Georgian National Museum Exhibit Comes to a Close

Earlier this year, the Alexander Kartveli Association announced the conclusion of a dedicated exhibit at the Georgia National Museum in honor of Alexander Kartveli, one of the greatest military aircraft designers in history.

The Association worked with the Museum to curate an exhibit to celebrate the life and accomplishments of Alexander Kartveli. Over the course of six months, thousands of Georgians visited the exhibit.

Born in Tbilisi, Kartveli immigrated to the United States in his early 1920s to pursue a dream to design aircraft that tested the limits of aeronautical design.  The exhibit will highlight Kartveli’s extraordinary life and his enduring legacy of military aircraft design.  Kartveli is credited with major aircraft designs such as the P-47 Thunderbolt (used extensively in World War II by the United States), F-84 (used extensively in the Korean Wart and then by NATO forces), and the F-105 9used extensively in the Vietnam conflict).  Most remarkable is Kartveli’s A-10 “Warthog” design which remains in service today in the U.S. Air Force - its fifth decade as a vital close air support aircraft.  Kartveli also made significant contributions to the design and technology used in hypersonic propulsion and in early space flight.

Richard Rubin has embarked on a five-year endeavor to document and curate Kartveli’s values and life story. Richard Rubin, Chairman of the Alexander Kartveli Association says, “I am so pleased to contribute the rich content and media assets about this great aviation pioneer and innovator.  My team at the Alexander Kartveli Association has collected a vast trove of materials that paint a fascinating and inspiring story about a great Georgian who impacted world events through his individual contributions to aviation.  And most important of all, through the content at the exhibit, the people of Georgia will be able to enjoy of sense of national pride about Kartveli’s personal values that are an extension of his Georgian heritage.”

The exhibit will opened November 17, 2015 with a brief ceremony to discuss the vision and mission behind the exhibit.

Kartveli's Nephew Speaking at Georgian National Museum, courtesy AK Association

Who is Alexander Kartveli?

Alexander Kartveli is perhaps the greatest among the early pioneers in military aviation.   More so than anything else, he was an innovator with vision and tenacity whose impact on aviation remains alive today with the fifth decade of service for the A-10.

Kartveli emigrated from his home country of Georgia to pursue a dream to design aircraft.  In the 1920s and 1930s, aviation captured the imagination of entrepreneurs and financiers looking for glory and riches – not unlike today’s Internet boom.   Fleeing the Bolsheviks, Kartveli moved to Paris, studied aviation and, in his early 20s, designed an aircraft for Louis Bleriot that established a world speed record.

As a result of early success in the Paris aviation scene, Kartveli met and eventually moved to the United States to work with entrepreneur Charles Levine.  When Levine’s aviation company failed, Kartveli joined forces again as chief engineer for Alexander de Seversky, another early aviation pioneer who also happened to be born in Tbilisi, Georgia.  Seversky Aircraft eventually become Republic Aviation, a major force in aircraft manufacturing through World War II and the conflicts that followed shortly thereafter.

At Republic Aviation, Kartveli oversaw the design of some of the era’s most important fighter planes including the A-10 Thunderbolt II (nicknamed the “Warthog”), the P-47 Thunderbolt (nicknamed the “Jug”), the F-84 Thunderjet (nicknamed the “Hog”) and the F-105 Thunderchief.  In fact, the A-10 remains in service today, nearly five decades after it was introduced, despite quantum leaps in aviation technology.

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Kartveli’s P-47 Thunderbolt shows the power of design genius at work long before the A-10 was conceived. It was the largest, heaviest and most expensive fighter aircraft in history to be powered by a single piston engine.  Its design encompassed advances in both edges of a sword – it was simultaneously one of the most lethal planes in the air and was also the safest for pilots.  The P-47 could carry half the payload of a B-17 on long-range missions, yet it was effective in ground attack roles when armed with five-inch rockets.  

Kartveli’s contributions were not limited to Republic Aviation.  His capacity to translate ideas into reality led to his role as an advisor to the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, the predecessor to NASA, where he contributed designs that proved to be the seed concepts for the space shuttle.  NASA's History Office, in "The Space Shuttle Decision" published in 1999, references Kartveli's work on ramjet technology.  Kartveli and Antonio Ferri collaborated on some notable early ramjet designs.

The heads down, thinking man stereotype associated with engineers partly explains why Kartveli remains obscured from history. Another important factor is the alienation imposed on Kartveli due to unfounded fears of espionage.  Despite these strictures, publications such as Time Magazine, the Washington Post and Think Magazine captured Kartveli’s immutable sense of imagination in articles in which he expounded on the future of aviation and space flight.

A breed of people with new ideas and a determination to succeed proved that an engineer, designer or mathematician can have an enormous impact on important world events.  Starting with World War II, the power of innovation and advances in early computers opened up a whole new front of warfare that put scalable technology to work in the hands of individuals like Kartveli.  What emerged was a group of people whose individual contributions formed an essential pillar of military supremacy and whose passion ushered in foundational technologies that today impacts every military and civilian industry.  

Simons Chase