Soviet aircraft designer, Italian. Text prepared by Andrey Goncharov

Robert (Roberto) Ludwigovich Bartini(real name - Roberto Oros di Bartini(Italian: Roberto Oros di Bartini); May 14, Fiume, Austria-Hungary - December 6, Moscow) - Italian aristocrat (born in the family of a baron), a communist who left fascist Italy for the USSR, where he became a famous aircraft designer. Physicist, creator of designs for devices based on new principles (see ekranoplan). Author of more than 60 completed aircraft projects. Brigade commander. In the questionnaires, in the “nationality” column he wrote: “Russian”.

Little known to the general public and also to aviation specialists, he was not only an outstanding designer and scientist, but also the secret inspirer of the Soviet space program. Sergei Pavlovich Korolev called Bartini his teacher. At different times and to varying degrees, the following were associated with Bartini: Korolev, Ilyushin, Antonov, Myasishchev, Yakovlev and many others. Basic works on aerodynamics, the term “Bartini effect” appears in the literature.

In addition to aviation and physics, R. L. Bartini studied cosmogony and philosophy with varying success, publishing two articles on the topic of physical dimensions in scientific journals, not recognized by the scientific community.

Encyclopedic YouTube

1 / 2

✪ Transcendent Designer - Secrets forgotten victories

✪ World cognition 3 Great mystery The Great Mystery of the Universe

Subtitles

Biography

early years

In 1900, the wife of the vice-governor of Fiume (now the city of Rijeka in Croatia), Baron Lodovico Orosa di Bartini, one of the prominent nobles of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, decided to take in three-year-old Roberto, the adopted son of her gardener. At the same time, there is information that the son was given to the gardener by his mother, a certain young noblewoman who became pregnant by Baron Lodovico. In 1912, high school student Roberto saw demonstration flights of the Russian aviator Khariton Slavorossov in Fiume. They captured his imagination and changed his destiny. Bartini developed a lifelong passion for aviation. He spoke several European languages. Participant in the First World War. He graduated from officer school (1916), after which he was sent to the Eastern Front, during the Brusilov breakthrough he was captured along with another 417 thousand soldiers and officers of the Central Powers, and ended up in a camp near Khabarovsk, where, it is believed, he first met the Bolsheviks. In 1920, Roberto returned to his homeland. His father had already retired and settled in Rome, retaining the title of State Councilor and the privileges he enjoyed with the Habsburgs, despite the change of nationality. However, the son did not take advantage of his father’s opportunities, including financial ones (after his death he inherited more than 10 million dollars at that time) - at the Milan Isotta-Fraschini plant he was successively a laborer, a marker, a driver, and, at the same time, passed the external examinations of the aviation department (1922) and received a diploma in aviation engineering (graduated from the Rome Flight School in 1921).

Work in the USSR

After the fascist coup in 1922, the PCI sent him to the Soviet Union. His path ran from Italy through Switzerland and Germany to Petrograd, and from there to Moscow. Since 1923, he lived and worked in the USSR: at the Scientific Experimental Airfield of the Air Force (now Chkalovsky, formerly Khodynskoye Airfield), first as a laboratory assistant-photogrammer, then became an expert in the technical bureau, at the same time a military pilot, and from 1928 headed an experimental group for the design of seaplanes (in Sevastopol), first as a mechanical engineer of an aircraft destroyer squadron, then as a senior inspector for the operation of materiel, that is, combat aircraft, after which he received the diamonds of a brigade commander at the age of 31 (a now defunct rank, between colonel and major general). Since 1929, he was the head of the department of maritime experimental aircraft construction, and in 1930 he was fired from the Central Design Bureau for submitting a memorandum to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks about the futility of creating an association similar to the Central Design Bureau; in the same year, on the recommendation of the head of the Air Force P. I. Baranov and the head of armaments of the Red Army M. N. Tukhachevsky, he was appointed chief designer of the SNII (plant No. 240) of the Civil Air Fleet (Civil Air Fleet). In 1932, design work began here on the Steel-6 aircraft, which set a world speed record of 420 km/h in 1933. The Stal-8 fighter was designed on the basis of the record-breaking machine, but the project was closed at the end of 1934 as it did not correspond to the theme of the civil institute. In the fall of 1935, the 12-seat passenger aircraft “Steel-7” with a “reverse gull” wing was created. In 1936 it was presented at the International Exhibition in Paris, and in August 1939 it set an international speed record for a distance of 5000 km - 405 km/h.

On the basis of this aircraft, the long-range bomber DB-240 (later classified as Er-2) was created according to Bartini’s design, the development of which was completed by chief designer V. G. Ermolaev in connection with Bartini’s arrest.

Arrest and work in prison

As German troops approached Moscow, TsKB-29 was evacuated to Omsk. In Omsk at the beginning of the war, a special Bartini Design Bureau was organized, which developed two projects:

• “R” is a supersonic single-seat fighter of the “flying wing” type with a low aspect ratio wing with a large variable sweep leading edge, with a two-fin vertical tail at the ends of the wing and a combined liquid-direct-flow power plant.
• R-114 is an air defense interceptor fighter with four V.P. Glushko rocket engines of 300 kgf of thrust, with a swept wing (33 degrees along the leading edge), which has boundary layer control to increase the aerodynamic quality of the wing. The R-114 was supposed to develop a speed of 2 M, unprecedented for 1942.

Aircraft by R. L. Bartini

Robert Bartini has over 60 aircraft projects to his credit, including:

Quotes

Technology theorist

The invention method developed by Bartini was called “And - And” from the principle of combining mutually exclusive requirements: “Both, And the other.” He argued “... that mathematization of the birth of ideas is possible.” Bartini left no room for insight or chance in such obviously unstable systems as airplanes; only strict calculation. For the first time, Bartini reported on this logical and mathematical research at a meeting of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1935.

One of Bartini’s prognostic developments is indicative, having an external resemblance to morphological analysis. After all the somewhat significant characteristics of all modes of transport were summarized into three generalized indicators and a three-dimensional “morphological box” was built on their basis, it became extremely clear that current modes of transport occupy an insignificant part of the volume of the “box”. The maximum degree of perfection (ideality) of transport based on known principles was revealed. It turned out that only ekranoplanes (or ekranoplanes) with vertical take-off and landing can have the best balance of all characteristics. Thus, a product that has not lost any of its relevance was obtained [ ] and to this day the forecast for the development of vehicles. According to American experts, thanks to this, the USSR went 10 years ahead in terms of ekranoplanes (Alekseev R. E., Nazarov V. V.), having achieved an implausible carrying capacity.

Physicist and philosopher

Bartini is primarily known as an outstanding aircraft designer, whom the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper even called the “Genius of Foresight.” But he also, after a number of approvals and support from academician B. Pontecorvo, published an article on theoretical physics in the journal “Reports of the USSR Academy of Sciences” in 1965, the style and content of which were unusual and seemed so meaningless that the scientific community considered it humorous a draw.

