page_title: Max Taitz
section_title: Flight Research Institute
hierarchical_section_title: Max Taitz / Biography / Flight Research Institute
caption_attribution_description: KS-1 (KENNEL) air-surface missile mounted on a Tu-16KS (BADGER B) formerly of the Indonesian Air Force, on display at the Air Force Museum, Yogyakarta
context_page_description: Max Taitz was a scientist, an engineer, and one of the founders of Gromov Flight Research Institute. He was a doctor of engineering, a professor, and a recipient of the Stalin Prize, and the honorary title of Honoured Scientist of the RSFSR.
context_section_description: Together with Alexander Chesalov and Vsevolod Vedrov, and with the support of Mikhail Gromov and Ivan Petrov, Taitz arranged the establishment of the Institute of Flight Research (8 March 1941). In the new institute Taitz held the Chief of Laboratory No. 2 position and also acted as the institute Deputy Chief for science. During the Great Patriotic War (World War II), Taitz headed the evacuation of the science core of the institute to Novosibirsk, and supervised flight and ground testing of the serial production fighter aeroplanes to eliminate defects in the flight qualities and war-fighting capabilities of the aircraft. At the same time he took the lead in developing the second volume of the Aircraft Designers Handbook (RDK) devoted to flight test techniques and published by TsAGI in 1944. The same year Taitz was assigned to head a Soviet technical group for the evaluation of the Peenemünde test site where the German V-1 and V-2 missiles were tested.
  From 1945 to 1947, together with Alexander Chesalov, Taitz initiated the development of testbed aeroplanes based on the Tu-2 bomber for flight testing of the jet engines. Concurrently he developed the theory of similarity for aviation turbojet engine testing. Taitz organised and supervised the flight research and testing of the first Soviet jet fighters MiG-9, MiG-15, MiG-19 and Su-9, for which he was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1949.
  At the end of 1940s during a second wave of antisemitism, Taitz and many others were fired from the institute. Later, in conjunction with new research projects in unmanned aircraft and missiles, and the establishment in 1952 of a new dedicated division, he was asked to return to the institute. After his return, he played a major role in the development and flight tests of Soviet cruise missiles the KS-1 and others, and their automatic control systems. In 1956, chief of the institute Nickolay Stroyev, insisted Taitz be assigned his deputy, although a number of high-level officials of the aviation industry were against that due to Taitz's Jewish ethnicity, his reluctance to be a Communist Party member and his repressed or emigrated relatives.
  In the late 1960s, Taitz initiated the development of the USSR civil aircraft certification system and was a strong supporter of joining the USSR to the Chicago convention and ICAO. Gromov Flight Research Institute became a leading research organisation in the USSR in flight testing and certification of aircraft and Taitz was a driving force behind that. Other notable scientists in these activities were Nickolay Stroyev, Victor Utkin, and Arseny Mironov. For a number of years in the 1960s, Taitz was head of the Soviet-French working group on avionics and flight tests. He was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1966 for achievements in automation of aeroplane controls.
caption: Cruise missile KS-1 under the wing of Tu-16 bomber
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