Robert Ludvigovich Bartini

Robert Ludvigovich Bartini (or Roberto Oros di Bartinini) (14 May 1897 – 6 December 1974) was an Italian aircraft designer and scientist. Active mostly in the Soviet Union, he was called Barone Rosso (Red Baron) because of his noble descent.

Biography

Bartini was born in Fiume, Austria-Hungary (now Rijeka, Croatia). He was the son of an unmarried 17 year old girl. When the natural father of the child, a married man, refused to recognize the baby as his son, the young mother drowned herself. Her aunts and tutors, impoverished aristocrats originally from the city of Miskolc, North-East of Budapest, granted custody of the child to a peasant family.

Besides his family education, he graduated from gymnasium in 1915, was drafted and sent to officers' reserve school located in Banská Bystrica (today's Slovakia). Upon graduation in 1916, Bartini was sent to the Russian-Austrian-Hungarian front where he was captured in June 1916. He attended flying school in 1921 and Politecnico di Milano in 1922. Bartini became a member of the Italian Communist Party in 1921.

After the Fascist takeover in Italy in 1923, he was transferred undercover to the USSR as an aviation engineer. Along with his transfer, he took along all the latest Italian design and avant-garde technology he was able to gather. He occupied several engineering and command positions in the Soviet Air Force and Red Army. He became the head of the department of amphibious experimental aircraft design in 1928. He was the head of the design department of NII GVF, general designer (chief designer), since 1930.

He was imprisoned from 1938 to 1946. He continued his work on new aircraft designs as a prisoner in TsKB 29 NKVD and in OKB-86 on the territory of Dimitrov Aircraft Factory and Beriev Aircraft Company in Taganrog (1946–1952), then in SibNIA, Novosibirsk. R.L.Bartini was rehabilitated in 1956.

He also published papers concerning aviation construction materials and technology, aerodynamics, dynamics of flight, and even theoretical physics.

He died in Moscow, Russia in 1974.

Aircraft designer

VVA-14 WIG aircraft

in Monino airfield, Moscow

Name Description Stal-6 Experimental fighter - established Soviet speed record DAR Stainless steel flying boat (long range Arctic reconnaissance) Stal-7 Twin engined stainless steel airliner Er-2 (AKA DB-240) military version by V.G. Ermolaev. First flown June 1940. Er-2 2xAM-35 April 1942. Er-2 2xACh-30B ~300 were built. 3x1000kg bombs. Max speed 446km/h. Range 5000km Er-2[1] None A-57 Revolutionary 'boat bomber', a jet-powered flying boat strategic bomber VVA-14-1/M-62 Ground effect aircraft. Designed for the anti-submarine role. Bartini-Beriev 1972. AL-40 nuclear engine hydroplane. none built. SibNIA, 1960s. R 53.6K All the aerodynamic surfaces were "calculatable" and have up to 4-th derivative function value. 1940s. Aviation

Sergey Pavlovich Korolev named Bartini as his teacher. At various times and to different degrees, Bartini has been connected with Korolev, Sergey Ilyushin, Oleg Antonov, Vladimir Myasishchev, Alexander Yakovlev and many others. In the literature on aerodynamics there is a term (definition) "Effect of Bartini".

Engineering creativity

The method developed by Bartini has received the name " And - And " from the principle of the connection of mutually exclusive requirements, or "Both that..., And another "...