In particular, outstanding mathematician V.I.Arnold writes in his memoirs (somewhat incorrectly quoting the first sentence of Bartini’s article):

After the publication of Bartini's article, Bruno Pontecorvo received letters from several “crazy people” at once, reproaching him for stealing ideas from them, and he also received a call from the Science Department of the CPSU Central Committee and began to wonder if this article was a hoax - with such a complaint Some mathematicians appealed, considering it an insult to publish a joke in the journal Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences B. Stern, in an article from 2008, considers Bartini’s article either a witty joke, or a sad story, “when a person talented in his field “loses his bearings” and plunges headlong into delusional research in search of the foundations of the Universe." He also mentions numerous attempts to “decipher” the article, attributing meaning to formulas and phrases, and speculating on fragments “omitted for brevity.”

However, not all scientists are so categorical; in particular, theoretical physicist Mikhail Shifman considers the article underestimated and makes sense from the point of view of string theory, however, it is written very confusingly.

However, complete scientific assessment The article has not yet been published, but it is published mainly on the websites of Russian followers of Roerich and the Academy of Trinitarianism.

Bartini also published an article on the same topic in 1966: “On some relationships between physical constants,” in the 1st issue of the journal “Theory of Gravity and Elementary Particles.” The content of the article was an expanded version of the first article.

In 1974, an article was posthumously published in a thematic collection of seminar reports, co-authored with P. G. Kuznetsov, it represented an expansion of the author’s ideas:

• P. O. di Bartini, P. G. Kuznetsov. Multiplicity of geometries and multiplicity of physics. // MODELING DYNAMIC SYSTEMS. THEORETICAL ISSUES IN MODELING. issue 2. Proceedings of the seminar “Cybernetics of electric power systems”. Bryansk. - 1974.

Modern followers of Bartini claim that he created “a unique theory of the six-dimensional world of space and time, which was called the World of Bartini.” According to them, in contrast to the traditional model with 4 dimensions (three dimensions of space and one of time), this world is built on six orthogonal axes. According to the followers of this theory, all the physical constants that Bartini calculated analytically (and not empirically, as was done for all known constants) for this world coincide with the physical constants of our real world. Also, according to the followers of the theory, Bartini was engaged in the analysis of the dimensions of physical quantities - an applied discipline, which was started at the beginning of the 20th century by N. A. Morozov. Bartini, according to his modern followers, relied on the research of J. Burniston Brown on the theory of dimensionality.

Exploring Bartini's legacy

The atmosphere of total secrecy in the Soviet aircraft industry limited the use of this forecasting method [ ] only to a narrow group of “approved” specialists. Since 1972, materials about R. L. Bartini have been studied in and at the Scientific Memorial Museum of N. E. Zhukovsky. You can read more about this man in the book “Red Planes” by I. Chutko (M. Publishing House of Political Literature, 1978) and in the collection “Bridge Through Time” (M., 1989).

After the war, applied dialectical logic was rediscovered and independently by the Baku naval engineer Heinrich Saulovich Altshuller, again in relation to invention. The method was called TRIZ - the theory of solving inventive problems. According to another version, G. Altshuller was a student of R. Bartini at the secret school “Aton” [ ], where I became acquainted with the “And - And” method. Unlike the method "And - And", TRIZ was completely open to the public. Dozens of books have been published on it (“Creativity as an exact science,” “Find an idea...”, etc.), and hundreds of educational seminars have been held.

see also

• World of Bartini

Notes

Sources

1. Bartini Roberto Lyudogovich
2. The third article was published posthumously, co-authored with P. G. Kuznetsov
3. Sensitive I. E. Red planes. - M.: Politizdat, 1978
4. biography of R. L. Bartini
5. Tikhonov S. G. Defense enterprises of the USSR and Russia: in 2 volumes. - M.: TOM, 2010. - T.2 - P.559 - 608 p. - Circulation 1 thousand copies. - ISBN 978-5-903603-03-9.
6. History engineer. Pobisk Georgievich Kuznetsov S.P. Nikanorov, P.G. Kuznetsov, other authors, almanac Vostok, Issue: N 1\2 (25\26), January-February 2005
7. Tombstone of R. L. Bartini at the Vvedensky Cemetery. Patronymic on the stone - Ludovigovich
8. ,
9. Ermolaev Er-2
10. Bartini T-117
11. A-55/A-57 (Strategic supersonic bomber project, OKB R. L. Bartini/Airbase=KRoN=/)
12. A-57 R. L. Bartini
13. E-57 Seaplane-bomber
14. ,

- Tell me, please, where should I go from here?
“It largely depends on where you want to come,” answered the Cat.
“Yes, I almost don’t care,” began Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter where you go,” said the Cat.
“Just to get somewhere,” Alice explained.
“Don’t worry, you’ll definitely end up somewhere,” said the Cat.
of course, if you don't stop halfway

L. Carroll, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

“Past, present and future are one and the same,” said Bartini. “In this sense, time is like a road: it does not disappear after we have passed along it and does not appear this very second, opening around the bend.”

Thinking out loud about the perception of time

I often remember the past, as probably all of you do. I remember my childhood years - here I am rushing along the shore Sea of ​​Azov on my grandfather’s bike, happiness overwhelms me, I’m 10 years old and my grandfather just gave me his Commander’s watch... Here is my first ruler, first class, the unknown and something magical is looking at me from the future. It seems that everyone feels this - the already slightly cool September air is filled with pleasant excitement... Here are the successes and failures at school, here is the first fight with a strong and angry high school student (just like in the movies), first love, then there was perestroika - everything started spinning like in bad detective. I look at myself from here, from the height of what I’ve already lived, and I clearly understand that at some moments in my life it’s like invisible hand guided me to avoid some very unpleasant things. Someone quietly, but very effectively led me out of deep dead ends.

One day I had to defend myself from bandits. There were three of them. But thanks to my reaction and freestyle wrestling school, I knew for sure that I would be able to get out. The point was that the only way to get out was by killing one of them. They gave me a glass of alcohol and clonidine, then they handed me a teapot and in a moment its spout could have entered the bandit’s eye. This was my only chance. Russia, 90s.
A moment to think. But this moment became an eternity. Someone invisible squeezed my hand with iron. And he didn’t let the irreparable happen. Subsequently, these stupid guys all went to heaven as one.
But what would happen to me if I took this step? It's clear what would happen. Nothing good.
And remember deja vu. Who didn't have them?! What is this? - when you clearly understand that you were here and saw all this, and even vaguely remember what will happen next - and this scares you worse than a wild hyena.
Or what are foresights, signs, memories of the future? Who shows them to us and why?
There are many questions, many thoughts. And the more you think, the more questions you have.

The nature of time

Works by Bartini and about Bartini:

Work by R. L. Bartini

Publications about R. L. Bartini

In contact with

Robert Bartini was born on May 14, 1897 in the Austro-Hungarian city of Fiume (now the city of Rijeka in Croatia).

Bartini's full name is Roberto Oros di Bartini. Bartini himself told the following story about his childhood. Roberto's mother came from a very noble family, but was left without parents early on and was raised by relatives. At the age of 17, she fell in love with a certain baron, who married another woman. Unable to bear the suffering, the girl drowned herself, having previously left the child wrapped in a blanket at her relatives' house. The foundling was given to a local peasant, who after some time moved to Fiume, where he got a job as a gardener in the house of the above-mentioned baron. The baroness saw the boy, she liked him, and the childless di Bartini couple adopted Roberto. When the parents decided to find out who real father child, it turned out that he was the baron himself.

