Tupolev ANT-20

The Tupolev ANT-20 Maxim Gorky was a Soviet eight-engine aircraft that was the largest in the world during the 1930s. Andrei Tupolev designed it using the corrugated sheet metal construction that Hugo Junkers had pioneered for all-metal aircraft, and it was built between 4 July 1933 and 3 April 1934. Its wingspan was similar to that of a modern Boeing 747 and was not exceeded until the Douglas XB-19 bomber prototype flew in 1941. The aircraft was named for the writer Maxim Gorky and served as the flagship of a propaganda squadron that toured the Soviet Union, carrying a powerful radio set called the Voice from the sky, printing machinery, a library, a photographic laboratory and a sound film projector for showing films in flight. It was also the first aircraft to use both direct current and alternating current and could be dismantled for transport by rail. On 18 May 1935 it collided with an accompanying Polikarpov I-5 fighter during a demonstration flight over Moscow and crashed, killing 45 people. A near-identical replacement, the ANT-20bis, flew with Aeroflot from 1939 and was lost in a crash in 1942.