Toward the end of World War II, the Soviet Union saw the need for a strategic bombing capability similar to that of the Western Allies.

The U.S. regularly conducted bombing raids on Japan from distant Pacific forward bases using B-29 Superfortresses.

The Soviets declared war on Japan two days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, in accordance with the Yalta Agreement.

[8] The reverse-engineering effort involved 900 factories and research institutes, which finished the design work during the first year, and 105,000 drawings were made.

[9] By the end of the second year, the Soviet industry was to produce twenty copies of the aircraft, ready for state acceptance trials.

[10] The Soviet Union used the metric system and so sheet aluminium in thicknesses matching the B-29's U.S. customary measurements was unavailable.

Extensive re-engineering had to take place to compensate for the differences, and Soviet official strength margins had to be decreased to avoid further redesign.

[12] The engineers and suppliers of components were under pressure from Tupolev, Stalin, and the government to create an exact clone of the original B-29 to facilitate production.

Kerber, then Tupolev's deputy, recalled in his memoirs that engineers needed authorization from a high-ranking general to use Soviet-made parachutes.

[15] The ASh-73 also powered some of Aeroflot's remaining obsolescent Petlyakov Pe-8 airframes, a much-earlier Soviet four-engined heavy bomber, whose production was curtailed by higher-priority programs.

The B-29's remote-controlled gun turrets were redesigned to accommodate the Soviet Nudelman NS-23, a harder-hitting and longer-ranged 23 mm (0.91 in) cannon.

At first three aircraft flew over and the Western observers assumed that they were merely the three B-29 bombers which they knew had been diverted to the Soviet Union during World War II.

[46] On 28 February 1953, Joseph Stalin gave China ten Tu-4 heavy bombers, and in 1960 two additional aircraft configured as navigational trainers arrived in Beijing.