Background
Bartini was born in Fiume, Austria-Hungary (now Rijeka, Croatia). He was the son of an unmarried 17-year-old girl.
aviator engineer physicist Aerospace engineer
Bartini was born in Fiume, Austria-Hungary (now Rijeka, Croatia). He was the son of an unmarried 17-year-old girl.
Besides his family education, he graduated from gymnasium in 1915, was drafted and sent to officers" reserve school located in Besztercebánya (Banská Bystrica in present-day Slovakia).
Active mostly in the Soviet Union, he was called Barone Rosso because of his noble descent. 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. 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.
After the Fascist takeover in Italy in 1923, he was transferred undercover to the Soviet Union 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 (Russian: Zavod Opytno Konstrooktorskoye Naoochno-Issledovatel"skiy Institoot Grazhdanskovo Vozdooshnovo Flota — "Factory for Special Construction at the Scientific Test Institute for the Civil Air Fleet"), 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 People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs and in OKB-86 on the territory of Dimitrov Aircraft Factory and Beriev Aircraft Company in Taganrog (1946–1952), then in the Russian Siberian Aeronautical Research Institute (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. List of Bartini"s aircraft designs
This table of Bartini"s designs incorporates information extracted from the Russian language Wikipedia article on Bartini.
Bartini became a member of the Italian Communist Party in 1921.
