27 Facts About Pavel Sukhoi

Pavel Osipovich Sukhoi was a Soviet aerospace engineer and aircraft designer known as the founder of the Sukhoi Design Bureau.

Pavel Sukhoi's planes set two altitude world records and two world speed records.

Pavel Sukhoi was honored in the Soviet Union as a Hero of Socialist Labor and awarded the Order of Lenin three times.

Pavel Osipovich Sukhoi was born 22 July 1895 in Hlybokaye, Vilna Governorate of the Russian Empire, to ethnic Belarusian parents of peasant background.

In 1900, Pavel Sukhoi's family moved to Gomel when his father, Osip Andreevich Pavel Sukhoi, got a job as a teacher at a school for the children of railway workers.

From 1905 to 1914, Pavel Sukhoi attended the gymnasium in Gomel, now the Belarusian State University of Transport.

In 1915, Pavel Sukhoi was admitted to the Imperial Moscow Technical School in Moscow after passing the entrance exams.

Pavel Sukhoi attended warrant officer training assigned to the artillery of the Russian Western Front.

Pavel Sukhoi was in the Russian Army when it collapsed after the October Revolution in 1917, returning to Moscow to find his university was closed.

Around this time, Pavel Sukhoi contracted typhus and then scarlet fever which significantly affected his ability to speak, and he developed a reputation as a quiet person for the remainder of his life.

In 1920, Pavel Sukhoi was finally demobilized from the army because of his health-related problems, and the government of the Russian Soviet Republic issued a resolution to reopen institutions of higher education in Russia.

Pavel Sukhoi returned to his studies at BMSTU and graduated in 1925 with his thesis titles Single-engined Pursuit Aircraft of 300 hp under the direction of aeronautics pioneer Andrei Tupolev.

In March 1925, Pavel Sukhoi started working as an engineer and designer with the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute and Moscow Factory Number 156 under Tupolev.

In 1932, Pavel Sukhoi was appointed head of the engineering and design department of TsAGI, and in 1938 he was promoted to head of the department of design.

Pavel Sukhoi developed a multi-purpose light aircraft, the Su-2, which saw service in the early years of the Eastern Front of World War II.

In September 1939, Pavel Sukhoi founded an independent engineering and design department named Pavel Sukhoi Design Bureau located in Kharkiv.

Pavel Sukhoi was not satisfied with the geographical location of the OKB, which was isolated from the scientific centers of Moscow.

Pavel Sukhoi insisted that the OKB should relocate to an aerodrome in Moscow Oblast, and by the first half of 1940 the relocation was completed.

Pavel Sukhoi had developed a new ground-attack aircraft, the Su-6, but Soviet leader Joseph Stalin decided that this plane should not be put into production, favouring production of the Ilyushin Il-2.

From 1949, Pavel Sukhoi fell out of Stalin's favour and was forced to return to work under Tupolev, this time as Deputy Chief Designer.

In 1953, the year of Stalin's death, Pavel Sukhoi was permitted to re-establish his own Pavel Sukhoi Design Bureau.

Pavel Sukhoi produced several major serial combat aircraft during the Cold War, including the supersonic Su-7, which became the main Soviet fighter-bomber of the 1960s, and interceptors Su-9 and Su-15, which formed the backbone of the Soviet Air Defence Forces.

Pavel Sukhoi pioneered variable-sweep wing aircraft, such as the Su-17 and Su-24.

Pavel Sukhoi started a number of projects that were not developed, including the ambitious Mach-3-capable Pavel Sukhoi T-3 attack aircraft.

From 1958 to 1974, Pavel Sukhoi served as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

Pavel Sukhoi died on 15 September 1975 at the Barvikha sanatorium in Moscow, and was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery.

The last fighter Pavel Sukhoi designed was the T-10 but he did not live to see it fly.