Plywood defeated dural

22


88 years ago, on January 30, for the first time, the prototype of the Soviet multipurpose combat aircraft ANT-1930 (P-10), developed by the design team under the direction of A.N. Tupolev. The first stage of testing revealed a number of shortcomings, which, in general, is common for almost any new car. The plane was sent for revision, which was completed by the summer. After that, ANT-7 successfully overcame state tests. However, he was not accepted into service and he did not go into the series, and the prototype was sent to Central Asia and used for postal transportation.



The fact of the matter is that by the fall of the 1930, another aircraft of the same purpose, the Polikarpovskiy P-5, had already been mass-produced. And while Polikarpov himself was sitting in a "sharashka" on charges of espionage and subversive activities, his car was preferred to an aircraft that seemed to be in favor of the Bolsheviks Tupolev (his turn to "fit" would not be suitable soon). The reason is simple: the Tupolev machine was all-metal, and the Polykarpovka was wooden.

The difference in price and availability between wood and duralumin was a decisive factor, despite the fact that metal machines are much more durable and durable than airplanes with a frame made of pine slats and cladding of plywood and calico. Moreover, the wood in those days was not plasticized and not soaked with antiseptic compounds, because of which it dampened, warped and rotted.

But the Soviet leadership wanted to have more planes in a short time and at a minimal price, but he didn’t particularly care about the durability. After all, the country in the 20-30 years constantly lived in anticipation of war, as the early Christians expected the second coming from year to year. As a result, the P-5 was produced for seven years, until it was completely obsolete. By the beginning of the second half of the 30's, it became the most massive Soviet aircraft, measured in more than five thousand pieces, and the P-7 remained in a single copy.

Above - P-7 coloring during the second test phase. Below - photographs of the prototype P-5 and P-7.



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  1. +13
    3 February 2018 07: 38
    Well, it’s necessary to have a talent in the description of working on an airplane * kick * SOVIET AUTHORITY.
    Here are just an article for POLIKARPOV selected, including on the statement of other aircraft designers who are dissatisfied with the competition. By the way, Tupolev himself was in * sharashka * for embezzlement. However, like many who confused the state pocket with their own.
    It was under Khrushchev that they all turned out * innocently ... * in company with policemen and other * fighters * against the SOVIET AUTHORITY.
    1. +2
      3 February 2018 08: 17
      Quote: Vasily50
      Here are just an article for POLIKARPOV selected, including on the statement of other aircraft designers who are dissatisfied with the competition.

      And Tupolev too. In the notes written by Polikarpov, a few mean words gave his assessment of the events that took place:
      "My disagreements with Tupolev are fundamental: the seizure of TsAGI, verification of projects, verification of statistical tests, tight control and irresponsibility. Our relocation to TsAGI is" for healing. "Fracture and persecution.
      Clamp in TsAGI: displacement in November 1931, withdrawal of the program (scouts and fighters), forced idleness until July 1932 ... "Vladimir Ivanov." Unknown Polikarov "
    2. +1
      3 February 2018 13: 27
      Let it be, you. But they flew on wings made of natural wood and without GMO laughing
  2. +3
    3 February 2018 08: 15
    The airplane from plywood flew to itself quite well and made from factories that used to produce beds ... And not only PO-2 but also fighter jets ... So maybe someone can establish the production of reliable and not expensive machines ... How many people would join to the sky ...
  3. 0
    3 February 2018 08: 46
    The difference in price and availability between wood and duralumin has become a decisive factor, despite the fact that metal cars are much more durable and durable than airplanes with a frame of pine battens and lining of plywood and chintz.
    And also the culture of production and manufacturability of products. With the qualifications that the workers had, it was easier and cheaper to make a wooden plane or a plane of mixed construction. For the production of all-metal aircraft at some aircraft plants, it was necessary to replace equipment.
  4. +4
    3 February 2018 09: 37
    The very concept of “aircraft” THEN already had a restraining force for the enemy, as now the “assumption of the presence of nuclear weapons” gives the right to a small state to conclude mutually beneficial treaties in spite of the dictatorship of democracy.
  5. +2
    3 February 2018 10: 27
    and sho? is it fso
  6. +6
    3 February 2018 12: 19
    Duralumin was in short supply, and there was a lot of wood. After all, the Soviet government was only 13 years old. Aluminum plants were just under construction. But in the blessed tsarist Russia they were not at all.
    1. +5
      3 February 2018 13: 22
      Quote: The cat is half-educated
      But in the blessed tsarist Russia they were not at all.

