As the Germans got closer to Russia, the desperate Soviet Air Force top officials finally admitted they needed help from the nation's most famous aircraft designer: Andrei Tupolev. As with many Russian engineers and scientists of the era, the problem was that Tupolev was in prison for crimes against the Red State. Designed from a prison cell, the twin-engine dive bomber was a machine unlike any other, with many combinations of armament and weaponry depending on the mission. Intrinsically built a