As a child, Roberto Bartini had at his disposal a wonderful library, a fencing hall, a two-masted yacht, a home observatory and the best model of a Zeiss telescope, ordered from Germany. In September 1912, Roberto flew for the first time on the plane of the Russian pilot Khariton Slavorossov, who performed with his attraction in Southern Europe, and on his sixteenth birthday, Bartini got his own airplane, which his father gave him.

The fact that Roberto was an unusual child was discovered by his parents even in childhood. Roberto was a great painter. And how right hand, and left. One day, my mother decided to read Jules Verne’s “20 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” to the boy in German, and Roberto learned German in two weeks. True, he could only read the text upside down - that’s exactly how the book lay in front of him. The boy also successfully participated in European swimming competitions. Bartini did not feel hungry at all, and, in order to be “like everyone else,” he ate by the hour, in a strictly certain time. Bartini had no sense of fear: at the age of five, on a dark autumn evening, he went alone to an abandoned park to see a fairy who, according to legend, lived in the side tower of an empty castle. Roberto didn’t make it to the fairy, got lost and fell asleep under a fern - he had such a strong nervous system. Then, in childhood, others began to notice the young baron and telepathic abilities. Later, already in the USSR, work colleagues noticed that Robert Ludvigovich answered questions before the interlocutor had time to ask them. Colleagues attributed this ability to good knowledge of people.

However, researchers of Bartini’s life, Olga and Sergei Buzinovsky, wrote: “We checked: none of the Italian, Hungarian, Austro-Hungarian, Austrian and German genealogical publications mention the di Bartini family. This name is not found in numerous “Who is Who” reference books published at the beginning of the 20th century. The protocol of the first interrogation in Butyrka prison explained something: it is written there that the baron received documents in the name of Bartini and the corresponding “legend” before being sent to the Soviet Union. Previously, Roberto bore the surname of his stepfather, the Hungarian Ludwig Orozhdi. He never saw his own father, the Austrian Baron Formachus. According to Bartini, the investigator wrote down and maiden name mother - Fersel (according to other documents - Fertsel). But these names do not appear in reference books either.

The Embassy of the Republic of Croatia in Moscow and employees of the Rijeka city archive told the Buzinovskys that in September 1912, the Russian pilot Khariton Slavorossov actually flew in Fiume. But information about people named Bartini, Forms and Fersel was not found in the archive. True, not far from Fiume there was the estate of Baron Philip Orozdi, an Italian large landowner and a member of the upper house of the Hungarian parliament. The baron also appeared on the list of honorary members of the Hungarian flying club. His brother Lajos lived in Budapest. Lajos in Italian is Lodovico, in German is Ludwig. It turns out that he was the father of the future aircraft designer. Subsequently in Soviet time Bartini donated the entire inheritance bequeathed to him by his father to the fund for helping the fighters of the Italian revolution.

In 1916, nineteen-year-old cadet school graduate Roberto Bartini arrived to serve in Russian Empire, and a week after arriving at the unit he was sentenced to death for shooting a tyrant lieutenant who had beaten a recruit a few days before. Roberto was saved by the sudden attack of the Russians, the famous “ Brusilov breakthrough", during which Bartini was captured by the Russians and was sent to the Far East. During the four years spent in captivity, Bartini learned Russian and became acquainted with the ideas of social equality. Bartini later spoke about his journey from Vladivostok to Europe in 1920: together with other prisoners of war from Austria-Hungary, he boarded a ship that was supposed to take them to their destination. In Shanghai, the baron and his Hungarian friend Laszlo Kemen had to go ashore after they were about to be thrown overboard as sympathizers with Bolshevism. In 1920, Bartini returned home. He did not take advantage of Bartini Sr.’s opportunities, including financial ones (after the death of his father, he received more than 10 million dollars at that time). At the Milan Isotta-Fraschini plant, Roberto works as a laborer, a marker, and then as a driver. At the same time, he was trained at the Rome Flight School and received a diploma in aviation engineering, having passed the exams of the aviation department of the Politecnico di Milano as an external student in two years. He also joined the Italian Communist Party.

As Bartini told his biographer Chutko, in 1922 he even participated in the operation to eliminate Savinkov, who wanted to disrupt the Genoese conference. Bartini did not allow the enemies of the Soviet regime to carry out their plans - Savinkov’s best people died. However, in the archives of the GRU and the KGB PGU there is no information about the Genoese operation. But in the newspaper “Il Mondo” for April 1922, a note was published about the disclosure of a White Guard terrorist plot against the Soviet delegation: “About 15 people who arrived with false passports were arrested. Among them is the famous Russian terrorist Boris Viktorovich Savinkov. Savinkov tried to get control of the security of the Soviet delegation in Santa Margarita. It is assumed that an assassination attempt was being prepared against Lenin if he came to Genoa.”

In 1922, Mussolini came to power, who really did not like the communists. And Bartini was again sentenced to death (in absentia). Then Roberto decided to flee to the USSR on the second plane his father gave him. The route was supposed to run through Switzerland, France, where in Paris, in order to confuse his tracks, he even had to fake his own death, and through Berlin, where doctors unsuccessfully removed his appendicitis. But there are several other versions of how Bartini got to the USSR. According to one of them, he arrived on a German ship with the documents of his Russian friend Boris Iofan. There is also a version about a submarine that surfaced at night off the Romanian coast. According to the Buzinovskys, the Comintern “personal file” of Bartini is kept in the former archives of the CPSU Central Committee: a thin folder of five to six pages. It records that admission to the Italian Communist Party “is not documented.” According to Bartini, he left Soviet Russia at the end of 1920 and returned in 1923. The stories of the “red baron” about working at the Isotta-Fraschini plant and about participating in the military actions of the Italian Communist Party were not documented. “We don’t have very much reliable, indisputable information about him,” wrote Chutko, “and it is unlikely that they will be significantly replenished. Especially information about the first 1920-25 years of his life. To do this, it would be necessary to find documents that may still be stored in Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Germany, China, Syria, and Ceylon.”

Bartini later talked about escaping from an Italian prison. But on official version(as follows from the report of the USSR Academy of Sciences), the Italian Communist Party decided that a graduate of the Milan Polytechnic Institute should help Soviet Russia in the aircraft industry. “Beware of calling what you do not understand non-existent,” said Bartini. Bartini may have largely invented his revolutionary past. But some light on the motives of the designer’s stories about himself is shed by a phrase uttered by one former employee Technical management Ministry of Aviation Industry: “Mysterious”, “mysterious”... If you want to know, Bartini was just a big kid! Each new idea fascinated him, he tried to do many things at once, but it turned out badly - plans, deadlines, bonuses flew by, the customer lost patience ... ".
In Moscow, Bartini was hired to work at the Scientific Experimental (now Chkalovsky) airfield on Khodynka as a laboratory assistant-photogramist, then he became an expert in the technical bureau. Having assessed the training of the Italian aircraft engineer, his superiors transferred him to the Black Sea Air Force Directorate. In Sevastopol, having started as a mechanical engineer in an aircraft destroyer squadron, he rose to the rank of senior inspector for the operation of materiel in 1927, that is, all combat aircraft, and the diamonds of a brigade commander (major general) appeared on his buttonholes.
Soon Bartini was returned to Moscow and appointed a member of the Air Force Scientific and Technical Committee. In it, he prepared his first projects for seaplanes, in particular, a heavy flying boat - the 40-ton MTB-2 naval bomber. Experts immediately noted the originality of the technical solution he proposed. Bartini proposed placing four engines in pairs in the wings, moving the propellers forward on elongated shafts, which would improve the aerodynamics of the car. After this, Bartini was transferred again, now to Aviatrest, and then to the Experimental Department-3 (OPO-3) - the leading organization involved in naval aircraft construction. It was headed by the outstanding aircraft designer D.P. Grigorovich, and young engineers S.P. Korolev, S.A. Lavochkin, I.P. Ostoslavsky, I.A. Berlin and I.V. Chetverikov worked in the Department itself. Later, Korolev told the sculptor Faydysh-Krandievsky: “We all owe Bartini very, very much, without Bartini there would be no companion. You must capture his image first.”