      and even in the entire blessed world, uranium was not mined or processed at all.
      1. +1
        3 February 2018 19: 42
        The first aluminum plant was built in Germany in 1885, duralumin production began in Germany around 1910, all-metal Junkers aircraft appeared on the First World War horse.
        1. +4
          3 February 2018 21: 23
          Quote: The cat is half-educated
          The first aluminum plant was built in Germany in 1885,

          in fact, aluminum was produced even earlier, but aluminum was so expensive that it was worth more than gold
        2. +1
          5 February 2018 00: 04
          Chain mail - aluminum alloy, duralumin with the addition of 0,5% nickel and other copper and manganese contents. The first chain-link aluminum samples were obtained in 1922 in the city of Kolchugino, Vladimir Region, by whose name the alloy was named.
          By the beginning of the 1930s, the term "chain mail" was phased out and replaced with "duralumin" and "duralumin materials" [4]. Subsequently, chain mail aluminum with slight changes in chemical composition became one of the standard grades of duralumin, which is still known and is used as duralumin D1 [5].
          The experimental melts of duralumin were carried out first in the foundry of MVTU, and then on the basis of the Kolchuginsky non-ferrous metal processing plant. In the course of work, by mid-1922, an alloy was obtained, which was called chain mail aluminum, which was not inferior in quality to German duralumin. It differed from duralumin by the presence of nickel and a different content of copper and manganese. After comprehensive testing of the samples in the laboratory of the MVTU, led by I. I. Sidorin, it became clear that the domestic duralumin is suitable for use in aircraft construction.

          In 1923, the production of the necessary assortment, sheet, corrugated and profiled chain mail was established, tolerances and technical conditions were established. The developer of chain mail was metallurgical engineers Yu. G. Muzalevsky and S. M. Voronov [1]. Other sources call V.A. Butalov [2] and I. I. Sidorin [3] the authors of the chain-metal aluminum industry.

          Together with the Kolchuginsky Plant, Tupolev Design Bureau developed its own original methods for the production of corrugation, which differed from those adopted at the Junkers factory in Fili, which gave significant time savings.

          In 1925, successful flights of the ANT-2 all-metal experimental aircraft (designed by A.N. Tupolev) showed that the new material, chain mail aluminum, is very promising in aircraft construction.

          Source https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%BB%
          D1%8C%D1%87%D1%83%D0%B3%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%8E%D0%BC%D
          0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B9
    2. 0
      4 February 2018 08: 08
      Quote: Cat undereducated
      Duralumin was in short supply, and there was a lot of wood. After all, the Soviet government was only 13 years old. Aluminum plants were just under construction. But in the blessed tsarist Russia they were not at all.

      And so they built thousands of TB1 and TB3 from a dyufsural dural
      1. +1
        4 February 2018 19: 59
        Quote: tchoni
        And so they built thousands of TB1 and TB3 from a dyufsural dural

        well, it's you, to put it mildly, exaggerated TB-1 - 212 units, TB-3 - 818 units for the period from 1925 to 1937. Not much for eight years.
    3. +1
      5 February 2018 12: 36
      do not forget yet that the fundamental school of aircraft construction was not all through trial and error. so yes hard. it’s the same as now in school the work of the steam engine is practically not studied, and they won’t be able to build a model of the simplest steam engine if you turn off the Internet
  7. +2
    3 February 2018 18: 55
    Another example of how competent authority operates. Instead of one Rolls-Royce, dozens of Lada cars. One of many rational decisions, taking into account the development prospects.
  8. +5
    3 February 2018 23: 00
    An article is not worth the paper on which it is printed. Already in the section "Armament" got fans of excrement drafts on the fan.
    The point is simple. Unlike Tupolev, Polikarpov well understood that any new machine, with all the originality of the ideas embedded in it, should not be too far from time, from the material and technical capabilities of industry.
    For the USSR of that time, it was an objective reality.
    R-7, with a degree of novelty, of course, it exceeded the competitor - an all-metal, simple from the point of view of technology, aircraft would be a godsend for any aircraft industry, except the Soviet one. Firstly, where to get duralumin for mass production, and secondly, heavy, in comparison with a wooden structure, Tupolev counted on an imported BMW motor, it was already a complete sentence for the car, it did not go beyond the tests. Thus, the practical Polikarpov defeated his opponent in an undeclared competition. Its wooden R-5 fell to the country of the Soviets both afford and in time.
    1. +3
      4 February 2018 02: 43
      Quote: Curious
      Tupolev was counting on an imported BMW motor, it was already a full sentence for the car, it did not go beyond the tests. Thus, the practical Polikarpov defeated his opponent in an undeclared competition. Its wooden R-5 fell to the country of the Soviets both afford and in time.

