OKB-86 Bartini

Robert Ludvigovich Bartini had the necessary qualities to solve the most difficult problems, he was not only a designer, but also scientists who tried to look into the depths of the structure of matter, to understand the phenomena around them. This, combined with encyclopedic knowledge, allowed him to generate very bold and original ideas. They were much ahead of their time and always became a "headache" for the leaders of the aviation industry. Ministers, academicians, directors, heads of departments and shops, ordinary designers, copiers, locksmiths, pilots-he treated everyone equally with respect. He generally tried not to impose anything on anyone, with all issues to be solved amicably.

He did not grovel before anyone, if he did not agree with something, he spoke directly. He was too independent, too independent, too appreciated his freedom and was too polite and correct among the rude Stalinist administrators and stupid Khrushchev voluntarists. So he remained the chief designer without a design bureau, a general without an army, an aircraft constructor without built planes, a stray genius in the tough world of well-established production structures. Bartini did not know how to be ordinary and banal, this ability was simply not given to him. His head was arranged so that he kept trying to go beyond the boundaries of the generally accepted.

Bartini (Roberto Oros di Bartini) (14/05/1897 - 06/12/1974), the Soviet aircraft designer and scientist, was little known to the wider public and also to aviation specialists, but he was not only an outstanding designer and scientist, but also a secret mastermind of the Soviet space program. Sergei Korolev called Bartini his teacher. At different times and in varying degrees were associated with Bartini Korolev, Ilyushin, Antonov, Myasischev, Yakovlev and many others.

Bartini was born in Fiume (Rijeka, Yugoslavia). By one account, 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. By another, more coherent telling, in 1900, the wife of the vice-governor of Fiume (now Rijeka in Croatia) Baron di Lodovico Orosz Bartini, one of the prominent nobles of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, decided to take in the three-year Roberto, the adopted son of his gardener. At the same time, there is information that the gardener's son was born of a certain young noblewoman who became pregnant from Baron Ludovic .

Serving in the First World War, in 1916 he graduated from officer school. At the front he was captured by Cossacks General A.A.Brusilova. In 1920 he returned to Italy, and in 1921 he graduated from flight school in Rome, and in 1922 from Milan Polytechnic. In 1921 he became a member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). After the establishment of a fascist regime in Italy, a decision of the Central Committee PCI illegally sent him to the Soviet Union as an aeronautical engineer. He was called Barone Rosso (Red Baron) because of his noble descent.

In September 1923 Bartini began work at the Sci-experiental (now Chkalov) airfield. Assessing the Italian aircraft engineer training, authorities transferred him to the Department of the Air Force of the Black Sea. Here, in Sevastopol, he quickly rose to the rank of chief inspector of material (1927), ie all combat aircraft, and soon there appeared on his lapels the diamonds of a brigade commander (in modern terms, a Major-General). For the successful preparation of the marine transcontinental flight ANT-4 "Land of the Soviets" in 1929 from Moscow to New York, Bartini was awarded the diploma of All-Union Central Executive Committee of the USSR.

Bartini soon returned to Moscow and was appointed a member of the Scientific and Technical Committee of the Air Force. In it, he produced his first seaplane designs, in particular a heavy flying boat - the 40-ton marine MTB-2 bomber. Experts immediately noted the originality of his proposed technical solution - place four motors in pairs in the wings, propellers relegate forward on long shafts that would improve the aerodynamics of the aircraft. Thereafter Bartini was transferred to the leading organization engaged in maritime aircraft construction, Senior Division 3 (GRO-3). It was headed by eminent aircraft D.P.Grigorovich and at the new location Bartinini continued his seaplane work for different purposes, but soon he switched to the elaboration of a fighter prototype.

And then in 1928 he was suddenly assigned to lead the GRO-3, after the arrest of Grigorovich in the famous "case of the Industrial Party". Under his leadership, GRO-3 created several seaplane projects whose materials were used to create aircraft MBR-2, MDR-3, MK-1. In March 1930 his group joined the SDB-39. For a memorandum Bartini aimed at the CPSU, he explained the pointlessness of "collectivization" in the design of aircraft, as a result of which the group disbanded and Bartini was fired.