In the new place, Bartini continued to work on seaplanes for various purposes. Under his leadership, several successful projects were developed over two years, which were subsequently used in the creation of seaplanes MBR-2 (marine short-range reconnaissance aircraft), MDR-3 (marine long-range reconnaissance aircraft) and MK-1 (marine cruiser), better known as ANT- 22.

However, he soon became cramped within one topic, and he switched to working on an experimental EI fighter. In addition, he was instructed to head OPO-3 instead of Grigorovich, who was arrested in 1928 in the “Industrial Party case.” But in March 1930, Bartini’s group became part of the Central Design Bureau, and for a memo sent by Bartini to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, in which he explained the pointlessness of “collectivization” in aircraft design, Bartini’s group was dissolved and he himself was fired.
In 1930, Bartini visited Taganrog for the first time, where he prepared the famous “Country of Soviets” plane for flight to the USA.

After the flight took place, the USSR government awarded the Italian an M-1 passenger car for his success in preparing the flight and presented him with a certificate from the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. In the Beriev TANTK illustrated encyclopedia of aircraft you can read about this time: “Despite the very heavy workload of the main work and preparation of the naval sports team for the 1st Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR in diving, he also found time for equipment. It was at this time that he prepared his proposals for the creation of three seaplanes and an experimental fighter, among which was a proposal for the creation of a naval short-range reconnaissance aircraft." In parallel with diving, Bartini proposed creating an all-metal aircraft. But the situation with aluminum in the country was poor, and it was decided to make the plane wooden. Beriev was assigned to finish the wooden plane, which he did. The plane was named MBR-2. The name has nothing to do with Mikhail Beriev or Bartini; the ICBM is a naval short-range reconnaissance aircraft.
In the same 1930, the head of the Main Directorate of the Civil Air Fleet (CAF), A.Z. Goltsman, on the recommendation of M.N. Tukhachevsky, provided Robert Lyudvigovich with a design department in the subordinate aircraft research institute of the Civil Air Fleet. And although combat vehicles were not within the competence of the research institute, Goltsman authorized the construction of an experimental fighter under the brand name “Steel-6”. In 1933, this aircraft set a world speed record of 420 kilometers per hour.

"Steel-6", although it had no weapons, was considered an experimental fighter and received the code "EI" from the Air Force Directorate. Many elements of novelty were tested on it, reducing aerodynamic drag and increasing the cultural level of factory technology. Thus, the pilot, which does not have a convex cockpit canopy, the landing gear, which is covered with a shield after cleaning, as well as water and oil radiator devices, were removed inside the device. It is difficult for a pilot to monitor his surroundings while being “walled up” under the skin of the aircraft. Therefore, during takeoff and landing, the pilot lifted himself and his seat above the contour of the fuselage using a cable winch and a locking mechanism. The transparent canopy cover, inscribed in the contours of the fuselage, moved forward and allowed the pilots to stick their heads out to see where the landing site was. For side viewing, the EI had the same capabilities as any conventional aircraft.
Having received the test results, Tukhachevsky convened an extended meeting of representatives of the Air Force, the Main Directorate of the Aviation Industry and senior executives of the Civil Aviation Research Institute involved in the production of Steel-6. The meeting took place at the headquarters premises Navy(Glavvoenmor). Designers from the Scientific Research Institute of the Aviation Industry, who were familiar with the new tactical and technical requirements in advance, in which the fighters were given a maximum speed of 400-450 km/h and a flight altitude of 8-10 thousand meters, were extremely surprised, and, armed with “weighty” arguments about the inconsistency of such data, they were eager to wipe the noses of presumptuous customers. The meeting was chaired by the People's Commissar of Military and Marine Voroshilov and the People's Commissar of Heavy Industry Ordzhonikidze, to whom the aviation industry department was subordinated as the head office. Air Force Chief J.I. Alksnis announced the desired figures in his introduction. This was followed by a detailed report from aviation industry representative A.A. Mikulin, who tried to prove the impossibility of achieving a speed of 400 km/h on a fighter. The speaker presented statistics and theoretical calculations, supported by visual propaganda (posters, graphs and nomograms), which earned the applause of all those dissatisfied with the “crazy” TTT. In response, Tukhachevsky presented a report on the factory flight tests of the Stal-6 aircraft and raised the designer of this machine, brigade commander Roberto Bartini, to the audience. The report indicated a speed of 420 km/h. Skeptics and ill-wishers were defeated. To be more confident, the meeting participants agreed to conduct state tests, which were generally not necessary for the experimental machine. A preliminary flight of "Steel-6" was carried out by Pyotr Mikhailovich Stefanovsky on June 8, 1934. The aircraft was transferred to the Air Force Research Institute on June 17, and the first stage of testing was completed by September 4. Over the course of six flights, lead pilot Stefanovsky and pilot N.V. Ablyazovsky discovered that at speeds of more than 300 km/h the plane was strongly pulled to the left. It was not possible to achieve a speed of more than 365 km/h, since the pilot’s efforts were barely enough to maintain horizontal flight, and there was still a decent amount of power reserve. Takeoff and landing went smoothly. On July 13, Stefanovsky landed the plane with the landing gear retracted due to an incorrect signal from the warning light in the cockpit. After minor repairs, the tests were continued, but were soon interrupted again due to the “unsatisfactory condition of the material part.”
From the conclusion of the Air Force Research Institute: “The test showed a completely unacceptable disdainful attitude of the Civil Air Fleet Main Directorate towards such important object, like the Stal-6 plane. 15 months after reaching the airfield, it turned out to be completely unfinished...” During the modifications, the usual cockpit canopy protruding beyond the upper contour of the fuselage was installed on the aircraft, the visor of which had a wedge-shaped glazing. The pilot's seat was made motionless (locked in the upper position). From a purely experimental machine, "Steel-6" gradually turned into a fighter. The device from the Civil Air Fleet Research Institute was again presented for state acceptance. On August 6, 1934, Stefanovsky reached the maximum speed previously obtained by Yumashev - 420 km/h, despite the deterioration of aerodynamics by the protruding canopy. At the same time, the pilot claimed that after adjusting the engine and bringing it to maximum power, the “Steel-6” would be able to fly 25-30 km/h faster. Meanwhile, the design bureaus of N.N. Polikarpov, D.P. Grigorovich and P.O. Sukhoi produced new fighters during the year that met the latest tactical and technical requirements. At the end of November 1933, Bartini himself received the task of creating a fighter, personally from the People's Commissar of Heavy Industry. The fighter, called "Steel-8" (Air Force code - I-240), was built separately in a fenced off workshop of plant 240. In terms of aerodynamic layout, it was almost identical to "Steel-6", differing in larger dimensions due to the use of a new French engine " Hispano-Suiza" with a power of 860 horsepower and all-metal construction. The production technology was largely worked out on the previous type. Of course, at the request of the military, the Steel-8 was equipped with a canopy for the pilot’s head, protruding above the fuselage. With a fixed dihedral visor, the canopy cover could be moved forward and, due to the through flow of air under it, had no tendency to spontaneously slam shut in flight. Only the pilot could push the transparent cap back when closing the cockpit. The canopy was tested on a full-size mock-up, and a scale model (1:5) was purged in the wind tunnel of the N.B. Zhukovsky Air Fleet Academy.
The fighter was armed with two synchronized ShKAS machine guns mounted on an engine with ammunition boxes above the wheel well. The water radiator was located in the wing, like the prototype, and the oil radiator was located in the root zone of the wing under the right fairing of the joint with the fuselage. The external forms of the Bartini fighter created the impression that it was developed not in 1934, but five to ten years later. Its aerodynamics were so perfect. “Steel-8”, and according to the calculated data, was quite consistent with the period of the Second World War. At an altitude of 3000 meters, its maximum speed was supposed to be 630 km/h, its service ceiling was 9000 meters with a take-off weight of one and a half tons. These figures are quite justified, given that the aircraft was made very cleanly, with minimal deviations from the theoretical contours, significantly less than in mass production. "Steel-8" was the first all-metal aircraft in the USSR using roller and spot welding. Its fuselage was a monocoque with hollow sheet profiles of a U-shaped section. The wing was two-spar with a rear wall. Spars and ribs are welded tubular trusses. The wing skin is Altmag, the inner one is 0.8 mm thick, the outer one is 0.5 mm thick. Along the entire span of the condenser, four sections of ailerons were hung to the rear wall of the wing, which would serve as flaps during takeoff, landing, and during turns. The ailerons and rudders were controlled by cable. The elevator deflected in response to the pilot's stick movements through rigid tubular rods. In the chain of the longitudinal control channel, a mechanism was installed to change the angle of deflection of the elevator depending on the flight speed.
Two gas tanks with a capacity of 175 liters, welded from electron, were placed in the root zones of the wing consoles. The lenticular oil tank, also of a welded structure, with its upper side fit into the outer contour of the fuselage in front of the cabin. During flight, especially at high speeds, the oil tank is also cooled by the flow. A talented designer's creations cannot be ordinary. Bartini did not use common profiles for the wings and tail. Its high-loading profiles were one and a half to two times more efficient in terms of aerodynamic quality and significantly more stable in terms of stall characteristics at high angles of attack. Having a perfect command of mathematics, Robert Ludwigovich used it to analytically determine the arches of profiles. If many specialists drew up the outlines of the wing profile by graphically conjugating segments of curves (usually ellipses or parabolas), Bartini found lines corresponding to such dependencies that at the junction of two conjugate curves their functions would not tolerate a discontinuity up to second-order derivatives. And the air flow felt the filigree smoothness of the outlines and parted with the least resistance.
Unfortunately, the I-240 was not completed, and its construction stopped at the end of 1934 at approximately 60% of the readiness stage. The Main Directorate of the Civil Air Fleet did not need it, and the GUAP also did not have it in terms of experimental construction and did not want to have it. In addition, the competitors who made I-16, I-14, IP-1 were strong, and the vulnerability of the steam-condenser cooling system in air combat or anti-aircraft fire actually reduced the combat effectiveness of Steel-8. Measures were planned to increase the survivability of the system by dividing the condenser into compartments with autonomous circulation of antifreeze, but the Main Directorate of Civil Air Flow, for reasons that have not yet been clarified, stopped funding the work.
At the end of 1935, Bartini developed the long-range Arctic reconnaissance aircraft DAR, which could land on ice and water. But despite the order from Polar Aviation, the DAR did not go into production, since there was no necessary equipment for it.

