Beyond the Spruce Goose: The An-22 Turboprop Titan

Some of these name’s sound like legends in the great hall of aviation giants. The Howard Hughes H-4 Hercules, also known as the Spruce Goose, is a giant wooden flying boat to many people, the ultimate propeller-driven ambition, which flew only once but gained the imagination of the world. Its wingspan was decades long. But what would you say, should I tell you that there is another type of propeller giant, which has been carrying huge freight, landing on roughly cut airstrips, and cementing itself as the largest turboprop-powered aircraft in the world, in the last half-century? It is the tale of the Antonov “Antei,” a true titan of the skies whose legacy is as massive as its airframe.

Whereas the Spruce Goose was a unique prototype, the An-22 was a labor horse. This Soviet wonder was born out of the strategic requirements of the cold war and was not meant to be flown once but to have a lifetime of heavy lifting. It is a monument to a time of bold engineering, a machine that is both a brute and a marvel, and whose last, tragic flight is the end of a great period in the history of aviation. And now, it is time to draw back the hangar doors on this amazing plane and have a look at the mechanics and history of the real king of the turboprops.

Routes in Cold War Necessity

The origin of the An-22 dates back to the late 1950s when the Soviet Union realized that it had an urgent requirement of a new heavy military transport. The Antonov An-8 and An-12 aircraft that were in service were already proving to be competent, yet the military aspirations were on the increase. They needed an airlifter that would be able to transport not only troops and supplies, but heavy armored vehicles, and this increased the range of the Soviet Airborne Forces. It was assigned to the famous Antonov Design Bureau, which at first called the project An-20.

The Antonov team, working in their Kyiv workshops in the early 1960s, came up with a wooden mock-up of what was by that time known as the Model 100. This design was further developed and on August 18, 1964, the prototype which was now officially known as An-22 was rolled out. It was an awe-inspiring sight. The plane was named the Antaeus or Antei, after the half-giant of Greek mythology with his incredible strength. The name was fitting. This new giant flew on 27 February 1965, and after only four months, it flew in the skies in its maiden flight and on 1965 Paris Air Show, the Western world was left in no doubt about the heavy-lifting capability of the Soviet Union.

The construction of a Turboprop Titan

In terms of design, the An-22 is a masterpiece in intentional design. All the features of the aircraft were designed to meet its strenuous mission profile. It has four powerful Kuznetsov NK-12MA turboprops, each with a power output of unbelievable 11,000 kW, or approximately 15,000 shaft horsepower. The engines are known to propel one of the most unique features of the An-22, four pairs of enormous contra-rotating propellers. It is very efficient with two propellers on each engine turning in opposite directions and generates a strong slipstream of air passing over the wings.

This controlled draught is the major secret of the short field performance of the An-22. The slipstream gives the large, high-mounted wings and their double-slotted flaps increased lift, and the fully loaded aircraft with a 250,000 kg mass can take off on a runway only 1,300 meters long. The aircraft was also designed to be able to work on austere and unpaved airstrips, which is important in facilitating airborne operations in remote areas. Its landing gear was unusually tougher to operate on rough surfaces and early models had even a system where the crew could adjust tire pressures in-flight to suit optimum landing performance, a feature later eliminated in production models.

The size of the cargo that the An-22 can carry is hard to exaggerate. The cargo hold is cavernous and measures 33 meters with a usable volume of 639 cubic meters. It was specifically designed to carry four armored vehicles (BMD-1) as opposed to one armored vehicle (An-12). Even the fuselage itself is an ingenious design. The front part, which accommodates the 5-to-8-person crew and up to 28 passengers, is completely pressurized to make it comfortable. The primary cargo hold is, however, pressurized to 3.55 PSI only partially. This engineering decision made it possible to have a lighter overall airframe without affecting the integrity of the crew cabin.

Frame 14 has a pressure bulkhead between the two areas, and this design enables the other major feature of the An-22, which is the possibility to open its rear cargo doors during flight. This was a critical aspect of its military use as it allowed the use of paratroops and dropping of equipment. Physically, the An-22 looks like a larger version of the An-12, except that there is one important difference- a twin-tail assembly. This was not merely a design, but it enhanced the performance of the aircraft in the engine-out situation, and the practical aspect of this design was that it made the aircraft shorter in height and thus could easily fit in the normal hangars. Large anti-flutter masses can also be identified at the top of every vertical stabilizer, which is another characteristic of the engineering.

