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Robert Bartini
Born	Róbert Orosdy (de Orosd et Bö) 14 May 1897 Fiume,Austria-Hungary(modern-dayCroatia)
Died	6 December 1974(1974-12-06) (aged 77) Moscow,Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Resting place	Vvedenskoye Cemetery,Lefortovo District, Moscow
Parent	Lajos Orosdy (Hungarian name order Orosdy Lajos)
Engineering career
Discipline	Aeronautical Engineering
Awards	Order of Lenin

Robert Ludvigovich Bartini (Russian:Роберт Людвигович Бартини; 14 May 1897 – 6 December 1974) was a Hungarian-born Sovietaircraft designer andscientist, involved in the development of numerous successful and experimentalaircraft projects. A pioneer ofamphibious aircraft andground-effect vehicles, Bartini was one of the most famous engineers in theSoviet Union, nicknamedBarone Rosso (Red Baron) because of hisnoble descent.^[1]

Robert Bartini was born on 14 May 1897, inFiume,^[2]Austria-Hungary (nowRijeka,Croatia).^[3]

He gave widely varying accounts of his parents' identity. In a 2020 biography, Sergej Lezak stated that it was "still quite unclear" who Bartini's parents were and where he was from. He evidently grew up in Austria-Hungary at Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia) and/orMiskolc. His father was apparently a member of aHungarian aristocratic family, although Bartini's comments make it unclear which of two brothers named Orosdy was his father. His mother may have been named Bartini and ofItalian noble origins. In other accounts, however, Bartini stated that his surname came from his father. And when questioned by theNKVD in 1938, Bartini stated that he had been born inKanjiza,Kingdom of Hungary (modern-daySerbia) that his mother's surname was Fersel and that his father was anAustrian nobleman named Formaha.^[4]

Most often, Bartini claimed to have been the son of an unmarried 17-year-old woman of noble origins,^[5] and that his mother haddrowned herself shortly after his birth when his father, a married man, refused to recognize him as his son. Bartini claimed that his father was named Ludovico (Hungarian: Lajos) Orosdy,^[6] (a.k.a de Orosd et Bö and/or Oros de Bartini),^[7] abaron of the Austro-Hungarian nobility.^[6] Contrary to a claim by Bartini, Ludovico Orosdy was not theLieutenant Governor of Fiume, and the circumstances suggest that his father may have been Ludovico's brother, Phillippe (Fülöp) Orosdy.^[4] Members of the Orosdy family suggest that Ludovico and Phillippe's paternal grandfather had been named Adolf Schnabel, and had adopted the surname Orosdy in 1848, after earlier converting from Judaism to Catholicism inPest (in 1826).^[8][9] Philippe (Fülöp) Orosdy was made a baron in 1905.^[10] As an infant, Bartini was fostered by a family from the city ofMiskolc. Most accounts state that despite their noble background, Bartini's biological relatives were impoverished and that his foster parents werepeasants.^[11]

Bartini graduated fromgymnasium in 1915, and upon the outbreak of theFirst World War wasdrafted into theAustro-Hungarian Army and sent to anofficers' reserve school inBesztercebánya (now Banská Bystrica,Slovakia). Upon graduation in 1916, Bartini was sent to theEastern Front where he was captured byRussian troops in June 1916 and detained at aprisoner of war camp in nearKhabarovsk in theRussian Far East. He remained at the camp for the remainder of the war and was eventually released in 1920. Bartini returned home to find administration of Fiume being fought over by the localItalian andCroat populaces, as well asItaly and theKingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, resulting in theFree State of Fiume. Bartini moved toItaly and received citizenship, where he became a member of theItalian Communist Party (ICP) and attendedflying school in 1921, and began studyingaerospace at thePolitecnico di Milano in 1922.

After theFascist takeover in Italy in October 1922, the ICP sent Bartini to theSoviet Union as anaviation engineer, taking all the latest Italian design andavant-garde technology he was able to gather. Bartini received Soviet citizenship and changed his name to Robert Ludvigovich Bartini according toEastern Slavic naming customs. Bartini initially worked at an airport nearKhodynka Field inMoscow before occupying several engineering and command positions for the research wing of theSoviet Air Force. In 1928, Bartini began working for the Central Design Bureau buildingseaplanes nearSevastopol and the following year became the head of the department ofamphibious experimental aircraft design, but was fired in 1930 for writing a letter to theCentral Committee of the CPSU criticizing the existence of the organization. Bartini was quickly hired by the research wing of theRed Army where he began working on the Stal-series ofairplanes. At the International Exhibition in Paris in August 1936, theBartini Stal-7 broke the international speed record.^{[citation needed]} He also published papers concerning aviation construction materials and technology,aerodynamics, dynamics of flight, and eventheoretical physics.^[12][13][14]