      This caused Tupolev's anger. “Once in November 1931, at a meeting in Tupolev's office, the calm conversation that had begun on the work of brigade No. 3 reached a boiling point. Tupolev expressed his opinion that brigade No. 13 could quickly complete the task for the I-3 fighter, taking as a basis I-8 (ANT-1 3), which was being tested at that time, respectively, strengthening its structure and improving the aerodynamics of the aircraft, and gave instructions on the immediate implementation of this work.Nikolay Nikolaevich referred to the difference in requirements for machines, said that the project can most fully satisfy them and what he is not going to take as a basis for I-8. Proud Andrei Nikolaevich was literally enraged by the refusal of NN Polikarpov. According to the memoirs of engineer Tarasov, Tupolev jumped up, knocking over the chairs. “I am this (mat) son of a bitch he will rot in ordinary engineers forever, he will forget how airplanes are designed ", shouted Andrei Nikolaevich in rage. V. Ivanov." Unknown Polikarpov. "
  9. +2
    5 February 2018 09: 33
    The thing is that by the fall of 1930, another aircraft of a similar purpose - the Polykarpov R-5 - was already mass-produced. And although Polikarpov himself was sitting in a “sharashka” at the time on charges of espionage and subversive activities, his car was preferred to an airplane that seemed to be in favor with the Bolsheviks Tupolev (his turn "to land" would not be suitable soon).

    The author confuses times, concepts and events. Polikarpov, in fact, was arrested by the OGPU 24.10.1929, amnestied by 07.071931, a year and a half later, after Stalin’s personal intervention, He was in the Lubyanka and Butyrka prisons, and at that time his P-5, created by him before arrest, won first place at the international aviation competition for reconnaissance vehicles in Tehran. So the P-5 was not only better than the P-7, but also a number of foreign reconnaissance aircraft. While in prison, Polikarpov did not design. Sharazhka time, i.e. The design bureau where the prisoners worked has not yet arrived.
  10. +3
    5 February 2018 11: 17
    The difference in price and availability between wood and duralumin was a decisive factor, despite the fact that metal machines are much more durable and durable than airplanes with a frame made of pine slats and cladding of plywood and calico. Moreover, the wood in those days was not plasticized and not soaked with antiseptic compounds, because of which it dampened, warped and rotted.

    But the Soviet leadership wanted to have more aircraft in a short time and at a minimum price, and the issue of durability did not bother him much.


    And in this, the Soviet leadership showed wisdom. For, unlike the author of the article, I understood the stupidity of spending a duralumin, scarce at that time, on the construction of continuous vehicles whose operating life would be limited.
  11. +2
    6 February 2018 11: 27
    In his journal, the author banned me.
    Apparently, I did not like the comments about his mistakes in articles about J2M and F3F.
    And from what material did democracies build airplanes that did not require "quantity in exchange for durability"?
    The British in 1927 demand to build metal planes, but not from duralumin, but from steel (and resort to various tricks to protect against corrosion). Such a design (steel frame covered with canvas) was used until the mid-30s (Gladiator, Hurricane, Swordfish). The first aircraft with all-metal casing - "Blenheim" - is 1935.
    Germany: light reconnaissance (analogue of R-5) He.45 - mixed design. Heinkel fighters up to He.51 are similar in design. Arado Ar.64 - Ar.69 - mixed construction; Fw.56 - similar. Only Hs.123 of 1935 was mainly dural, but partially retained linen sheathing.
    In the United States at this time, a mixed design also prevailed, although the Americans began the transition to all-metal structures before the rest - already in the first half of the 30s.
    In general, the mass introduction of all-metal structures in aviation began in the mid-30s.
  12. 0
    2 March 2018 23: 07
    Guys, do not repeat the mistakes of others:
    "duralumin
    [lat. durus solid + aluminum] - otherwise dural - an alloy of aluminum with copper (3,5 - 5,5%) and small amounts of manganese, magnesium, silicon, iron; after hardening it obtains a special hardness, is easy to process and has various applications in engineering, especially in aircraft manufacturing "

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