Production and Experimental Variants

After its successful introduction, the An-22 started to be produced in Tashkent State Aircraft Factory. It was first delivered in 1969 to an air transport wing at Ivanovo Airbase. Although only a single primary version of production was made, there were minor variations and intriguing suggested ones. The earliest prototypes that were observed in Paris had entirely glazed noses, with no nose-mounted radar, as on the production models, which had the radar under the right wheel well. A better model, named the An-22A, was subsequently constructed that had air-start capability, modified electrical system and new navigation equipment.

The most graphic version was possibly the An-22PZ. Two An-22s were modified to the unusual mission of transporting the huge wing center sections or outer wings of the even larger Antonov An-124 or An-225 jets, out of the fuselage. In order to keep these aircraft stable with such an unconventional load, a third tail fin was added in the middle. That was not the limit of the imagination of the Antonov bureau. There were plans of a 724-passenger civil airliner with upper and lower decks, an amphibious one, a nuclear-powered aircraft and even a ballistic missile platform, but none of these ambitious ideas ever came to fruition.

International Reach of Service and Humanitarian

The An-22 was soon to be an effective strategic asset in both military and humanitarian operations in service. Its history of operation is a chronicle of the major world events that have taken place since the 1970s. The first operation was the Antei providing humanitarian assistance to Peru in July 1970 after the disastrous earthquake in the Ancash, but regrettably one of the planes was lost in the Atlantic in the course of such relief operations. It transported military aid to Egypt and Syria in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, to Angola in 1975 and to Ethiopia in 1977.

The first deployment of airborne troops was in An-22s of Migalovo airbase during the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Another tragedy of this war was also witnessed when an An-22 was shot down in October 1984 off Kabul when it was being used as a troop carrier. The aircraft also played a major role in disaster relief, transporting Mi-8 helicopters to Ethiopia during the 1984 drought and transporting essential supplies following the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Military An-22s were used in 1988 to transport 15,000 tons of supplies and 1000 people to assist in the relief effort after the Armenian earthquake.

The An-22 fleet remained in service with the disintegration of the Soviet Union, with internal forces being used in local wars. It was deployed in the Bosnian War in 1995 to fly in the Russian peacekeeping force. By mid 1990s, about 45 were still in service, however, the fleet was old and was gradually being phased out by the larger, jet powered Antonov An-124. Even this did not stop the fact that a few airworthy An-22s still served in the Russian Aerospace Forces, with the 76th Military Transport Air Squadron at Tver. They were to continue in service as late as 2018.

The Final Chapter of a Legend

Regrettably, the working history of this great airplane seems to have ended tragically. In August 2024, it was reported that Russia had stopped using the An-22. On December 9th, 2025, the final An-22 to serve in Russian service, RF-08832, crashed in the Ivanovo region northeast of Moscow. The plane was undergoing a test flight after repairs when it crashed and all the seven crew members died. Witnesses even testified to seeing the plane disintegrate in the air. The Russian Defense Ministry admitted the loss and said, a commission of the Main Command of the Russian Aerospace Forces had flown to the crash site to determine the causes of the aviation accident. This disaster must be the final grounding of the type, a sad death to a great workhorse.

One has to see the specifications of An-22 to appreciate it. Its wingspan is 64.4 meters (211 feet) and it boasts of being among the largest aircrafts ever constructed. Its height is about 57.92 meters and height 12.53 meters. This giant has an empty weight of 114,000 kg, yet it has a maximum takeoff weight of 250,000 kg. It is able to transport a maximum of 80,000 kg and at that weight it has a range of 5,000 kilometers. It has a service ceiling of 9,100 meters and a maximum speed of 740 km/h, which is not bad. These figures are not merely the numbers on a piece of paper; they are the unbelievable potential that helped the An-22 achieve the records and become a strategic asset that could not be ignored over the decades.

The Antonov An-22 Antei was not only an airplane, but it was also a representation of brash strength and crass dependability. The clattering throb of its four huge contra-rotating propellers was a signal to the world over fifty years long, that here was a machine that could go where none of the rest could go and carry what none of the rest could carry. It did not become as widely known as jet-powered giants, or as mythical as the Spruce Goose, but in the realm of the real-world, heavy-duty aviation, it made an unmatched legacy. With the final of its kind going silent, the An-22 leaves behind a history of daring Soviet engineering, a history of world war and world war, and the lasting legacy of the largest, most powerful turboprop aircraft the world has ever witnessed.