Later Bartini, was chief designer of the small KB formed at the experimental constructions factory CAF (# 22). Simultaneously, Bartini was chief of the PLA - Scientific Experiments airfield. While fighting vehicles were not included in the competence of research institutes, construction EI Holtzman allowed under the brand name "Steel-6." In 1933, the "Steel-6", set a world speed record - 420 km / h On the basis of the record of the aircraft was designed fighter "Steel-8", but the project was canceled in late 1934 as a category not appropriate for civil institution. On the basis of this aircraft was created by long-range bomber project Bartinini DB-240 (later classified as EF-2), which completed by the the chief designer VG Yermolaev, due to the fact that Bartini was groundlessly repressed

On February 14, 1938, Bartini was arrested. He was accused of having links with the "enemy of the people" Tukhachevsky and engaging in espionage in favor of Mussolini (from which he once ran!). He was sentenced to 10 years in labor camps and five years "disenfranchisement." Until 1947 he worked in prison, first in SDB-29 NKVD, where SRT-103 participated in the design of the Tu-2. Soon Bartini transferred at his request to the bureau "101" D.L.Tomashevicha which designed fighter. Fate played a cruel joke - in 1941, those who worked with Tupolev released and staff "101" were released only after the war.

In Omsk, to which SDB-29 was evacuated, Bartini performed tasks to develop the jet interceptors. They have developed two project. Project "P" - a supersonic single-seat fighter of the "flying wing" type with low aspect ratio wing with a large variable sweep of the leading edge, with two-keel vertical tail surfaces on the wing tips and the combined liquid-ramjet propulsion system (1941). P-114 - AA interceptor with four V.Glushko 300 kgf liquied rocket engines thrust with swept wings (33 ° to the front edge) having a boundary layer control to increase the aerodynamic efficiency of the wing. P-114 was to develop an unprecedented speed in 1942 for Mach = 2! But efforts to build these aircraft failed. In the autumn of 1943 the group led by R.L.Bartini, was reorganized and transferred to other units.

In 1944-1946 R.L.Bartini performed detailed design and construction of transport aircraft. T-107 (1945) with two engines AL-82 - Passenger Airliner - midwing with sealed double decker fuselage and empennage trehkilevym. The was not built as the IL-12 had already been adopted. T-108 (1945) - a light transport aircraft with two diesel engines of 340 hp, with a twin-boom cargo cabin and fixed landing gear was also not built.

The T-117-trunk transport aircraft had two engines AL-73 to 2300/2600 hp. It was the first plane able to transport tanks and trucks. There was also a passenger and sanitary options with airtight fuselage. Aircraft project was ready in the autumn of 1944 and spring of 1946 presented in MAP. After positive findings by the Air Force and the Civil Air Fleet, and after a series of petitions and letters to prominent figures of aviation (Khrunichev, G.F.Baydukova, A.D.Alekseeva, I.P.Mazuruka etc.), the project was approved, and in July 1946 the aircraft factory im.Dimitrova in Taganrog started construction. Again the OKB-86 Bartini was organized. In June 1948, the building is almost finished (80%) of the aircraft was discontinued because Stalin thought the use of AL-73 engines was needed for the Tu-4.

After his release, from 1948 to 1952 Bartini was Chief Designer of hydroaviation of OKB Beriev. He developed projects for transport and combat aircraft, which for various reasons were not implemented. In 1950, on the instructions of DOSAAF, R.L.Bartini developed the project record aircraft for non-stop flight Moscow-North Pole-South Pole-Moscow length of 40,000 kilometers.

