Vladimir Miasishchev

Born Sept. 15 (28), 1902, in Efremov, in what is now Tula Oblast; died Oct. 14, 1978, in Moscow. Soviet aircraft designer. Major general of the engineers (1944); doctor of sciences in technology (1959). Hero of Socialist Labor (1957); Honored Worker in Science and Technology of the RSFSR (1972). Member of the CPSU from 1953.

Miasishchev graduated from the Moscow Higher Technical School in 1926. He began his career in the aviation industry in 1925. He worked on heavy airplanes in the experimental design offices of A. N. Tupolev and V. M. Petliakov. He became a chief designer in 1943 and a principal designer in 1956. Miasishchev directed the development of such airplanes as the M-2 (DVB-102) high-altitude bomber, the Pe-2I long-range dive bomber, the M-4 and M-6 strategic bombers, and the M-50 supersonic strategic rocket-carrying bomber. From 1947 to 1952, Miasishchev was a professor at the Moscow Institute of Aviation. From 1960 to 1967, he was the director of the Central Aerodynamic and Hydrodynamic Institute.

Miasishchev was a deputy to the fifth and sixth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He received the Lenin Prize in 1957. He was awarded three Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, and two other orders, as well as various medals.