OKB TUPOLEV

A history of the design bureau and its aircraft. Over the years, nearly three hundred projects have evolved within the OKB, Nearly ninety reached the prototype construction stage, with more than forty types put into series production. In the 1930s, the TB-1 (ANT-4) and TB-3 (ANT-6) bombers, the latter being the world's first heavy strategic bomber, paved the way for the long line of large multi-engined aircraft - both civil and military - for which the OKB is justly famed. Wartime production of the SB and Tu-2 plus the remarkable "reverse engineering" of the Boeing B-29 that resulted in the Tu-4 led on to the jet Tu-16 and propeller Tu-95 bombers. These, in turn, were adapted for civil purposes as the Tu-104 and Tu-114 airliners. The supersonic Tu-22 and Tu-22M bombers and the Tu-144 airliner, a move into pilotless aircraft and a host of imaginative but unbuilt projects complete a fascinating work. With 605 black and white photographs, thirty-eight pages of colour plus over 190 line drawings.