште води у крило.
Ипак, дизајн на позорници је постало јасно да ће бити тешко за пилот за контролу авионом јер огроман оптерећење на контроле.  Иако је за оригинални дизајн КАКалинин предложена одлука које касније је нашироко користи у авијацији - електрични 'боостерс'.  Уговор је потписан са једним од Москве елецтротецхниц институцијама, који је дужност да развију и изради нови систем. Али програмере фаилед то учинити и контролу површине К-7 су опремљени са сервосурфацес, на светло цвета.
Теоријски проблеми тешки авиони контролу коришћења сервосурфацес је аеродинамичан решити екипе да води НФФреиман.  На ТсАГИ аеродинамички тунел више од 300 успешних тестирања су спроведена, а 1932 сервосурфацес су тестирани на К-5 летећи лабораторија.  Функционалност је савршен, а био је препоручљиво инсталирати их на К-7.

Калинин такође одлучила користити цхроме-молибдениум цеви за авион оквир - то је био први употребу тих цеви у нашој земљи.  Израчун за оквир су да води професор АСБалинскы - истакнутих научника са подручја чврстоће материјала.  Али, авион је био претежак и даље у пројекат, јер је израчун узети у аццонт одријешиш чврстоће цеви уиелдед близу зглобова.
Челичне цеви за производњу започео (у исто време са авиона дизајна) на Днепропетровск Метал Уор.   До овог сличне цеви су увезени из Суееден, и за купити цеви за једнокреветну К-7 могао цијене онолико колико 100.000 златно роублес ($ $? - 30'с).  Као ТсАГИ комисије напоменуо 1932, К-7 заслужују бити велики корак напред у авиону дизајн само зато што стимулише практичну употребу хрома-молибдениум цеви у СССР-а.   
К-7 је био замишљен као стандард за цивилне и милитеры авиона.  Један од путника опција је развијен за ношење 128 путника до 5000 км. Друге дизајн - "лукс" - требало да организује 16 луксирилы кабина за 64 путника.  Авион требао имати удобан боравак клуб, снацк-бар АМД кухиња.  Ово је први дизајн који омогућава механика авиона у лету приступ трчање мотора.
Доста напора су потрошите на К-7 по наоружање екипе водити ДИГригоров. Војна верзија авиона је био прави "летећи тврђава", које се појавили пре 10 година амерички Боеинг Б-17.  Одбрану од Калинин'с џин Достигли колико 12 тобџија позицијама (8 20мм топовима и 8 7.62мм митраљеза).  Специјални електрични корпу (трчање на жице унутар таилбоомс) је дизајниран за "превоз" од гуннерс два митраљеза реп. . Авион није имао "слепа мрља", а сваки смјер је под ватром најмање од 3 гуннерс, што је увелико повећана поузданост одбрану.
Бомбе су биле смјештене у увала крило бомба, а бомба је залив оквири су били укључени у крило структуре.  Зависно о рекуиред домету, бомба лоад варирала од 9900кг до 16600кг (25.550 - 42.840 £).  Спољашњи танком фуле дозвољено лета 2400 км са 6000кг бомби.
Друге војне модификације могао носити 112 потпуно опремљен паратрооперс. Могућности носити 8,4 тона Танк или други парасхуте дроппабле опреме између главних зупчаници је такође под студы.
. Техничка Пројекат је довршен раним1932. У дворишту је Кхарков творница Авијација дрвених моцкуп авиона централном делу саграђен је у мјерилу 1:1.  Величине авиона је била превелика за постојеће производне областима, и нови саборница саграђена. У новембру 1932 скупштина експериментални авиони започели, и био је завршен у само девет месеци.
У почетком августа 1933 авиона је таксиед на писте. It's test pilot was MASnegirev, co-pilot - ANGiatsinsky. Ит'с тест пилот је МАСнегирев, цо-пилот - АНГиатсинскы.  Прво покретање свих моторе открило озбиљан вибрација различитих делова авиона; они су хитно ојачан.. На Анугуст 19 АМСнегирев направио први лет равно на 5м висина.  Више невоље су открила - контролне површине су амплитуде са вобратионг до 1м!  У неколико дана реп од авиона је преобликовано - постао је "двокрилац" са додатним стабилизирајући површину између таилфинс. Сервосурфацес из таилфинс су избрисани, а оне су се преселили на стабилисерс ближе контроле.