In the fall of 1935, Bartini designed a 12-seat passenger aircraft, the Stal-7, with a reverse gull wing. “The construction of Steel-7 progressed slowly,” recalled Bartini’s colleagues. — After the arrest of the chief designer, we were endlessly dragged to the investigator: failure to meet all deadlines was the only truth of everything that Robert was accused of. In addition, Bartini's designs were always on the verge of the possible. Only God knows where everything came from: this is the work of entire institutions! But he didn’t know how to bring a product to series.”
There were days, weeks and even months in 1937 when he suddenly lost interest in airplanes. And Bartini disappeared somewhere. At this time he visited the rocket scientists, counted something and did not pick up the phone. Sometimes Roberto would go somewhere unexpectedly and for a long time. One night, subordinates had to look for Bartini, as the designer was urgently called to the headquarters, and he was found at the observatory.

In 1936, the Steel-7 aircraft was exhibited at the International Exhibition in Paris, and in August 1939 it set an international speed record over a distance of 5,000 kilometers, which was 405 kilometers per hour. But this record was set without Bartini’s participation, since in 1938 the designer was accused of preparing to set fire to plant No. 240, where his aircraft was being built, in connection with Tukhachevsky and espionage for Mussolini.
When the record was celebrated in the Kremlin, both the crew and the lead designer were introduced to Stalin.
- Who is the chief designer, why is he not here?
They explained to Stalin that the designer had been arrested.
Voroshilov asked:
- We should let him go, Comrade Stalin. It's such a good head!
Stalin asked Beria:
- At your place?
- Yes.
- Alive?
- Don't know…
- Find it, make it work!..

Meanwhile, in solitary confinement at Lubyanka, investigators demanded that Bartini confess to spying for fascist Italy. He was charged with connections with the “enemy of the people” Tukhachevsky, as well as spying for Mussolini, from whom he once fled. He was sentenced to 10 years in the camps and five years of “defeat” of his rights. Much more is known about this decade than about previous years. In particular, Beria repeatedly came to the sharashka near Moscow to discuss development prospects with the prisoners. Soviet aviation. One day, prisoner Bartini - boldly and in the presence of the generals accompanying Beria - asked why he was imprisoned: “You know, Lavrenty Pavlovich, I’m not guilty of anything.” “I know,” replied Beria, “if I had been guilty, they would have shot me. It’s okay, if you make an airplane, you will receive the Stalin Prize of the first degree and be released.”

As a prisoner, Roberto Bartini took part in the conversion of the Stal-7 passenger aircraft into the DB-240 long-range bomber. He advised his former comrades, he was “secretly” taken to them from prison at night. Despite this mockery, Roberto Bartini worked for the result.
After several months of such work, the Soviet Air Force received a high-speed long-range bomber, unique in its combat capabilities, which became known as the Er-2. A curious case in the history of aircraft construction: the machine was given the name not of its creator, but of one of the engineers and party organizer of the design bureau, General V.G. Ermolaev, who nominally headed the team after Bartini’s arrest.

At the beginning of the war Hitler's leadership assured the Germans that not a single stone would shake in Berlin from enemy explosions, because, they say, Soviet aviation had been destroyed. But the stones of the German capital shook - in the first months of the war, Berlin was bombed by Ilyushin DB-3Fs, and then by the longer-range and faster Bartiniev DB-240s. These bombers flew from Moscow itself and back, without intermediate “jump airfields” and without refueling. True, they did not fly for long. The front line was moving east too quickly. Air Marshal A.E. Golovanov said that our best long-range bomber at the beginning of the war was the Bartinievsky DB-240, and he was very sorry that there were few of these machines - only 300. And even those quickly disappeared, ruined by unsolicited improvements.

