The Arkhangelsky Design Bureau was a short-lived

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

military aircraft

design bureau OKB () is a transliteration of the Russian initials for "" (), which translates to "Experimental Design Bureau." It could also mean or "Special Design Bureau" in english. During the Soviet era, OKBs were closed institutions working on design and ...

headed by Alexander Arkhangelsky. Formerly working for

Andrei Tupolev Andrei Nikolayevich Tupolev (; – 23 December 1972) was a Russian and later Soviet aeronautical engineer known for his pioneering aircraft designs as the director of the Tupolev Design Bureau. Tupolev was an early pioneer of aeronautics i ...

, Arkhangelsky became the leader of Tupolev's

after Tupolev was arrested in 1938 during the

Great Purge The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, assassination of ...

and was tasked to develop a

dive-bomber A dive bomber is a bomber aircraft that dives directly at its targets in order to provide greater accuracy for the bomb it drops. Diving towards the target simplifies the bomb's trajectory and allows the pilot to keep visual contact througho ...

version of the

Tupolev SB The Tupolev ANT-40, also known by its service name Tupolev SB ( – ''Skorostnoi Bombardirovschik'' – high speed bomber) and development co-name TsAGI-40, was a high speed twin-engined three-seat monoplane bomber, first flown in 1934. The Tup ...

(the

Arkhangelsky Ar-2 The Arkhangelsky Ar-2 was a Soviet dive-bomber used in small numbers during World War II. Its design was a refinement of the earlier Soviet Tupolev SB. The design bureau's name (Cyrillic: Архангельский) is transliterated in many ...

). The bureau resumed its original name when Tupolev was released from prison after the

Axis powers The Axis powers, originally called the Rome–Berlin Axis and also Rome–Berlin–Tokyo Axis, was the military coalition which initiated World War II and fought against the Allies of World War II, Allies. Its principal members were Nazi Ge ...

invaded the Soviet Union Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and several of its European Axis allies starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. More than 3.8 million Axis troops invaded the western Soviet Union along a ...

in June 1941.Gunston, p. 39

Aircraft

Citations

Bibliography

* Aircraft manufacturers of the Soviet Union 1940 establishments in the Soviet Union 1941 disestablishments in the Soviet Union {{Aero-company-stub