In 1952 he was seconded to Novosibirsk and appointed Head of proepstive schemes at the Siberian Research Institute of Aviation im.S.A.Chaplygina (SibNIA). It produced a study on profiles, boundary layer control at subsonic and supersonic speeds, the theory of the boundary layer, the boundary layer on the regeneration of aircraft propulsion, supersonic wing during the transition to supersonic. In this type of wing balancing achieved without sacrificing aerodynamic qualities. Being a great mathematician, Bartini literally figured wing without purging particularly expensive and significant costs. From these studies, it created the project for the T-203 aircraft.

R.L.Bartini presented in 1955 a project to create the A-55 supersonic flying boat bomber. Initially, the project was rejected because declared characteristics considered unrealistic. He appealled to SP Korolev, who helped draft a justification for the project. They used over 40 models, and up to 40 volumes of written reports.

In 1955, Bartini appealed to the Central Committee with a request for rehabilitation, reinstatement in the party and housing. And he was given a two-room apartment in a new house (now Kutuzovsky Avenue, 10), in which the former repressed were lodged. Local residents called it the House of Rehabilitants. After returning to Moscow tried to arrange becoming deputy to Tupolev. Everybody understood well: Robert Ludwigovich would be an uncomfortable deputy. He knew this.

Since April 1957 he finally went to OKB-256 P.V.Tsybin, where he continued to work on the project A-57. Here, and after closing the OKB-256, at KB-based aircraft factory number 938, Bartini led work that until 1961 developed five projects aircraft flight mass from 30 to 320 m for different purposes (projects "F", "P", "R -Al "," E "and" A "). MAP Commission, which brought together representatives of TsAGI, CIAM , NII-1, OKB-156 ( Tupolev ) and DB-23 ( named after V. Myasishev ) gave a positive opinion on the draft, but the government decided to not to build the aircraft. In 1961, the designer presented a draft of a supersonic long-range reconnaissance nuclear-powered P-57-AL, an A-57 development.

In subsequent years, R.L.Bartini led the development of the project for a supersonic passenger aircraft on the medium weight of 70 seats. From 1963 to 1974 Bartini was chief designer of Taganrog machine-building plant. OKB-86 was re-created at the Dimitrov in 1963 and worked until 1968, when it was disbanded due to lack of developments. EDO staff along with the work transferred to the bureau of hydroplanes (now - Beriev), which was headed A.Konstantinov.

During this period Bartinini developed another outstanding idea to create a large amphibious aircraft vertical takeoff and landing, that would encompass most of the transport operations of the Earth's surface, including the eternal ice and deserts, seas and oceans. It used ground effect to improve the landing characteristics of the aircraft. Projects of VTOL-2500 with a takeoff weight of 2,500 tons and VTOL shipborne Kor.SVVP-70.

R.L.Bartini's VTOL amphibious VVA-14 ("Vertical soaring amphibian") development began in the Government Decree in November 1965 Ukhtomsky Helicopter Plant (DC), and then continued in EDO G.M.Berieva in Taganrog, where the team moved from the suburbs in 1968. Here in 1972 were built two anti-aircraft VVA-14 (M-62). In 1976, one of these devices has been transformed into a winged aircraft, which received the designation 14M1P. Some time after the death in 1974 of R.L.Bartini, work on these aircraft was discontinued due to congestion Beriev im.Berieva who worked on boats flying the A-40 and A-42.

Overall, Robert Bartini worked on more than 60 aircraft projects. He accomplishe major works in the field of aviation materials, technology, aerodynamics and flight dynamics. He was awarded the Order of Lenin (1967), the October Revolution, and medals. May 14, 1997, the day of the 100th anniversary of the birth, in the foyer of OKB im.Berieva appeared plaque for R.L.Bartini.

Experts have argued that the most important thing for him was to design a machine with an aerodynamic solution, refuting the old dogma or deplete the regular aviation "deadlock". He lived in the future. The decision to further develop the projects were for others. It should be clarified that the designer never knocked on the doors of bureaucratic offices. As to the future of the projects, he was surprisingly calm.

Bartini is perhaps the most colorful personality of all domestic aviation engineers who have not received wide world fame during their lifetime, but have left a notable mark in the aircraft industry.