12 Facts About Alexander Kartveli

Alexander Kartveli, born Aleksandre Kartvelishvili, was a Georgian aeronautical engineer and an aviation pioneer in the United States.

Alexander Kartveli graduated from the grammar school in Tbilisi in 1914.

Alexander Kartveli began working as a test pilot but was seriously injured during a test flight which ended the short-lived career.

In 1927, the American millionaire Charles Levine invited Kartvelishvili to New York, to join the Atlantic Aircraft Corporation in 1928 and in 1931 Kartvelishvili met the prominent engineer Alexander de Seversky, who was born in Georgia but was of Russian descent.

The F-84 Thunderjet which Alexander Kartveli had already developed in 1944, was going into serial production in 1946.

Alexander Kartveli was heavily involved with a 1960s-era Air Force project called "Aerospaceplane", to design and build an orbital logistics vehicle a decade before NASA attempted a similar concept, known as the Space Shuttle.

Alexander Kartveli contributed significantly to the science of flight and the readiness of the US military, and was involved in designing and leading of various projects.

Alexander Kartveli was consultant at Fairchild Republic and was the primary designer of the A-10 Thunderbolt II.

Alexander Kartveli therefore adopted the unorthodox method of designing this feature first, and then building up the fuselage around it.

In 1944, Alexander Kartveli began working on a turbojet-powered replacement for the P-47 Thunderbolt piston-engined fighter.

Alexander Kartveli died on July 20,1974, at Huntington Hospital, New York, USA.

The announcement by the Fairchild Republic Company, where Mr Alexander Kartveli had been chief engineer emeritus and was still active as a consultant, said he had apparently succumbed to a heart attack at his home in Huntington.