In the 1960s, the Antey's predecessor, the An-12, could carry by air only 20% of the weapons and equipment of the ground forces, as well as about 18% of the country's air defense forces. And the An-12 could not at all transport the equipment of the strategic missile forces. It is precisely because of such a rapid development of the Soviet Army that the need arose for the super-giant of its time - the An-22. By the time it was put into service, Antey could have already transferred 90% of the Strategic Missile Forces equipment and almost 100% of all other weapons.
Lviv, summer 1974. Loading a bus for astronauts into the bottomless An-22
For this reason, as mentioned earlier, it was necessary to use the potential of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Academician I. N. Fridlyander recalls on the pages of the "Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences":
“In the 1950s, an idea arose to create a powerful military transport aircraft An-22 (Antey). He was supposed to transport hundreds of soldiers with full weapons and military equipment, including tanks and guns. For this aircraft, it was supposed to use very large stampings, but it was necessary to avoid the leash when quenching. Alloys B95 and B96 are not very suitable for large high-strength assemblies. We proposed for the An-22 forging alloy B93, which could be heated in hot water, using a usually harmful impurity - iron as an anti-recrystallizer. All large stampings and parts of "Anthea" were made from alloy B93. By the way, power units made of B93 alloy were demonstrated at the Le Bourget air show.
As a rule, the manufacture of new aircraft begins with forgings, but in the case of "Antey", due to the rush, they decided to immediately make stampings. The minister figuratively explained the situation to the directors of the factories: “If I see forgings, I will ask the director of the factory to lie down on it, and I will put another forging on top”. There were no hunters to lay down on the forging, so they mastered stamping."
Power frame made of B93 alloy of An-22 aircraft
Back in 1961, a wooden model of the future giant was assembled, and the model commission headed by the commander of the Soviet military transport aviation NS Skripko was satisfied with the flight technical data of the machine. There was only a note in the final report: “The use of the power plant from the Tu-95 increases the take-off run to an unacceptably long length. This will require special airfields instead of the agreed 2nd class”. With reservations, but flight tests were planned for 1963, which, however, fell through. One of the key problems was the too heavy defensive armament Kupol-22, the total weight of which exceeded 4 tons. The issue of removing some of the weapons from the aircraft was specially discussed in the summer of 1964 at the level of the Central Committee of the CPSU.
On April 22, 63rd, the first fuselage descended from the stocks in Kiev, on August 1, the first An-22 aircraft with serial number 5340101 (USSR-46191) saw the light. The car was born in close cooperation with the Tashkent plant №84, the future assembly plant for "Antey". It is interesting that the roll-out of the first of its kind aviation giant had to be carried out unassembled - detachable parts of the wing were mounted already on the concrete airfield. And so that the vertical tail is not damaged by the opening of the gate of the assembly shop, the engineers lifted the nose of the An-22 with a special trolley, and the stern dropped a couple of meters.
Hero of the Soviet Union, Honored Test Pilot of the USSR Yuri Vladimirovich Kurlin (1929-2018)
There were awards for the development and testing of "Anthea"
The largest aircraft in the world at that time was to be lifted into the air by test pilot Yuri Vladimirovich Kurlin, who was selected from four applicants. They began to prepare Kurlin for flights on the An-22 long before the first prototype was rolled out - the future "test pilot" was training on the strategic Tu-95M.
In 1964, the first taxiing and takeoff run up to a speed of 160 km / h was carried out. By that time, the second car was already ready, but it was intended for static tests. It is 1964 that can be considered the time of birth of the famous name "Antey" - in honor of the mythical hero of Ancient Greece.
As with all aircraft, the first tests did not pass without roughnesses: in the fall of 64, during a thorough examination of the fuel system, a mass of debris was found, which was not so easy to get rid of. Although the filters were washed, it did not help much. As a result, it was necessary to open the wing box for cleaning. In the course of these unscheduled works, engineers at the same time replaced titanium with stainless steel in the exhaust system, "finished" the chassis elements and only at the end of the year handed over the winged "Anthea" for fine-tuning and testing. Readiness for the first takeoff of the vehicle and crew was only achieved by February 27, 1965, when the aircraft commander, Yuri Kurlin, took off the world's largest transport aircraft. The historical test was also attended by co-pilot V. I. Tersky, navigator P. V. Koshkin, flight engineer V. M. Vorotnikov, radio operator N. F. Shatalov. Breaking away from the concrete runway of the factory airfield Svyatoshino, the car a little over an hour later landed on the site of the long-range aviation airfield in the city of Uzin near Kiev - it was there that the factory tests continued. A year later, the car was shown in Le Bourget, where it made a splash with its size, made our "friends" from NATO think about the strategic mobility of the Soviet Army, and also received the previously mentioned nicknames "Rooster" and "Flying Cathedral".
The first copy of the An-22 No. 01-01 at a photo session in 1965
The management and the design staff for the An-22 had many plans - they even assumed to increase the payload from the standard 60 tons to 80. For this, it was only necessary to supply the NK-12MA engines with a capacity of 18 thousand liters. with., mount additional accelerating engines and organize the control of the boundary layer on the wing plane. Quite from the realm of fantasy were options for lifting 120 tons into the air at once with a take-off weight of 290 tons. True, then the flight range was reduced to 2,400 km while maintaining a cruising speed of 600 km / h. But not all plans were realized in metal. By the fall of 1965, the tests were transferred to Tashkent, where by that time the second flight copy of the An-22 (the third in the series) had been prepared for work. It was on the second flying machine that the first air incident took place.
In January 1966, during the flight (commander - Yu. Kurlin), the extreme motor went out of order, which led to the automatic feathering of the propellers. If translated from specific vocabulary, then feathering is the translation of the angle of the blades to the position of the least resistance to the oncoming air flow. Thus, the possibility of propeller autorotation is practically excluded and, therefore, the formation of negative thrust of the motor is leveled, which can lead to a catastrophe. But the failure of one engine out of four in that Curlin test would not have a critical effect on flight, but a failure of the front landing gear release signal could lead to a serious accident. But from the ground, the test pilot was informed that the strut was still released and it was possible to land. It is noteworthy that when the front wheel touched the runway, the strut release warning lamp immediately came to life and lit up. The analysis of engine failure showed that it was not an engineering miscalculation, but a poor-quality pre-flight inspection - the technicians forgot to put the large pitch propeller O-ring. As a result, the loss of the tightness of the cavity led to a decrease in its revolutions and a subsequent stop.
Also in 1965, even before the end of the tests, the An-22 in one flight set 12 world records at once. But this and much more will be in the next parts of the cycle.