. At 6a.m. Дан пре првог лета ПИБаранов (водитељка главне Управа за ваздухопловну индустрију), заједно са тест-пилот ММГромов стигло Кхарков.  21. аугуст 1933 К-7 је био 'на почетку' са приказивањем мотора.  Време је било фер, упркос неким светлом облацима.  Седам чланова посаде је узео своје позиције.  И, као и обично, у последњи тренутак цо-пилот седиште окупирају Калинин себе.
Након неколико такси возила, авионом скинула глатко.  Као АМСнегирев касније рекао, "авион је врло осетљив.  Било је лако контролисати.  Тешко је веровати, али ви једноставно повући јарам - а машина одговара '.
К-7 направио круг изнад Каркив, и сигурно спустили на фабрику аирстрип. Након пилота МАСнегирев примили извештај аппретиатионс и КАКалинин - симболична казна за илегалну лет авиона.  У наредних летови постало јасно, да вертикална вибрација је отишао са новим реп дизајн, хоризонталног али је још увек тамо.  Али МАСнегирев, запошљавају његова богата искуства тест пилот, наћи начина да га угушити мијењање мотора регинме.  Континуираног теста открила фер лети карактеристике авиону.. Посљедњи фабрички тест лета је заказан за 20. новембар, а авион морао да лети у Москву. Било је планирано за мерење приземљу максималну брзину.  То лет (10. један) успешно је завршен, али терен екипе која је направила грешку покварио у мерењима.
Следећи покушај био је планиран за 21. новембар.  За сада К-7 је имао више од 5 сати лета. Флигхт план укључене приближавају у "мерење километар 'на 1000м надморске висине, а затим ловеринг авиона на 100м и триппле пролазак у" владар' на највећу брзину.
К-7 скинула са 20 чланова посаде на броду.  Овде је прича о ДАЦхернысхев, један од инжењера терену је учествовао у тестовима: "Као што је планирано, К-7 флеу над нама и пилот фигуред оут да смо спремни за мерења. Авиони направио окрет, убрзан и почео приступ. У 3-4 км од нас је направио нагли ронити на 30-40 степени при пуној брзини. Први хит у земљу покуцао слетања удаљени зупчаници. авиони скочио и са активним моторима погодиле земљу поново. Фире почело ... "
Шта је подсјетио на по пет чланова посаде преживео, ПИСемеренко: "приближавања" меру километар 'Снегирев дао пуну троттле. Реп крака вибрација дошли. Ја броје 15-20 погодака. Одједном се бука мотора покренут је додат звук ломљења апарт таилбоом доњем левом цеви. расељена цев рубова закључана вертикалне контроле и К-7 није био у могућности за добити ван од ронити. Ја сам обавештавате вибрација, на угао ока проценити ронити ... Близу површине авиона чини лево питцх. Им ' чекамо краја. Контроле су и даље мртви. згазит ... "
Техничара и дизајнера претрпјела уништавање њихове израде и смрти од 15 чланова посаде. Калинин био на два месеца због проблема са срцем. Но, упркос овом катастрофу тима није изгубити самопоуздање. Да испита узроке и црацх неколико компетентних цомметеес створено је, уз учешће најистакнутијих стручњака ваздухопловства у земљи.Закључено је да је разоран вибрација узроковане сервосурвацес време неке режиме седми мотор. Али није било 'теоретске' проове овог закључка.  Само неколико година касније МВКелдысх експланед ове (и многе друге сличне) Крах и нађе решење за борбу са укус - тежина балансинг контролних површина. Али, то је прекасно ...
1935. Након добијања стручне цонлусионс, не откривајући грешке у авиону дизајн, на челу ГУАП наредили хитну Калинин за почетак производње два нова (путнички и војни) К-7 са заказаним ролл-оут на почетку 1935. Производња је била додељена нова база - Тхе Воронежско Авијација Фацторы.
Измењен становишта земље ваздухопловства вођство на производњу тешке авион нису дозволили тима за завршетке развоја К-7.  Оба авиона су 'цонсерватед' (ака 'напуштене' - АС), један од њих пола изграђена. Калинин неколико пута покушао да докаже неопходност тог авиона класе, али он није успио савладати опозиција његов пројекат.