Until 1947, Bartini worked in prison, first at TsKB-29 of the NKVD, where at STO-103 he took part in the design of the Tu-2. Soon Bartini, at his request, was transferred to the 101 bureau of D.L. Tomashevich, where the fighter was designed. This played a cruel joke - in 1941, those who worked with Tupolev were released, and the employees of “101” were released only after the war.
In Omsk, where TsKB-29 was evacuated, Bartini carried out the task of Lavrentiy Beria to develop jet interceptors. He developed two projects. “R” is a supersonic single-seat fighter of the “flying wing” type with a low aspect ratio wing with a large variable sweep of the leading edge, with a two-fin vertical tail at the ends of the wing and a combined liquid-direct-flow power plant. R-114 - anti-aircraft fighter-interceptor with four V.P. Glushko rocket engines of 300 kgf of thrust, with a swept wing (33° along the leading edge), which has boundary layer control to increase the aerodynamic quality of the wing. The R-114 was supposed to develop a speed M=2, unprecedented for 1942. But it was not possible to build such aircraft, and in the fall of 1943 the design bureau was closed.
From 1944 to 1946, Bartini carried out detailed design and construction of transport aircraft. He created the T-107 passenger aircraft in 1945 with two ASh-82 engines - a mid-wing aircraft with a two-story pressurized fuselage and a three-tail tail. But it was not subsequently built, since the IL-12 had already been put into production. In 1945, Bartini developed the T-108, a light transport aircraft with two 340 horsepower diesel engines, a twin-boom high-wing aircraft with a cargo compartment and fixed landing gear. It was also not built.

Bartini created the T-117 - a long-haul transport aircraft with two ASh-73 engines of 2300/2600 horsepower. It was the first aircraft that could transport tanks and trucks. There were also passenger and ambulance versions with a pressurized fuselage. The aircraft project was ready in the fall of 1944, and in the spring of 1946 it was submitted to the MAP. After the positive conclusions of the Air Force and Civil Air Fleet, after petitions and letters from a number of prominent figures aviation (M.V. Khrunichev, G.F. Baidukov, A.D. Alekseev, I.P. Mazuruk, etc.) was approved, and in July 1946, construction of the aircraft began. In June 1948, the construction of an almost finished (80%) aircraft was stopped, since Stalin considered the use of ASh-73 engines, necessary for the strategic Tu-4, an unaffordable luxury and the Il-12 aircraft was already available.

Bartini was sent to Taganrog in 1946. There, on the territory of the Dimitrov plant, there was a “sharaga” called OKB-86. A design office was set up in a hangar away from the workshops, and a barracks and a watchtower were built nearby. The OKB with 126 “prisoner” engineers was headed by Robert Lyudvigovich. The designer did not look well-groomed at that time - he wore a shabby leather coat, his pockets were bulging, full of torn packs of Belomor. Around his neck he wore a white silk scarf, fastened with a pin with a transparent stone. “Bartini, absorbed in himself, sat at the drawing board and gave the impression of some kind of exotic bird in a cage,” recalled former Sharaga draftsman N. Zheltukhin.
“Freemen” worked alongside the prisoners. Among them was design engineer Valya. “A kind, sincere person,” Vladimir Bartini said about his mother. “She was respected at the plant.” How Robert and Valentina met, and how their relationship developed, given that Bartini was constantly accompanied by a sentry is another Bartini mystery. “I don’t know, I don’t know, my mother never told me about this,” said Vladimir Robertovich.
After the T-117, Bartini designed the T-200 - a special heavy military transport and landing aircraft, a high-wing aircraft with a high-capacity fuselage, the contours of which were formed by the wing profile, and the trailing edge, opening up and down, between the two tail booms, formed a passage 5 meters wide and 3 meters high for large cargo. The aircraft had a combined power plant: two piston star-shaped four-row ASh engines with 2,800 horsepower each (future) and two RD-45 turbojet engines with 2,270 kgf of thrust each. It was envisaged to control the boundary layer of the wing, the chord of which was 5.5 meters (version T-210). The project was developed in 1947, was approved, and the aircraft was recommended for construction that same year, but it was not built due to the closure of the design bureau. Subsequently, these developments were used to create Antonov transport aircraft.
“Father came out of prison with broken fingers,” recalled Vladimir Robertovich. “Although he had a dog as a child, he could no longer hear the dog barking... “The misunderstood genius of Soviet aviation,” this is what aircraft designer Antonov later wrote about Robert Ludvigovich. Of the 60 aircraft he designed, only a few were built.
Bartini's ideas were too ahead of their time. Back in the early 1940s, Bartini developed a jet aircraft. It was supposed to fly at a speed of 2400 kilometers per hour. “This cannot be,” they said Soviet aircraft designers. “There are no airplanes without a propeller.” In 1950, on the instructions of DOSAAF, under the leadership of Bartini, an aircraft design was developed for non-stop flight Moscow - North Pole — South Pole- Moscow. The plane was supposed to cover 40 thousand kilometers, but the project was also not implemented.
From 1948, after his release, and until 1952, Bartini worked at the Design Bureau of Hydroaviation of G.M. Beriev. In 1952, Bartini was seconded to Novosibirsk and appointed head of the department of advanced schemes of the Siberian Scientific Research Institute of Aviation named after S.A. Chaplygin (SibNIA). There, research was carried out on profiles, on the control of the boundary layer at subsonic and supersonic speeds, on the theory of the boundary layer, on the regeneration of the boundary layer by the power plant of an aircraft, a supersonic wing with its self-balancing during the transition to supersonic. With a wing of this type, balancing was achieved without loss of aerodynamic quality. Being an excellent mathematician, Bartini literally calculated such a wing without particularly expensive blowing and significant costs. Based on these studies, he created a design for the T-203 aircraft. Bartini's project, presented in 1955, planned to create the A-55 supersonic flying boat bomber. The project was initially rejected because the stated characteristics were considered unrealistic. It helped to contact Sergei Korolev, who helped substantiate the project experimentally.
In 1956, Bartini was rehabilitated, and in April 1957 he was seconded from SIBNIA to OKBS MAP in Lyubertsy to continue work on the A-57 project. Here in the OKB P.V. Tsybin under the leadership of Bartini until 1961, 5 aircraft projects with a flight weight from 30 to 320 tons for various purposes were developed (projects “F”, “R”, “R-AL”, “E” and “A” "). “Strategic cocked hats,” in addition to excellent flight characteristics, had to be equipped with avionics, which at that time was the height of perfection. The MAP commission, in which representatives of TsAGI, CIAM, NII-1, OKB-156 (A.N. Tupolev) and OKB-23 (V.M. Myasishcheva) took part, gave a positive conclusion on the project, but the government decision on the construction The plane was never accepted. And then in 1961, the designer presented the project of a supersonic long-range reconnaissance aircraft with a nuclear power plant R-57-AL - a development of the A-57.

