This  is amazing, how on earth did it ever get off the ground once let alone 11  times?

Looks  like something out of a Jules Verne novel.

Built  in Russia during the 1930s, it flew 11 times before crashing and killing 15  people.

The designer,  Konstantin Kalinin, wanted to build two  more planes but the project was  scrapped.

Later, Stalin had   Kalinin executed.

Evidently, it was not good to fail on an expensive  project under Stalin.

It's got propellers on the back of the wings,  too. You can count 12 engines facing front.

The size would be  equivalent to the Empire State Building on  its side, with cannons. 

And you think the 747 was big... not only a bunch of engines but check  out the cannons the thing was carrying.

In the 1930s the Russian army  was obsessed by the idea of creating huge planes.

At that time they  were proposed to have as many propellers as possible to help carrying those  huge flying fortresses into the air, jet propulsion has not been implemented  yet.

Not many photos were saved from those times because of the high  secrecy levels of such projects and because a lot of time has already passed.. 

Still,  on the attached photos you can see  one such plane - a heavy bomber  K-7.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can  you imagine what it would be like sitting in this thing when those cannons  go off? They would have to have one hell of a recoil system, or they would  rip off the main part of the air craft body. Also when it dropped the the  load of bombs the up lift would raise hell with the flight level. That may  be the reason it  crashed.