peashooter85:The Great Soviet Propaganda Plane,At the time it was the largest and most advanced airp
peashooter85:The Great Soviet Propaganda Plane,At the time it was the largest and most advanced airplane in history. Designed by Andrei Tupolev, the ANT-20 was a Soviet airplane that pushed the boundaries of aviation. It wingspan was similar to that of a modern day Boeing 747. To power such a massive plane, the ANT-20 utilized eight 900 horsepower engines. It was also the largest airplane made of corrugated sheet metal. Finally it was the first airplane to use both alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC).Named after Maxim Gorsky, a popular Soviet writer and founder of the Socialist realism art movement, the ANT-20’s purpose was to spread Stalinist propaganda across the Soviet Union and Europe. To do this, the ANT-20 was equipped with a radio station whose transmitter (called the “voice from the sky”) could override all but the most powerful local radio stations, a printing press that could distribute propaganda leaflets from the air, a library, a photography lab, and a film projector with sound to show movies to the plane’s 75 passengers. It was Stalin’s plan that a whole fleet of such airplanes were to be built, which were to cruise the world’s skies while spreading communist propaganda across the globe.On May 18th, 1935 the Maxim Gorky made it first demonstration flight over Moscow escorted by two I-5 fighters. While the ANT-20 flew over Moscow spreading Soviet propaganda, the two fighters were to perform a series of dazzling aerial maneuvers around the massive plane. Unfortunately the two planes simultaneously crashed into the Maxim Gorky, sending it plummeting to the ground where it crashed in a residential district near the present day Sokol Metro Station. The crash killed 45 people, including two pilots, all 33 passengers, and ten people who were family members of the airplane’s designers.After the devastating crash, the Soviet government made a scapegoat of the deceased pilot Blagin, claiming that he had made a reckless maneuver causing the crash and that he had a “cocky disregard of authority.” A year after the fatal crash, a replacement airplane, called the ANT-20bis went into production. It was similar to the Maxim Gorky, but with more powerful engines. In 1942 it likewise crashed when the pilot allowed a passenger to take his seat momentarily and the passenger apparently disengaged the automatic pilot, sending the airplane into a nosedive from an altitude of 1,500 ft and killing all 36 on board. Stalin’s grand scheme of building a massive fleet of gigantic propaganda planes was scrapped in 1939 after several purges of the Soviet aviation industry resulted in a shortage of qualified engineers. -- source link