The world debut of Anthea took place in the summer of 1965 in Le Bourget, France. The car immediately became a real highlight of the exhibition. Still, before the An-22, the most heavy-lifting aircraft were the domestic 3M, which lifted 55 tons into the air, and the state-owned C-141, designed for a commercial load of 40 tons. For the French, the appearance of the giant and the hum with which he announced the surroundings of Le Bourget gave rise to the name of the An-22 "Flying Cathedral".
Exposition of the 26th Salon Le Bourget
Brainstorming at the Antonov Design Bureau regarding the prospects for the An-22 passenger version
It was at Le Bourget that the legendary designer Oleg Konstantinovich Antonov said that the passenger version of the Anthea would be capable of lifting 720 people into the air at once. The most interesting thing is that the designer even instructed his own design bureau to work out the concept of a double-deck megaliner. Of course, in those days, even world air transportation could not offer such a passenger aircraft worthy routes, not to mention the domestic Aeroflot. Therefore, the main purpose of the An-22 remained the same - to carry out amphibious transport operations. After the demonstration at the 26th Le Bourget Salon, the Americans, in their usual manner, named “Antey” by the not most prestigious name “Cock”, or, in translation from English, “Rooster”. Obviously, the Yankees found the similarity in the contours of the fuselage and the loud voice of the NK-12M turboprop.
Draft projects of the Be-16
The history of the development of the An-22 began in the late 1950s, when the task was set to build an aircraft capable of transferring equipment weighing under 50 tons to a range of up to 5000 km. The heaviest aircraft in the USSR at that time, the An-12, could lift only 16 tons from the ground. The engineers needed to ensure at least three-fold superiority of the new model in terms of payload over its predecessors.
An-20 is a product of the elaboration of the appearance of the future "Antey"
Several design bureaus began work on the state order at once. OK Antonov with the design staff proposed the projects An-20 and An-20A, which were later replaced by the VT-22, designed for turboprop NK-12M. In Taganrog, GK Beriev, as part of the order, designed the Be-16, and the Tupolevs worked on the Tu-115. The latest model was only a creative rethinking of the passenger Tu-114 with its swept wing and narrow fuselage. Obviously, the Tupolev Design Bureau was not particularly interested in working on a giant transport aircraft, since their project did not initially meet the payload requirements, and also did not allow landing on unprepared runways. Antonov and Beriev initially came to the classic single-keel layout with a straight wing. The designers did not have another option - the requirement to equip the aircraft exclusively with a turboprop engine and the high payload (the ratio of cargo to takeoff weight), as well as the possibility of operating on unpaved runways, put engineers in a narrow framework. In addition, there was a severe limitation on the take-off run - no more than 1000 meters and the landing run - up to 800 meters.
IL-60 sketch projects
The Ilyushin Design Bureau did not stand aside from the struggle for a serious state order - in the early 60s they presented the Il-60 project with a take-off weight of more than 124 tons. The car was calculated for the transportation of 40 tons at a distance of 3500 km. However, the development advantage was ultimately given to the Antonov design bureau's car as the most thought-out and high-tech. The initial focus on the NK-12M turboprop (turboprop engine) remained unchanged, since it was this engine that made it possible to achieve the optimal combination of propeller efficiency and aerodynamic quality. In addition, the Soviet Union simply did not have a turbojet engine with a high bypass ratio, which would meet the requirements of the military in terms of range and aircraft carrying capacity. It can be said with a great deal of responsibility that the course of the then leadership of the aviation industry of the USSR to develop mainly super-powerful turboprop engines was in many ways erroneous. Since that time, the Soviet Union began to lag behind in the technology of two-circuit turbojet engines, which we still feel.