Надам се да ће те моћи прочитати.

Па може да се разуме нешто. Хвала
Него, jubilej, да ниси Ти можда Рус?

He,he, nadjoh ovu spravu za FS2002 - moze da leti i u FS2004, samo se ne vide propeleri. Zvuk mu je fenomenalan i leti lepo i stameno. Evo malo slicica (poletanje), uspeo sam da napravim veeeliki skolski krug sa njime i lepo da sletim

Jubilej- hvala na trudu oko teksta 

Evo slike aviona u letu, dav portreta konstruktora Konstantina Kalinina  i dva teksta o njemu i avionima.

1.

Konstantin Alekseevich Kalinin
14k b/w "History of aircraft construction in the USSR" by V.B.Shavrov, Vol.1 p.414
   
Military pilot since 1916, K.A.Kalinin joined the Moscow Aviation Technicum (College) June 1, 1920.
    October 1920 - passed to the second 'course' ahead of schedule. Unlike now in the USA, educational institutions in Russia/USSR have solid schedule of classes. To jump from one 'course' to another is possible only for the most determined, strong and lucky students.
    March 1921 - head of scientific-technical section of the IVF;
    In 1922 (first waves of purges, yet soft) was suspended for one year, as an intelligent (why not?) who participated in Ukrainian nationalistic Petlura movement (Petlurovschina) and did not prove himself as a Party (Communist one of course) activist.
    June 1922 - S.V.Ilyushin submitted petition in his support. S.V.Ilyushin was a member of the IVF Party organization, so it was quite safe for him.
    November 11 - expelled from the IVF for missing some tests;
    Since 1925 - one of the most prominent Soviet aircraft designers. He worked mostly at Ukraina (Kharkiv), where he was able to pick the brightest graduates of the Kharkov Aviation Institute (KhAI), like I.G.Neman, Z.I.Itskovich, A.Ya.Scherbakov, V.Ya.Krylov and others.
  # Airplanes of his design shared several common features: they were monoplanes;
  # wing and tail plane - elliptical;
  # fuselage - wielded steel tubes frame;
  # wing structure - mostly wood;
  # cover - fabric;
    Taking into account historical period, those were materials of choice. Kalinin's passenger aircraft were cheap and very easy to maintain. Plus they were more economical than any other domestic and foreign civil aircraft. No wonder, that they were widely used.
    Military aircraft built by K.A.Kalinin were all of unique design. He had courage to get involved with advanced project, but had no chance to bring them to mass production. And it was not necessarily his fall.


2.

Kostyantyn Kalinin was born in the land of Slobozhanshchyna (which is now part of Bilhorod Oblast), the land of the Ukrainian Cossacks, where Ukrainian traditions and customs had very deep roots. Ukrainian culture and Ukrainian spirit were part of everyday life.

It was surely not accidental that after the collapse of the Empire, Kostyantyn Kalinin, a WWI air force pilot, an officer who was awarded the Russian Empire’s Orders of St Stanislav and St Anna for bravery (he was wounded several times), joined the air force of the Ukrainian People’s Republic where he served in 1918 and 1919. After Ukraine lost her short-lived independence, he fled to Moscow where he enrolled in the Aviation Academy. Strangely enough, at the time of his enrolment, the secret police must have overlooked him, and he studied for some time without being harassed. It was only in 1922 that he was expelled from this Academy for his “political convictions and leanings” and he fled again — this time back to Kyiv. His talents were so obvious that he became a student of the Kyiv Polytechnic with ease. He majored in aircraft design, and as early as in 1925 the first plane, designed by him, K-1, was flight-tested. Most of the aircraft designers at that time preferred the biplane designs, with two sets of wings, one above the other, but Kalinin chose the monoplane design as his favourite which, ten years later, became the dominant design in world aircraft building. Kalinin was invited to come over to Kharkiv to work at an aircraft design centre which he headed shortly after his arrival in the then capital of Ukraine.