In 1938, Bartini was arrested by theNKVD on charges of being an "enemy of the people" and aspy forFascist Italy. He wasextrajudicially convicted by atroika, receiving a 10-yearimprisonment sentence. During his imprisonment Bartini continued his work on new aircraft designs, first at thesharashka TsKB-29, an NKVD experiment aircraft design bureau in Moscow where he worked withAndrei Tupolev designing theTupolev Tu-2, which became one of the most important Soviet aircraft ofWorld War II. Bartini's Stal-7 plane also became the base for theYermolayev Yer-2bomber, also used by the Soviet Air Force during the war. WhenGerman troops were close to Moscow during theGerman invasion of the Soviet Union, TsKB-29 was moved from the city toOmsk where Bartini led his own design bureau,OKB-86. His bureau was disbanded in 1943, and he began working on varioustransport plane projects. Bartini was released in 1946, later working at the Dimitrov Aircraft Factory inTaganrog until 1952, when he became the chief engineer of advanced aircraft designs at theScientific Research Institute inNovosibirsk. In 1956, during theDe-Stalinization underNikita Khrushchev, Bartini was officiallyrehabilitated by the Soviet state. The following year he was transferred to the OKBS MAP design bureau inLyubertsy with Pavel Vladimirovich Tsybin, and received backing fromMarshal of the Soviet UnionGeorgy Zhukov, at the time theMinister of Defense of the USSR. Zhukov was forced out the position shortly afterwards, and most of the projects he backed were cancelled. In 1961, Bartini had proposed anuclear-poweredsupersonic long-range reconnaissance aircraft.

Contributions of Bartini were well appreciated at the highest levels of the Soviet government, and he was awarded theOrder of Lenin in 1967. High esteem for his contributions to defense afforded him the help fromPontecorvo andGershtein to publish his theoretical physics paper in the prestigious Proceedings of theSoviet Academy of Sciences (Doklady). The paper was considered to be strange even by Gershtein who was asked to help edit it and prepare for publication, while after the publication some prominent physicists initially thought that "Roberto Oros di Bartini" was a fictitious name invented specially for a scientific hoax. Bartini himself was apparently very proud of his paper, signed it with his noble name, and confided in Gershtein that this was the most important contribution of his lifetime. The paper develops the idea of the dimension of spacetime which is dynamical, equal to four only on average, and presenting an argument in favor using some numerological relations between physical constants.

In the mid-1950s, Bartini became involved inground-effect vehicles, namedekranoplans, in which the Soviet government developed a great interest. The extensive development of these vehicles led to Bartini's first output in 1964, with theBe-1, a small prototype ekranoplan made for research by theBeriev Design Bureau. In 1968, Bartini returned to Taganrog to specifically developseaplanes, where began development of his last known project, theBartini Beriev VVA-14, an experimental ekranoplan featuringvertical takeoff intended to be used inanti-submarine warfare against American submarines armed withPolaris missiles.

Bartini died on 6 December 1974, inMoscow, at the age of 77. He was buried atVvedenskoye Cemetery with a grave featuring a monument with the inscription "In the land of the Soviets, he kept his oath to devote all life that the red planes flew faster than the black (ones)". Bartini had almost no contact with Italy since he had left in the 1920s. Beriev eventually cancelled the VVA-14 project as development slowed and eventually stopped after Bartini's death.

Bartini influenced many Soviet aircraft engineers, particularlySergey Pavlovich Korolev who named Bartini as his teacher. At various times and to different degrees, Bartini has been connected with other prominent Soviet aircraft engineers such asSergey Ilyushin,Oleg Antonov,Vladimir Myasishchev,Alexander Yakovlev and many others.

Bartini's Effect, a phenomenon inaerodynamics wheredrag is reduced andthrust is increased whenaircraft propellers are arranged of two motors in atandem, was named in honor of Bartini as it was first used on hisDAR airplane.

In recognition of his contributions to aerodynamics and aircraft design, his name was put forward to name an asteroid.4982 Bartini, amain-belt asteroid, the asteroid Bartini, the 4982nd asteroid registered, was named in his honour.^[15][16]

This table of Bartini's designs incorporates information extracted from theRussian language Wikipedia article on Bartini. "(Prototype)" indicates an aircraft project where a physical example was built to some extent but was never operational. "(Draft)" indicates an aircraft project that was likely a prefeasibility study where no physical examples were built.

* Ekranolyot refers to a hybrid ground-effect vehicle (ekranoplan) also capable of flight at more regularaltitudes.

Notes

Bibliography

• Bartini information in Russian Retrieved 14-Feb-2005.
• 1989. The collection "the Bridge through time". (russ.сборник "Мост через время")

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