Oleg Antonov

Oleg Konstantinovich Antonov (Russian: Оле́г Константи́нович Анто́нов, ; 7 February 1906 – 4 April 1984) was a prominent Soviet aircraft designer, and the first chief of the Antonov - a world-famous aircraft company in Ukraine, later named in his honour.

Antonov was personally responsible for designing a number of very successful Soviet airplanes (such as the Antonov An-12) and gliders for both civilian and military use.

Antonov was born on 7 February 1906 in Troitsy (now Podolsky District of the Moscow Oblast), Russian Empire. Russian Ethnicity. In 1912, the Antonovs moved to Saratov, where he attended the non-classical secondary school (now gymnasium №1) and secondary school (now school №23). From an early age, Antonov was fascinated with aviation and spent much of his spare time at the local airfield.

At the age of 17, Antonov founded the "Amateur Aviation Club" and later joined the "Organization of Friends of the Air Force". Later he designed the OKA-1 "Pigeon", a glider that was entered in a competition in Moscow where he won the first prize, a flight on a Junkers 12 aircraft.

In 1930, Antonov graduated from the Kalinin Polytechnical Institute in Leningrad. He continued to design gliders and in 1931 Antonov became the chief designer at the Moscow Glider Factory. During the next eight years, he designed 30 different gliders including the Standard-1, Standard-2, OKA-6 and the large "City of Lenin" glider. Due to a requirement that all pilots in the Soviet Union had to begin their flight training on gliders, Antonov was able to produce up to 8,000 gliders per year.

In 1938, after an incident when an instructor defected to the West using a glider, the Soviet government reversed its decision regarding glider training, banned the sport of gliding and shut down the Moscow Glider Factory.

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