At that time there was another design and aircraft building centre in Kharkiv, in addition to Kalinin’s. The Kharkiv Aviation Institute had its own aircraft design centre, headed by Yosyf Neman who, in fact, worked for some time at Kalinin’s centre, and became an aircraft designer in his own right before he had turned thirty. Two of the planes designed at the Institute, KhAI-1 and KhAI-5 (also known as R-10) were successfully tested proving their airworthiness. R-10 was a light bomber which could also be used for reconnaissance. More than five hundred of these planes were used in combat missions during the Second World War. But in 1938, the Neman aircraft design centre was closed down because its head, Yosyf Neman, was arrested by the secret police. He was one of many millions who were imprisoned or sent to concentration camps on trumped-up charges.

A series of planes designed by Kalinin culminated in K-5, the most widely used plane in domestic flights at that time. In fact, 260 K-5 planes were the best-known passenger aircraft in the Soviet Union of the 1930s. The landing gear on some of these planes was modified to make it possible for the planes to land on water. Incidentally, Kalinin’s previous plane, K-4, won the gold medal at the Berlin International Exhibition. However, Kalinin’s ambition was to build a plane of much bigger size, an intercontinental liner.



Kalinin’s jumbo plane

The design work on a new plane which was called K-7, began as early as in 1928. “An idea to build a very big plane came to me back in 1925. By 1929 the project had been worked out in principle and it took two more years to get it carried out… Creation of planes of such size requires engineering innovations, new ways of solving engineering problems. In our case it was a new concept of the wings which had to carry some of the load. For that time it was a revolutionary idea that helped solve many problems. We worked at the creation of a craft with the aerodynamics of a flying wing, which in itself is an ideal airplane. In order to have such a flying wing, we had to build a plane which would have quite a few things placed in the wings,” said Kalinin later.

The plane that eventually was built in 1933 was an exceptional craft for its time. In August 1933 it was successfully flown for the first time. Seven engines, 750 hp each, provided a great lifting power. The wing span was 53 metres. The plane had several modifications, passenger and military ones. One of the passenger modifications could carry 128 passengers to a distance of 5,000 kilometres. The air force modification was a veritable “flying fortress,” built nine years earlier than Boeing B-17, the famed American bomber. K-7 was armed with 8 aviation guns and 8 rapid-fire machine guns. It would be extremely difficult for enemy fighters to approach K-7 from any side since every point in the immediate vicinity of the plane could be observed and covered by at least three gunners. The plane could carry, depending on the distance it had to fly, loads of 10 to 16.5 tons. Additional fuel tanks, suspended beneath the plane, provided enough fuel for flying a distance of 2,400 kilometres with 6 tons of bombs on board. K-7, modified for delivering troops in landing operations, could carry up to 112 parachutists, and a 8.5-ton armoured vehicle, or a field gun, suspended beneath the plane and then released on parachutes. For comparison, the Maksim Gorky (ANT-20) plane designed by Andrey Tupolev in Moscow and tested in 1934, could carry only 76 passengers; its military modification was armed with two guns, six machine guns and could carry ten tons of bombs.

From the memoirs of the participants of the first test flight of K-7: “The plane was rolled out onto the runway in early August 1933. Mykhailo Snehiryov was appointed to be the test pilot. When the engines were started for the first time, a strong vibration in various sections of the plane was registered, and it became clear these sections had to be reinforced. On August 19 Snehiryov actually flew the plane for several seconds, 5 meters above the ground, flying in a straight line. The pilot reported that during this test flight, the rudders vibrated with an amplitude of about one meter —and that was unacceptable. The whole empennage was redesigned and a new one installed. The head of the Main Board of Aviation Industry Petr Baranov and test pilot Gromov arrived in Kharkiv the day before the next test flight which was to take place on August 21. At six o’clock in the morning the plane was on the runway with six people on board. Kalinin took the seat of the second pilot, as was his custom. The weather was not unfavourable for the flight, though the low clouds hang over the airfield, and there was a light mist. The engines were started, the plane smoothly rolled along the runway and took off. ‘The plane obeyed the wheel well … It was unbelievably easy to control the plane — it responded to the slightest move of the control column,’ the test pilot Snehiryov said after the flight. After flying in a circle over Kharkiv, K-7 safely landed.”



