Kalinin’s curious bird

KALININ K-12/VS-2 By any standards, the Kalinin K-12 reconnaissance, attack and flight transport aircraft — also known by the Soviet military designation VS-2 — was an odd-looking machine. But it still might have been developed into an effective platform, had its chief designer not fallen victim to Stalin’s purges During the aviation parade at Tushino airfield just outside Moscow on 18 August 1937, staged in honour of the Soviet Union’s Air Force Day, much attention was drawn to an unusual