When Bartini turned to Sergei Korolev with a request for experimental verification his “fantasies”, then Korolev, who at that time was working on rocket technology and therefore had practically unlimited possibilities, went to meet the Italian, whom he revered for the courage of his design ideas since the late 1920s.
Sergei Pavlovich’s engineers created and “blown” several models in wind tunnels, made according to the drawings proposed by Bartini, and compiled over 40 volumes of reporting documentation. The conclusion of the admiring rocket scientists was clear: the plane is capable of achieving the declared speed. Another thing is that neither the level of equipment nor the capacity of Soviet industry is enough to build it.

Only ten years later, the Italian’s aerodynamic calculations, drawings and profiles of the wing he calculated for supersonic flight were used in the construction of the famous Tu-144.
It was during this period that Bartini had another outstanding idea: the creation of a large vertical take-off and landing amphibious aircraft, which would cover transport operations most surface of the Earth, including eternal ice and deserts, seas and oceans. He carried out work on using the screen effect to improve the takeoff and landing characteristics of aircraft. Projects were developed for the VTOL-2500 with a take-off weight of 2500 tons and the ship-based VTOL aircraft Kor.SVVP-70.

The implementation of Bartini’s ideas was the project of the anti-submarine VTOL amphibian VVA-14 (“Vertical take-off amphibian”), the development of which began by government decree in November 1965 at the Ukhtomsk Helicopter Plant (UVZ), and then continued at the G.M. Design Bureau. Beriev in Taganrog, where Bartini’s team moved from the Moscow region in 1968. There, in 1972, two VVA-14 (M-62) anti-submarine aircraft were built. In 1976, one of these devices was converted into an ekranoplan. It received the designation 14М1П.

Back in the mid-1960s, Bartini reported to the CPSU Central Committee on his analysis of the prospects for transport development. He said that each vehicle is characterized by a number of indicators: speed, range, carrying capacity, degree of weather dependence, cost... Bartini mathematically reduced these indicators of each vehicle to three generalized ones, put the generalized ones on the axes in the usual coordinate system and, setting aside the length, width and height, drew a parallelepiped. Then, using the resulting maximum values, I drew a maximum, but hypothetical, rectangle. The speed and range of such an unrealistic, but in principle imaginable means - like that of a spaceship, the carrying capacity - like that of an ocean ship, the dependence on weather - no more than that of a heavy train... And it became clear that real rectangles, each individually and all together, in total they occupy only a small part of the hypothetical volume. One turned out to be wide, but flat, the other - high, but thin... And then the conclusion followed that the maximum share of the hypothetical volume would be occupied by ekranoplanes, devices known in the USSR since 1935 and even built, albeit in single units. But not ordinary ekranoplanes, but with vertical take-off and landing.
In 1972, in Taganrog at the G. Dimitrov plant, in accordance with the concept of “airfield-free aircraft”, two VVA-14 anti-submarine aircraft were built. This is what the designer himself said about this development: “The plane flies well, but lands poorly. The helicopter rises and lands easily, but flies slowly. The way out of these contradictions is in a design of the aircraft body that achieves the unity of opposites, such functions as the function of the wing, fuselage and tail. I believe that over time they will begin to use an aerodynamic screen under the body of the device. The resulting air cushion will make the aircraft of the future - the ekranoplan - all-aerodrome or, if you like, non-aerodrome: it will be able to land and take off anywhere.

In addition, when taking off and landing, Bartini developed his idea, the hydrodynamic requirements for the aircraft disappear altogether. Nothing prevents the improvement of aerodynamic shapes, and the waves for such an ekranolet are almost the same as for a ball thrown at them. No matter how they shake it, the ball remains intact.”
According to the recollections of Leonid Fortinov, a career employee of the OKB, VVA-14 was an apparatus of an unusual design: with a large center section - a “flying wing”, along the sides of which inflatable floats-chassis 14 meters long, with a diameter of 2.5 meters and a volume of 50 each cubic meters every. They were intended for takeoff and landing on any surface: water, snow, ice, swamp and sand. These floats also provided buoyancy for the aircraft. When filled, they were released outside, and when retracted after takeoff, they were automatically stowed in the side compartments of the center section. In this form, the VVA-14 was no different from a land aircraft.
The amphibian fuselage was located along the axis of the vehicle from the bottom in front, and from above in the rear part of the center section two D-ZON propulsion engines designed by P. Solovyov were installed on pylons. The VVA-14 was supposed to be equipped with 12 turbofan lift power units RD-36-35PR designed by P. Kolesov, also located in the thickness of the center section.

The amphibian had a trapezoidal wing, spaced vertical and horizontal tails. Control of the aircraft was provided by aerodynamic and jet rudders. The crew, consisting of three people, was housed in a cabin that could be separated in case of an accident. Bartini decided to make his plane take off in two stages: first, powerful lifting engines pulled the device out of the water, and only then the marchers gave it the required speed.
The creation of the amphibian was accompanied by extremely thorough bench testing, especially on a flight bench designed specifically for the VVA-14, which solved many issues of piloting this unique aircraft.
Soon the plane was ready, but the lifting engines, as usual, did not have time to be completed. Then they decided to simply check the volatility of the car. Since floats were not tested on it for tangential loads, it was not possible to take off on them with a running start, or to land. Therefore, the floats were replaced with bicycle wheeled chassis. VVA-14 made its first flight from a land airfield on September 14, 1972. It was lifted into the air by the aircraft plant test pilot Yu. Kupriyanov and navigator L. Kuznetsov. There was also a closed flight along a 200-kilometer-long route. According to the test pilot, the car behaved normally.
Subsequently, the VVA-14 was modified for a STOL aircraft using the gas-dynamic boost effect, for which purpose boost engines with a device for deflecting the gas jets of the engines under the center section were installed on the forward part of the fuselage. The aircraft in this modification, under the name 14M1P, was tested in the Azov Sea, where the characteristics of gas-dynamic injection for the use of seaplane takeoff from rough surfaces were confirmed.
Experimental studies and flights have shown the high efficiency of using pressurization during takeoff and landing modes, increasing seaworthiness during takeoff. The problem of splash protection has been solved sea ​​water. However, during the tests, the negative aspects of using air under the center section during landing modes were also revealed: it led to the appearance of a large acceleration component and increased the landing distance, which was several times greater than the takeoff distance. Therefore, to improve seaworthiness, they decided to use partial airflow, which reduces the weight of the aircraft by 50-60%, as well as a screen mode during takeoff and landing.
However, the fate of the VVA-14, like the fate of many Bartini aircraft, turned out to be sad. After the first flights, work on fine-tuning the amphibian dragged on and gradually came to naught due to the death of Robert Ludovigovich. After Bartini's death, work on these aircraft was stopped due to the workload of the Beriev TANTK, which was working on the A-40 and A-42 flying boats.
In 1976, one of these devices was converted into an ekranoplan. According to American experts, thanks to this, the USSR went 10 years ahead in the field of creating ekranoplanes, achieving an incredible carrying capacity.
Shortly before his death, Bartini made a report in which he proposed creating hydrofoil aircraft carriers. They accelerated to 600-700 km/h, so the plane could land without slowing down. When Bartini made his report, the famous ekranoplan designer Alekseev from Sormovo refused to speak, citing the fact that his report was worse.
“Airplanes have always been a craft for my father. He considered the main task of his life theoretical physics“,” said Vladimir Robertovich. The article “Relationships between physical quantities” by Roberto Bartini, published in 1965 in the journal Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences, caused a scandal. The author argued that time is three-dimensional, has length, width and height. Yet our space is six-dimensional. With this number of measurements it is most stable. To prove his reasoning, Bartini cited the values ​​of Planck's constant, the charge of the electron, its mass, and so on, calculated according to his theory. These values ​​are very high accuracy coincided with the data obtained experimentally. Today, the six-dimensional structure of the Universe would not raise any particular objections among theoretical physicists. And in 1965, the article was published rather out of pity and sympathy for the 68-year-old Bartini. Scientists who knew him, Bruno Pontecorvo and Keldysh, stood up for Bartini: “The author has a difficult fate. He came to the Soviet Union young, had great merit in aviation, was sent to prison in the 1930s. No one in the Italian Communist Party remembers him. Bartini must be saved, otherwise he will go crazy.”
However, even scientists who sympathized with Bartini were surprised: Robert Ludvigovich first signed the article with his full name— Roberto Oros di Bartini. It was kind of a challenge. The editorial office of the magazine received a call from the Science Department of the CPSU Central Committee and asked whether this article was a hoax. There was no doubt in the Science Department that the article was a hoax. The author’s unusual surname also seemed fictitious to them. Academician Bruno Pontecorvo, who presented Bartini’s article in the “Reports of the Academy of Sciences,” had a unpleasant conversation with an instructor of the CPSU Central Committee. The Central Committee could not believe that a scientist with such an exotic name could exist in the USSR. Pontecorvo advised skeptics to make inquiries about Bartini in the defense department of the Central Committee.
In fact, Bartini created a unique theory of the six-dimensional world of space and time, which was called “Bartini’s world.” In contrast to the traditional 4-dimensional model (three dimensions of space and one of time), this world is built on six orthogonal axes. What is most interesting is that all the physical constants that Bartini calculated analytically (and not empirically, as was done for all known constants) for this world coincide with the physical constants of our real world. This shows that our world is more likely to be 6-dimensional than 4-dimensional.

