Who can identify this four engined aircraft?

This almost looks like an ancestor of a flying wing. Does anybody know what sort of aircraft this is?

 

Junkers G.38. Not a flying wing, but a conventionally-shaped aircraft with unusually thick wing. This was an airliner and was unusual in that passengers were actually seated in the roots of the wings.Two aircraft were built in the early 1930s.

EDIT: Some refer to this as the predecessor to the "thick" flying wing (or "blended wing") concept. Interesting reading.

 

And George just beat me to it.

I was waffling on the G.38 and it's Japanese derivative the Ki-20, but could not find any photographic evidence that the Ki-20 was fitted with 2-bladed outboard props.

 

Wonderful, I found this at a fleamarket with a bunch of WW1 aircraft pictures as well. The picture is damaged, but it's an original and it's probably rare and one can see crew walking around it and it could possibly be on display at a pre-war air show at le Bourget.

 

Footage of the thing flying;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKKvgrx6zEA

 

The Soviets made some huge monsters, was going to say it was a Tupoleve.
Can't really see on my ancient computer. ..Are the engines embedded in the wing?

 

According to Greenslime's link only two were made. One prototype was used by the Luftwaffe and one by the Lufthansa. My picture depicts the Lufthansa one. This confirms it's a rare photography.

Poppy : you are possibly talking about ths Tupolev (ANT-20)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QLpyNT3lB8

 

Incredibly, ANT-20 was also only 2 ever built.

The first Junkers G.38 crashed during a maintenance test flight in 1936, and was written off, but no one was killed.

The last Junkers G.38 was destroyed in Greece in May 1941, on the ground during an RAF raid.

The first ANT-20 crashed during an airshow in Moscow in 1935, when it collided with a "following" I-5 plane. Killing 45 people, including all pilots and passengers.

The last ANT-20bis crashed when the autopilot was disengaged by a passenger invited into the pilot seat at 500m altitude, in December 1942. All 36 on board died.

I don't know about the ANT-20, but the G.38 engines were apparently accessible in flight by the engineer.

 

Noticed some images had 2 blade outboard and others 4 blade.

On a side note saw a episode of "Air Disasters" centering on a Russian AirBus that crashed due to similar 'invite guest to sit in cockpit seat and auto pilot problem crashes jet"

Not to self, don't fly Areoflot.

 

These aircraft were upgraded several times during their lifetime, and it was a time of great development within motors; IIRC they swapped out the engines in both the G.38 and ANT-20 during their decade long existence.