Planes, morals and famine

The plane was flight-tested in 1933, when millions were dying in rural Ukraine in an artificially created famine. What should we think of the people who designed and built planes when they knew that peasants were dying from starvation? They could not help seeing some of these skeletal peasants who had managed to get through the army and police cordons only to die in the streets of Kharkiv. What should we think of the people who worked for the Soviet military industrial complex? What kind of moral values were these designers guided by providing the tyrannical regime with strategic bombers, probably the best in the world as far as their range and bombs carrying capacity were concerned? What kind of moral principles did they have that allowed them to work at building the largest fleet of strategic bombers in the world at the time when untold millions lived in abject poverty? Do we have the right to accuse them of callousness and immorality? I am afraid there is hardly a clear-cut to answer we can give today to any of these questions. One thing is clear though — Kalinin, in contrast to many of other designers, did want to build passenger rather than military planes, whereas others devoted themselves entirely to designing and building military hardware, a solid support of the Soviet regime. Kalinin was eager to design and build passenger planes but was forced to build bombers and other military planes.

The test flight showed that K-7 was quite airworthy. A test flight which would determine what was the maximum speed at which the plane could fly, was to take place on November 21. Then, the next day the plane was to be flown to Moscow. In the afternoon of August 21, K-7 with twenty people on board, took off.

From the memoirs of the engineer Chebyshev who watched the plane’s test flight from the ground: “K-7 flew above us at the appointed hour, and when the pilot saw that we were ready with our instruments to measure the plane’s speed, he made a circle and evidently prepared to throttle up when he would be flying above us again, but without reaching the place we were at on the ground with our instruments, the plane suddenly dived and began descending at an angle of about 30 or 40 degrees. The distance to it at that moment was about 3 or 4 kilometres. The plane crash-landed, lost its landing gear, bounced off the ground, and then fell again, its engines still working. And immediately it burst into flames.”

Out of twenty people on board fifteen died. One of the survivors, Semerenko, a test pilot, described what happened: “When he entered the straight line — it was while the plane would be moving along this line that the speed was to be measured, the test pilot Snehiryov opened the throttle, and immediately a strong vibration began at the tail unit… There was a sharp sound of something breaking and it became impossible to control the elevators. K-7 went into a dive and could not be brought out of it. The vibration continued; I tried to assess the angle at which we were heading toward the ground… Shortly before we hit the ground the plane banked sharply to the left. The plane was completely out of control. Nothing could be done, and all that was left was to wait for the end… And then we hit the ground.”

The thing that ruined K-7 is called “flutter”— vibration that broke apart many planes in those times when they reached a certain speed, very high by the then standards. It was only several years later that Mstyslav Keldish, a superb mathematician and would-be academician, provided mathematical description of this phenomenon which allowed to successfully deal with it. Baranov who has been mentioned earlier, ordered to have two more K-7 planes built with improved tail units. A year later, the Kalinin Centre was transferred from Kharkiv to Voronezh, Russia, and the building of the two planes was never completed.

Officially, the transfer was explained by a necessity to create a design centre at the aircraft building factory that was being created in Voronezh. But it is very likely that the real reason was of a very different kind — the Soviets wanted Ukraine to be no more than a producer of grain, metal and coal, and high-tech industries were to be concentrated in Moscow, or at least in Russia. It was the time when the Bolshevik political line changed from propaganda of “international brotherhood to undisguised Russian imperial chauvinism. Even the Soviet phraseology went through a change — deeds followed the words.



