ANT-20 Maxim Gorky - Design
The giant ANT-20 toured the otherwise inaccessible areas of the USSR, bringing the communist message to the masses. Intended entirely for propaganda purposes, the airplane had lights under the wing for spelling out slogans, a small printing press for printing handbills to be distributed in flight, photographic studio, a telegraph office, a radio station called "Voice from the sky", a 16-telephone exchange, and motion-picture projectors.
As well as its media production and output capabilities, the ANT-20 had a cafeteria, an internal telephone exchange and sleeping accommodation for the crew. Some sources say it also had a laundry, a pharmacy and a bar. This indicates that it was used above the more remote areas of the USSR, places that still did without the blessing of civilization. Four smaller auxiliary engines were required to drive various devices, including the giant sound system and a series of lights for displaying propaganda slogans at night.
In the project was provided for the possibility of using the aircraft as an agitational platform, a passenger plane, a transport, and a bomber. It could serve as a mobile staff for the highest military and political structures of authority.
The new aircraft was projected on the basis of project Ant-16 (TB-4), but in contrast to it had to bear on 1,500 kg payload and use relatively small airfields. The takeoff run length its with the takeoff was to be only 300-400 m (instead of 800 m in TB-4). In connection with this a new wing was designed with increased area and lengthening compared to the wing of the TB-4. In the power plant were used eight modernized engines M-34[fri] with a total power of 7,200 hp. Six engines were mounted in the wing leading edge, two in the tandem installation above the fuselage.
In the creation of the Ant-20 special attention was paid to the design of different systems of the aircraft and equipment. On Ant-20 for the first time for a heavy aircraft the control system used rigid tubular installation, adjustable stabilizer with the long distance electric of the system of control, electro-servodrive in control system and in the power plant. The flight equipment of aircraft ensured its operation by day and at night, including night landings in unprepared localities, for the first time in the domestic practice an autopilot was included. The centralized electrical station of the aircraft used direct and alternating current (for the first time on a domestic aircraft the system of the three-phase alternating current was used, with a voltage of 127 V and with a frequency of 50 Hz., which fed the purposeful equipment of propaganda aircraft (cinema and radio set, printing house, searchlight so forth).
In the process of creating the aircraft Ant-20, Ant-20[bis] and their prototype of experimental bomber TB-4 were solved most complex for their time problems of aerodynamics, structural mechanics and structural strength of such large aircraft, creation of contemporary onboard equipment and mastery of their series production.
The creation of the aircraft Ant-16 (TB-4) and Ant-20 (“mH”), which according to their geometric dimensions and throughout flight mass considerably exceeded the domestic and foreign heavy aircraft of that time, was the salient success of entire Soviet aircraft industry and, first of all, the association, headed by A.N.Tupolev.
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