A flying boat built at home

Vadim Shavrov, born in Moscow in 1898, trained as a railway engineer before switching to aviation. After a spell with the Dobrolet airline in Central Asia he joined Dmitry Grigorovich’s naval prototype department in Leningrad in 1925 and began drawing a flying boat of his own. In 1928 the Osoaviakhim society backed it. With V. L. Korvin he left the bureau and, by summer 1929, they had built the Sh-1, its main parts made in Shavrov’s apartment. It first flew on 21 June 1929.

The Sh-2 everywhere

The slightly larger Sh-2 followed, a three-seat amphibious sesquiplane of pine, ash and plywood with folding wings so it could be hoisted aboard ships. It first flew on 11 November 1930, passed state trials in 1932 and went into series production at Taganrog in 1933, the first batch numbering 270. Production exceeded 700, the last ones built in small workshops in 1952, and the Sh-2 flew mail, ambulance, fishery-protection and ice-reconnaissance work until 1964.

The designer who wrote the history

Shavrov’s later designs were less fortunate: the Sh-5 survey amphibian of 1934 was outdated when it flew, and the Sh-7 transport of 1940, ordered for Aeroflot, was stopped by the war after one prototype. In the 1950s he turned historian, and his History of Aircraft Construction in the USSR remains a standard work. He also collected beetles, and in 1968 played an elderly Red Army pilot in a feature film. He died in 1976.

工厂

• Zavod No. 23 · Leningrad — Built the Sh-2 prototype
• Zavod No. 31 · Taganrog — Sh-2 series production from 1933

人们

• Vadim Borisovich Shavrov · designer, historian — 1898–1976
• V. L. Korvin · collaborator — Co-built the Sh-1
• Dmitry Grigorovich · mentor — Head of the OMOS bureau Shavrov joined in 1925