An-10 Airliner 1957 Year 1/72 Scale Plastic Model Kit Amodel 72020

An-10 (according to NATO codification: Cat - “Cat”) is a Soviet medium-haul, turboprop passenger aircraft of the 2nd class. Created under the direct supervision of Oleg Konstantinovich Antonov.

The development of a new four-engine passenger aircraft "U" ("Universal"), designed for operation on airlines with a length of 500 to 2000 km, began at OKB-153 at the end of 1955 in accordance with a government decree of November 30, 1955. The assignment provided for the use of NK-4 or TV-20 (AI-20) engines. In May 1956, the draft design was defended. Five months later, the layout of the aircraft was approved.

The first flight of the An-10 experimental aircraft, which received its own name "Ukraine", was made on March 7, 1957 by a crew consisting of commander Ya. I. Vernikov, co-pilot V. A. Shevchenko, navigator P. V. Koshkin, flight engineer A. V. Kalinichin, flight electrician I. D. Yevtushenko and lead test engineer A. P. Eskin, from the airfield of the Kyiv Aviation Plant in Svyatoshyn. The plane landed at a military airfield in Boryspil. In July 1957, a demonstration of the aircraft to the Soviet leadership took place at Vnukovo Airport. By the end of the year, the first serial copy of the An-10 was produced. And in November 1958, operational tests of the first production vehicles that entered the Ukrainian Territorial Administration of the Civil Air Fleet began - they had to carry cargo and mail. According to the results of state tests, which ended in June 1959, the car was allowed to carry passengers.

On April 27, 1959, the An-10 performed its first technical flight, and exactly a month later, an advertising flight took place along the route Kyiv-Moscow-Tbilisi-Adler-Kharkov-Kyiv. On July 22, 1959, the operation of the aircraft began on the Moscow-Simferopol route. According to calculations, the An-10 was among the most profitable aircraft in those years: the cost of transporting one passenger was significantly lower than on the Tu-104A, mainly due to the greater passenger capacity.

Produced from 1957 to 1960 at aircraft factory No. 64 in Voronezh. In total, 108 aircraft were produced there: in 1957 - one, in 1958 - 20, in 1959 - 46 and in 1960 - 41 (the first 16 series - three cars each; the next 10 - six each). The design of the fuselage almost completely coincides with the design of the An-12 fuselage. The main difference is that the rear of the aircraft is made as part of the passenger compartment. In the middle part of the fuselage, instead of the cargo compartment of the An-12, there is a passenger cabin, the front part of the aircraft with the cockpit is almost completely identical to the front part of the An-12. The cockpit is airtight and separated from the airtight passenger compartment by a pressure bulkhead (due to the unification of the production of An-10 and An-12, which had an unpressurized cargo cabin). The design of the An-10 made it possible, if necessary (for example, in the event of war), to relatively easily turn it into a cargo aircraft, almost completely similar to the An-12 by simply replacing the rear fuselage (together with horizontal and vertical tails). To test the reality of this concept, one copy of the An-10 was successfully converted into a cargo aircraft.