Tupolev

Tupolev, officially United Aircraft Company Tupolev, is a Russian aerospace and defence company headquartered in Moscow. It is the successor to the Soviet Tupolev Design Bureau, OKB-156, founded in 1922 by the aerospace pioneer and engineer Andrei Tupolev, who led it for fifty years until his death in 1972. Its aircraft carry the design office prefix Tu, and it designed over 100 models of civil and military aircraft and produced more than 18,000 aircraft for Russia, the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. Early results included the all-metal ANT-4 and ANT-6 heavy bombers, followed by the Tu-2 bomber of the Second World War, the Tu-4 copy of the B-29, the Tu-16 jet bomber, the Tu-95 turboprop bomber and civil derivatives such as the Tu-104 and Tu-114. In 2006 Tupolev became a division of the United Aircraft Corporation.