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ANT-41 (T-1, LK-1)

In the 1930s, the USSR Navy experienced an acute need for a modern land-based high-speed aircraft capable of performing the functions of a torpedo bomber, reconnaissance aircraft and bomber.

Work on the machine intended for the fleet began in the design bureau in March 1934. Design work was carried out by the team of VM Myasishchev. The project receives the designation ANT-41 under the design bureau, the official T-1 [Torpedonosec - Torpedo-bomber] and LK-1 [Lotchik Kreiser - Test Pilot Cruiser]. In August 1934 and in the following 1935, the UHVS presented the TTT to the aircraft. ANT-41 was designed to perform the tasks of a "cruiser", a bomber and a torpedo bomber, its maximum speed was to be 300-340 km / h, the ceiling was 7000 m, the normal range was 1300 km (maximum 3000 km). In June 1936, the TTT was once again adjusted. Now the main purpose of the car was torpedoing.

KB prepared a draft aircraft in accordance with these requirements. The ANT-41 was an all-metal twin-engine midplane with M-34FRN engines (1,275 hp) and retractable landing gear. A feature of the project was a large fuselage bomb bay under the internal placement of two torpedoes or bombs with a total mass of up to 2000 kg.

The aircraft was launched into pilot production in April 1935. The construction of the test sample was complicated by a large number of modifications. In November 1935, the design of the T-1 was basically completed and its brief technical description was compiled. The prototype was in full swing. In accordance with the calculation, the T-1 in the land based variant could have a maximum flight speed of 358 km / h at the ground (at the water), and at a calculated altitude of 2.1 km –400 km / h, the ceiling is 7000 m. At the beginning of January In 1936, the first experimental machine left the assembly shop of the ZAK TsAGI.

But it was here that the designers were waiting for an unpleasant surprise. In the mid-1930s, high-speed aircraft first encountered a new phenomenon — flutter — an unusually rapid increase in structure oscillations, capable of destroying a plane in a matter of seconds. Although theoretically the flutter was already known, but in domestic practice it had not yet been encountered with it, and there were no reliable methods for its preliminary calculation. When the work on the T-1 came to an end, the engineer of the experimental aerodynamic department of TsAGI, EP Grossman, one of the leading Soviet specialists in the issues of aeroelasticity, carried out calculations of the already defined aircraft design for the flutter And it turned out that for horizontal tailing the critical speed, that is the speed at which flutter occurs is so small that the plane could not be released for testing. This required a complete rework of the horizontal tail.

On May 28, the aircraft was transported to the Central Airfield, where the Operational Department, Flight Test and Refinement (OELID) TsAGI were located. There the T-1 factory tests began. The leading test-pilot was appointed A.Chernavsky. At first, taxiing and jogging was performed, and on June 2, 1936, the first flight was carried out, which lasted 25 minutes and ended quite safely. The usual test and development work began. The plane turned out to be simple in piloting, had good stability and controllability, only to improve the lateral control it took a little to increase the area of the ailerons. The first five flights showed unsatisfactory stability of the aircraft, and flights were conducted with artificial front centering.

After this was done, pilot A.Chernavsky on July 3, 1936 set off for another test flight with the task of measuring the maximum speed and testing the aircraft at a speed exceeding the maximum by 15% (in a dive). This flight was fatal for the T-1. Seven minutes after takeoff, due to the arisen flexural-aileron flutter the plane collapsed in the air, and the plane crashed near Khimki railway station near Moscow. The crew escaped by parachute.

The accident ANT-41 at first seemed incomprehensible. The work on the aircraft was stopped, the finalization of the project began, taking into account their implementation on the "double" and in the series. But in connection with the introduction of the DB-3T into the series, the release of the “doubler”, and even more so, the matter did not reach the series.

Serial production of the aircraft was supposed to expand at the Moscow plant number 84, drawings were prepared for the series in the design bureau, the technology was developed, all the slipway equipment was designed, contracts for the supply of components were secured. In parallel with the development of the land variant in the design bureau, a float variant ANT-41 was designed; it was supposed to install the machine on the floats after conducting state tests.

The designers did everything they could to ensure the serial construction of the T-1, but to no avail. It is now difficult to unambiguously answer the question why this happened. Whether the accident undermined confidence in the aircraft, or there were some other reasons. It is likely that in 1936, the calculation was already on the torpedo version of the long-range twin-engine bomber DB-3 (which had just passed state tests and its introduction into the series began). There are no direct documents shedding light on this circumstance. But the fact remains. The first special-purpose torpedo aircraft in the USSR, which embodied a number of advanced technical solutions, which had obvious prospects in terms of combat use and had no analogs, was never built.