Bartini was also involved in the analysis of dimensions of physical quantities - an applied discipline, which was started at the beginning of the 20th century by N.A. Morozov. One of the most famous works is “Multiplicity of geometries and multiplicity of physics,” written by him in collaboration with P.G. Kuznetsov. Working with the dimensions of physical quantities, Bartini built a matrix of all physical phenomena based on only two parameters: L – space, and T – time. This allowed him to see the laws of physics as cells in a matrix. Just as Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev discovered the Periodic Table of Elements in chemistry, Bartini discovered the Periodic Table of Laws in physics. When he discovered that the known fundamental conservation laws were arranged diagonally in this matrix, he predicted and then discovered a new conservation law - the law of conservation of mobility. This discovery puts Bartini in the ranks of such names as Johannes Kepler (two conservation laws), Isaac Newton (law of conservation of momentum), Julius Robert von Mayer (law of conservation of energy), James Clerk Maxwell (law of conservation of power), etc.
The invention method developed by Bartini was called “And - And” from the principle of combining mutually exclusive requirements: “Both, And the other.” He argued “that it is possible to mathematize the birth of ideas.” Bartini left no room for insight or chance in such obviously unstable systems as airplanes - he was guided only by strict calculation.
For the first time, Bartini reported on this logical-mathematical research at a meeting of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks back in 1935, but the atmosphere of secrecy in the Soviet aircraft industry allowed only a narrow group of “admitted” specialists to use this forecasting method. Since 1972, materials about Bartini have been studied at the Institute of the History of Natural Science and Technology of the USSR Academy of Sciences and at the N.E. Zhukovsky Scientific Memorial Museum.
After the war, applied dialectical logic was rediscovered and independently by the Baku naval engineer Heinrich Saulovich Altshuller, again in relation to invention. The method was called TRIZ - the theory of solving inventive problems. According to another version, G. Altshuller was a student of Bartini at the secret school “Aton”, where he became acquainted with the “I - I” method. Unlike the secret “And - And” method, TRIZ was completely open to the public.
Bartini argued that it was possible to make an airplane transparent or mirror-like. He believed that we could try to bend a light beam so that it would go around the object we needed. Einstein said that this is possible near large masses or in strong electromagnetic fields. In 1945, physicist Rumer and aircraft designer Bartini submitted a joint work to the Academy of Sciences entitled “Optical analogy in relativistic mechanics and nonlinear electrodynamics.” In 1991, the name of the author of the mysterious invisible aircraft, Bartini, was first named. It turned out that the initiator of the Transparent Airplane project was Tukhachevsky, who patronized the designer in the 1930s.
After his release from prison, Bartini lived alone, separately from his wife, son and grandson, whom he loved very much. He worked in semi-darkness (Bartini’s pupils did not constrict - the consequences of some kind of illness). In the large walk-through room, a chandelier shone faintly, wrapped in gauze, and a table lamp with a homemade lampshade made of thick green paper was burning. The designer painted strange pictures. According to Chutko, Robert Ludwigovich asked the painters to paint one room in the apartment bright red, the other he painted himself: there was the sun on the blue ceiling, a little lower on the walls there was the surface of the sea, and here and there there were islands. The “deeper,” the greener the water became thicker, darker, and at the very bottom was the bottom. Bartini worked in the red room, and “at the bottom” he rested - he drank a strange mixture of the strongest tea and coffee with condensed milk - one to two - and loved to eat the Surprise waffle cake.

Taganrog designer Vladimir Vorontsov, who visited Bartini’s Moscow apartment, was struck by a painting dated 1947. She depicted a rocket taking off. He was surprised by the shape of the flame - a fireball: “How could he know that this is exactly what a rocket launch would look like!?” As Chutko wrote, what attracted attention in the house were two photographs under glass on the wall. On one - a young, proud aristocrat Roberto, on the other - a declassed element - pitiful and not dangerous. To meet with the designer, you had to first call him by phone, otherwise he would not come to the door. Robert Ludwigovich was afraid of something. According to Bartini, attempts were made on his life three times - in Berlin, Sevastopol and Moscow. In 1967, in the very center of the capital: a Muscovite with its headlights off tried to hit him on Kirov Street.
Bartini died on the night of December 4–5, 1974. When his body was found two days later on the bathroom floor, water was flowing from the tap and gas was burning in the kitchen. According to the police, Bartini felt ill at night, got up from the table, knocked over his chair, and went into the kitchen. He turned on the gas and began to draw water in the bathroom. Then he fell backward, hitting his head on the doorframe. It was that night that Bartini wrote his will, attached a black bag to it and hid it behind a thick curtain. The package was carefully sealed. In his will, Robert Ludwigovich asked that his papers be sealed in a metal box and not opened until 2197. There was also an inscription on the package: “I removed one corollary from my articles on constants. I ask you, when you consider it appropriate, to report in any form of your choice that I, Roberto Bartini, arrived at it mathematically, I am not sure that I was not mistaken, so I did not publish it. It needs checking, I don't have time left for that anymore. The consequence is this: the amount of life in the Universe, that is, the amount of matter that, in the infinitely distant past from us, suddenly saw itself and its surroundings, is also a constant quantity. World constant. But, of course, for the Universe, and not for an individual planet.”
Robert Bartini was buried at the Vvedensky cemetery in Moscow. The inscription on the monument reads: “In the land of the Soviets, he kept his oath, devoting his entire life to making red planes fly faster than black ones.”