He is called the father of transport aircraft, although during the Great Patriotic War, aircraft designed by Oleg Konstantinovich Antonov made a significant contribution to the victory over the Nazis. Pilots and pilots affectionately called their "Anushki".
Biography
Oleg Antonov is a descendant of an old family in which all men were somehow connected with technology. Great-grandfather worked as a manager at a metallurgical plant, grandfather was a bridge engineer, his father, following the example of the head of the family, also became a builder and was well known in his circles as a talented engineer. In addition to work, he was fond of sports: fencing, horse riding and mountaineering. Oleg’s mother was a kind and affectionate woman and supported her husband in everything.
Here in such a family in 1906 the future aircraft designer was born. When Oleg was six years old, his parents moved from the Urals to Saratov. In this city, they had influential relatives who could protect the head of the family in his career.
In Saratov Oleg met his cousin Vladislav, who raved about aviation. He talked about miracle machines that fly into the air like birds, and about the heroic pilots who flew the planes. Oleg remembered these stories and vivid impressions from his brother's words for his whole life. Then he really wanted to be like hero pilots.
Parents did not take his hobby very seriously, even when he began to collect everything that had at least something to do with airplanes. And his grandmother gave him a model of an airplane, which was his pride. He collected newspaper clippings, photographs and other information, and subsequently this collection became a kind of reference for him: from childhood he knew everything about the history of aircraft construction around the world.
After school, Oleg entered the Saratov real school to study exact sciences.
When the First World War began, Oleg’s mother died, and he fell under the care of his grandmother, who supported his passion for airplanes.
The path to aircraft construction
An active teenager created his own club - "Aviation Fans Club", and a little later he began to publish a magazine with the same name, which was published in one copy. It is easy to guess that Oleg himself did all the work of creating the magazine. In it you could find photos of different planes, drawings, stories about flights, poems. The only copy was popular: it was passed from hand to hand and read to holes.
When the school closed, Antonov had nowhere to study: to enter a more serious institution, there was not enough years. Then he began to secretly go to classes in high school with his sister, hiding in the back rows. Everyone was used to a smart boy, and after graduation he was given a certificate of education.
After that, Oleg was opened the road to the flight school, but his health and puny appearance let us down - he looked about five years younger than his age. He did not know what to do now, but he knew for sure that he would deal with airplanes even without a flight school.
At the club, he and his friends began to design their own glider. This was found out in the Society of Friends of the Air Fleet and invited them under their roof. So the guys got the materials, their premises and the opportunity to make the first product: the OKA-1 "Pigeon" glider. He is considered the first brainchild of Antonov.
In 1924, the glider took part in a glider rally in the Crimea. It was very responsible, and when the “Dove” did not pass the test, it was very difficult for everyone to bear it. However, the technical commission noted the unique design of the airframe, and this helped not to abandon the dream.
In 1925, Antonov entered the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute, where he showed unprecedented activity in all areas of student life. Friends did not understand how he did everything.
In 1933, Oleg Konstantinovich was appointed designer at the Moscow Glider Plant. His task was to establish mass production of aircraft. By that time, the young specialist had already created several of his glider models, and he had something to present to the most stringent commission. At this plant, he began working simultaneously with the famous designer Sergei Korolev.
Serious work began, and Antonov showed tremendous results: the plant produced two thousand gliders in a year, which was previously unthinkable. And this at the minimum cost of cars, which was also important.
That was until 1936, and then the plant was closed, and the talented designer was left out of work. In 1938, he joined the design bureau for designer Yakovlev, who put in a good word for a friend. Here Oleg Konstantinovich switched from gliders to airplanes, about which he had long dreamed.
All the designers were registered, everything was “under the hood”, and it is amazing how Antonov was not repressed then: he was quite sharp in expressions. However, in 1940 he was assigned to the car factory in Leningrad, and in 1941 he was transferred to Kaunas, in Lithuania. Soon the war broke out, and the Antonov family went to evacuate first to Moscow and then to Tyumen.
Each time I had to start all over again: to reconstruct factories, recruit workers, change aircraft designs. Then they began to create a glider for the transport of goods and passengers. Their purpose was to deliver goods to the most inaccessible places, so the A-7s could land and take off on the field, on ice and even in large clearings in the forest. For this model Antonov received the Medal "Partisan of the Great Patriotic War".
In 1943, Oleg Konstantinovich moved to the Yakovlev Design Bureau, and was engaged in the modernization and “refinement” of cars from Yak-3 to Yak-9.
Antonov created his famous AN-2 already in Novosibirsk. It cost him a lot of energy, but in 1947 the plane left the assembly shop. Mass production of this model, it was decided to move to Kiev, which Antonov was very happy. He was tired of wandering around the country, and he decided to settle permanently in Kiev.
In 1949, the first An-2 was released. Then the designer realized that this was his greatest luck. Aircraft series "AN" began their lives.
In 1981, his last aircraft, Ruslan, was born, and in the same year he was elected an academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
