It is no secret that often a man-made disaster is preceded by a fatal combination of circumstances, aggravated by the notorious human factor. The unprecedented aviation accident that took place in the Moscow sky on May 18, 1935, was no exception. Having shaken the country, it gave rise to a lot of contradictory rumors.
Fortunately, the cleansing time, if not everything, then the essential places in place, clearing the way for the truth. So the recently publicized testimonies of the famous ace, Hero of the Soviet Union Mikhail Mikhailovich Gromov, make it possible to remove groundless accusations from another remarkable pilot, Nikolai Pavlovich Blagin. He, however, was never officially ranked among the perpetrators of the tragedy. More on this later, because first you need to confirm the correctness of Gromov’s conclusions, having done this by reconstructing the events of a long-ago rainy day, having previously paid attention to the unique characteristics of the deceased car – a masterpiece of the design bureau of Andrei Nikolaevich Tupolev.
About the eight-engine Maxim Gorky aircraft, the Encyclopedia of Russian Aviation says that its design began in the winter of 1932. The assembly was going at a rapid pace. I tested a car with a wingspan of 62 meters, the length of the fuselage was 30 meters, the weight at a cruising speed of 240 kilometers per hour was approaching 42 tons, M.M. Gromov. The bases of the wings were mixed with passenger cabins, auxiliary compartments. In the center section there was a conference hall with broadcasting and film installations, a PBX, a printing house, a restaurant, showers, a salon equipped with leather armchairs, which were converted into sleeping places by pressing buttons. 72 passengers, enjoying the flight, could work and relax in comfort. Thanks to the reliability of the engines of A.M.Mikulin, advanced technological solutions, the machine provided the pilots who trusted it.
