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In the Bolkhovitinov Design Bureau and KOSTR
aircraft with remote controlled machine guns to protect the rear hemisphere.
There were two ShKAS machine guns and new 20-millimeter ShVAK aircraft
guns for frontal attacks. 4
Isayev was very absorbed by this project. He subsequently pulled me into the
development of the remote control for the rear hemisphere moveable machine
gun pair. I had long dreamed of developing a remote-controlled machine gun
mounting using slaving systems.This problem had been solved on naval ships. It
was time for aviation to adapt a similar technology.
The matter never reached the point of practical realization. Several years were
needed for development and the war intervened. But in the process of working on
the system, which interested Bolkhovitinov very much, I became closely
acquainted with the developers of slaving systems,Andronik Gevondovich Iosifyan
and David Veniaminovich Svecharnik. Andronik Iosifyan was already well known
at that time for his unusual design of an “electric helicopter.” My first acquaintance
with Iosifyan in 1936 turned into many years of collaboration and friendship that
continued until the end of his life. 5
The KB devoted primary attention to the design of “S”—the paired-engine
aircraft.The innovation of the “S” was the mounting of two engines one behind
the other.The long shaft of the rear engine passed between a V-shaped split in the
cylinders of the front engine. The two propellers, each one operated by its own
engine, rotated in different directions.This configuration reduced head resistance
by the resistance value of one engine, enabling a twenty-five percent increase in
speed over the conventional two-engine configuration. The “S” design reached
speeds of 700 kilometers per hour at a range of 700 kilometers.
The idea of pairing the engines, which was realized on the “S,” was used in
the design of the “B” bomber. Instead of the conventional four-engine aircraft
configuration, with the engines in wing nacelles, the design called for two sets
of paired engines, with a speed in excess of 550 kilometers per hour and a maximum
altitude of up to 11 kilometers.
In spite of these new designs, Annushka’s modernization continued. They
installed boosted M-34FRN engines with turbo compressors and variable-pitch
propellers. Instead of pulling the landing gear up into “trousers,” it was fully
retracted. The turret in the center portion of the fuselage was equipped with a
ShVAK machine gun and a drive.Two machine guns providing a 360-degree field
of fire were installed in the cockpits under the center section of the wings. The
crewmembers increased from six to eleven. These substantial improvements did
not help, however.Tupolev’s TB-7 began to fly in the spring of 1937, and based on
all parameters, immediately moved far, far ahead of our Annushka.
4. The ShKAS was the Shpitalniy-Komarnitskiy rapid-fire aircraft machine gun, and the ShVAK was the
Shpitalniy-Vladimirov rapid-fire aircraft machine gun.
5. Andronik Gevondovich Iosifyan (1905–93) served as chief designer of VNII EM, the organization that
designed Soviet weather and remote sensing satellites such as Meteor.
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