Georgii Mikhailovich Beriev produced his first original design, Aircraft No. 25, at the Menzhinsky plant in Moscow in 1932. Beriev had gained considerable expertise as an assistant to French designer, Paul-Aime Richard, during the latter"s stay in the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1930. The B.M.W. VIF-powered prototype was transported to Sevastopol on the Black Sea for flight tests, and these proving successful the new flying-boat went into production as the MBR-2 (Morskoy Blizhnii Razvedchik, or naval short-range reconnaissance). In production form it was powered by a Soviet-built M-17B inline engine. Beriev MBR-2M-103: in 1937 a standard MBR-2AM-34 was modified to take a more powerful M-103 engine, but no production of this version was undertaken Beriev MP-1: this was a civil passenger version of the MBR-2M-17; it carried six passengers in an enclosed cabin, or an equivalent weight of freight; used in some numbers by Soviet Civil Aviation Beriev MP-1bis: a 1937 civil development of the MBR-2AM-34, with simi