Tragic finale

In Voronezh, the Kalinin Centre proceeded to work at the K-12 plane, codenamed BC-2, which was to be modified for military purposes. It was to be a multipurpose plane which could be used for reconnoitring, bombing missions, spotting for adjusting artillery fire, transporting troops or the wounded. Kalinin’s design was once again innovatory and it took quite some time and a lot of arguments to convince the military who commissioned the plane that K-12 was an aircraft they needed. In 1936 the plane was successfully tested and in 1938 they began to be built. But Kostyantyn Kalinin did not see a single one of them — on April 1 1938 he was arrested and died in prison soon after his arrest. The death was caused by tortures he was subjected to. The exact date of his death is not known but must have occurred either in the late spring or in the fall of 1938. Many of his colleagues at the Centre suffered a similar fate, disappearing without a trace in the GULAG limbo.

Paradoxically, Kalinin, when in prison, did not stop working on new designs — he made drawings of a plane with a totally new concept on his mind. He called his new plane K-15, which did not progress — for obvious reasons — from the first sketches to any further stage, but the same idea, independently and much later, was successfully used in building such planes as the US Stealth and other hypersonic fighters and bombers. When right after the war the Soviets started research in the field of hypersonic flight which resulted in the creation of jet fighters, they used the relevant research materials captured by their troops in Germany.

Oblivious of Kalinin’s pioneering ideas, the Soviets sought solutions elsewhere. Kalinin was only one of many researchers who were destroyed by the Soviet regime and whose ideas instead of being used, were buried in the secret police archives.

Two aircraft design centres were thus closed down almost at the same time — one of Yosyf Neman and the other one of Kostyantyn Kalinin. The Kharkiv school of aircraft design and construction ceased to be. Similarly to so many other spheres of science and art, the development of Ukrainian aircraft design was rudely disrupted and the researchers, scientists and engineers whose talents could be creatively used, were “liquidated” as “enemies of the Soviet people.”

The aviation design in Ukraine goes back to Levko Matsiyevych who also happened to be one of the founders of the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party. In the Soviet times, this name, among so many other names, was a taboo, “unmentionable.”

The entry about Kalinin in the Soviet Ukrainian Encyclopaedia, quoted at the beginning of our story, was a typical Soviet product of misinformation and suppressed facts. The same can be said about entries that dealt with a great many other prominent Ukrainians whose names were allowed to be mentioned but whose dates of death tragically concentrated around the years 1937 and 1938, the time of “great purges.” The encyclopaedia editors were instructed to do something about the dates — and they obediently did. In the post-Soviet times, a lot of archive materials — but by far not all — became accessible and the true stories about “the enemies of the Soviet people” began to emerge. These “enemies” were first mercilessly annihilated by the Soviet regime and later their contribution was “rediscovered” and attributed to “the advantages of Soviet science and technology.” Also, many other unsavoury facts were discovered in the archives. It emerged, for example, that the prominent Soviet Russian aircraft designer Andrey Tupolev had a hand in the demise of Neman’s and Kalinin’s design centres, either because he wanted to get rid of his “rivals” or because of some “political” considerations. But Tupolev and his pupil Petlyakov did use Kalinin’s ideas in designing Tu-2 and Pe-2 bombers which did play a significant role in the battles of the Second World War. In fact, shortly before his arrest, Kalinin had his new plane, K-13, tested but later this bomber was destroyed as “a project that was an act of sabotage” (now it must sound absolutely absurd, but in the nightmarish Soviet reality of the 1930s it was the order of the day). Only a little later, it turned out that Kalinin’s ideas were not “sabotage” but could be successfully used in the creation of diving bombers.



Legacy

In 1958, the British magazine Air Pictorial, featured a photograph of Kalinin’s K-12 with a caption that read, “This craft was a prototype of all modern hypersonic jets.” In 1978, the Russian Academician Artobolevsky remarked that, “Igor Sikorsky (aviation pioneer who designed and tested planes and the first successful American helicopter, was born in Kyiv in 1889; he had Ukrainian Cossacks among his ancestors — S.H.) was accorded the honours of an American hero at his funeral, but another brilliant aircraft designer, Kostyantyn Kalinin remains unknown in his own country — he was destroyed when he was still a young man.”

E to se zove predstavljanje.