Tupolev ANT-20

The Tupolev ANT-20 Maxim Gorky (Туполев АНТ-20 "Максим Горький") was a Soviet eight-engine aircraft, the largest of the 1930s. Its wingspan was similar to that of a modern Boeing 747.

Overview
The ANT-20 was designed by Andrei Tupolev, using the all-metal airframe technologies devised by German engineer Hugo Junkers during the World War I years, and constructed between July 4, 1933 and April 3, 1934. It was one of two aircraft of its kind built by the Soviets. The aircraft was named after Maxim Gorky and dedicated to the 40th anniversary of his literary and public activities. The ANT-20 was the largest known aircraft to have used the Junkers design philosophy of corrugated sheet metal for many of the airframe's key components, especially the corrugated sheet metal skinning of the airframe.

It was intended for Stalinist propaganda purposes and was equipped with a powerful radio set called "Voice from the sky" ("Голос с неба", Golos s neba), printing machinery, library, radiostations, photographic laboratory, and a film projector with sound for showing movies in flight. For the first time in aviation history, this aircraft was equipped with a ladder, which would fold itself and become a part of the floor.

Also, for the first time in aviation history, the aircraft used not only direct current, but alternating current of 120 volts, as well. The aircraft could be disassembled and transported by railroad if needed. The aircraft set several carrying capacity world records and is also the subject of a 1934 painting by Vasily Kuptsov, in the collection of the Russian Museum at St. Petersburg.

1935 Maxim Gorky crash
On May 18, 1935, the Maxim Gorky (pilots – I. V. Mikheyev and I. S. Zhurov) and three more planes (Tupolev ANT-14, R-5 and I-5) took off for a demonstration flight over Moscow. The main purpose of the other three planes flying so close was to make evident the difference in size. As a result of a poorly executed loop maneuver (a third such stunt on this flight) around the plane performed by an accompanying I-5 fighter (pilot – Nikolai Blagin), both planes collided and the Maxim Gorky crashed into a low-rise residential neighborhood west of present-day Sokol metro station.

Forty-five people were killed in the crash, including both pilots and their 33 passengers, family members of some of those who had built the aircraft. (While authorities announced that the fatal maneuver was impromptu and reckless, it has been recently suggested that it might have been a planned part of the show.) Also killed was the fighter pilot, Blagin, who was made a scapegoat in the crash and subsequently had his name used eponymously (Blaginism) to mean, roughly, a "cocky disregard of authority." However, Blagin was given a state funeral at Novodevichy Cemetery together with ANT-20 victims.

ANT-20bis
A replacement aircraft, designated ANT-20bis had begun production the following year and first flew in 1938. It was largely identical in design but with six more powerful engines. This plane, renumbered PS-124, served with Aeroflot on transport routes in Russia and Uzbekistan. On December 14, 1942, it too crashed after 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 500 m (1,500 ft) and killing all 36 on board.

Plans to build a fleet of ANT-20bis aircraft were abandoned in 1939 as Joseph Stalin's purges of the aviation industry had resulted in a shortage of qualified engineers.