Wooden model An-22
V. I. Kataev was appointed chief designers of the future flagship of military transport aviation, who was later replaced by A. Ya. Belolipetskiy. The official start of the development of the aircraft "100" (designation of the future An-22) was given in December 1960 by a decree of the government of the USSR. At the same time, the requirements for the car were slightly adjusted: now 40 tons were required to be transported at a distance of 3,500 km, and 10 tons - at a distance of 10,000 km. The future aircraft was supposed to climb 11,000 meters, accelerate to 720 km / h, and in cruise mode to 650 km / h. The main purpose of the An-22 was parachute landing of 150 soldiers and 15 tons of cargo at a speed of about 350 km / h or landing delivery of 295 soldiers, missiles of various classes (up to blocks of promising UR-500 (8K82) and T-10M or T- 54. The tactics of using the An-22 consisted in delivering cargo to an airfield closest to the front or even a simple unpaved area, followed by reloading onto a B-12 helicopter, which delivered equipment or soldiers directly to the destination. The V-12's weak link turned out to be a gigantic rotorcraft, the development of which was eventually curtailed, but the project of the 100 aircraft was brought to its logical conclusion, and the aircraft became quite popular both in the army and in civil aviation.
O. K. Antonov near the An-22 aircraft model
O. K. Antonov examines the An-22 aerodynamic model before testing in the OKB tube
Initially, the An-22 was planned to be equipped with a mass of rather heavy defensive weapons. The design envisioned space for the Initiative-2 radar sighting device and several air-to-air missiles. Moreover, earlier the engineers thought to limit themselves to only a passive radar jamming system with its installation in the front hemisphere. For this purpose, the TRS-45 unguided turbojet projectiles were used, stabilized in flight by rotation around the longitudinal axis and installing curtains of dipole reflectors directly along the course of the aircraft. A little later, the idea came to equip the An-22 with a 45-mm cannon, which would fire anti-radar projectiles at targets.
Now about the engine. In Stupino, in the design bureau of ND Kuznetsov, in parallel with the development of the aircraft, work was underway on a modification of the NK-12 engine under the index "M". The diameter of the propellers at the engine, in comparison with the base model for the Tu-95 bomber, was increased to 6, 2 meters. The new modification "M" was the best suited precisely for the low-speed and heavy transport An-22, since the maximum efficiency was achieved at speeds of the order of M = 0, 6. The Tu-95 strategic bomber flew a little faster, which reduced the efficiency of the engine with all the ensuing consequences … As often happens, the engine was not ready on time, and the "Antonovites" had to remove the base NK-12 from the Tu-95 for the initial tests of the aircraft. To master the production of such a large and complex aircraft, the industry of the Soviet Union had to create many technologies practically from scratch. Thus, the new aluminum wrought alloy B93, chosen specifically for the An-22, made it possible to stamp parts up to three meters in size and weighing under six tons. This reduced the number of joints of parts, and also reduced the final weight of the airframe by more than two tons. In the plane, much was gigantic - more than 500 parts had non-standard dimensions, and the length of some of them was more than 5 meters and weighed about 1 ton.
A certain novelty in domestic aviation technology was the duplication of the control system for height and roll with the help of servo-wheels. The An-22 became the second Soviet aircraft with a similar solution, the first was the K-7 aircraft designed by K. A. Kalinin, which he developed at an aircraft plant in Kharkov.
A feature of the Antey development program was a very close cooperation between the Antonov Design Bureau and the Central Research Institute-30 of the USSR Ministry of Defense, located in Zhukovsky, which formulated the key requirements for the future transporter. Also, the entire development process was accompanied by specialists from the Military Transport Aviation, whose ideas and experience helped in the design of the cockpit, rudder and emergency escape shaft by the crew. Research Institute of Operation and Repair of Aircraft, which is now called the 13th Central Research Institute, also worked closely with the design headquarters of the An-22 project. Commander of the Military Transport Aviation G. N. Pakilev wrote in this regard: “Speaking about the joint work of military specialists and the design bureau of O. K. Antonov, I would like to note the extraordinary attentiveness of the bureau staff, I would say - patience and desire to take into account our order and wishes. I don’t remember a single case when Oleg Konstantinovich or his assistants would not agree with our demands, trying to find a rational solution to the next problem”.
