The prisoner who gave the Red Air Force its finest tactical bomber: Pe-2, born in a sharashka
In the spring of 1940, Petlyakov watched the test flight of his Pe-2 from the roof of his prison workshop. He was still an inmate.
The right hand of Andrei Tupolev who designed the wings of the TB-1, TB-3 heavy bombers and the ANT-20 Maxim Gorky. Arrested with Tupolev in 1937 on fabricated sabotage charges, he continued designing inside an NKVD sharashka. When Lavrentiy Beria ordered his high-altitude VI-100 fighter converted into a dive bomber, Petlyakov delivered the Pe-2 in 45 days: a machine that became the Red Air Force's most important tactical bomber throughout the Great Patriotic War. Released in 1940, awarded the Stalin Prize (1st class) in 1941, he died the following year when the Pe-2 carrying him to Moscow for production talks crashed near Arzamas.
Career Timeline
- 1910Graduated Taganrog Technical College; moved to Moscow
- 1911–22Entered Moscow State Technical University; technician in Zhukovsky's aerodynamics lab
- 1921–36TsAGI; Tupolev's lead on heavy bombers: TB-1, TB-3, Pe-8
- 1936–37Chief designer at aviation plant; deputy head of TsAGI
- 1937–40Arrested; designed VI-100 → Pe-2 in NKVD sharashka
- 1940–42Released; chief designer at Plant No. 22 — Pe-2 mass production, Pe-3