Dmitrii Pavlovich Grigorovich

Born Jan. 25 (Feb. 6), 1883, in Kiev; died July 26, 1938, in Moscow. Soviet airplane designer.

In 1913, Grigorovich designed his first flying boat, the M-1. He created the M-5 flying boat (1914), which had high flight performance data, and the M-9 flying boat, which was armed with a machine gun (1915) and a cannon (1916). In 1916 the world’s first fighter seaplane, the M-P. was built according to his design. During the Soviet period his best designs were the 1–2 and I-2-bis fighters and the M-24 flying boat. Grigorovich and N. N. Polikarpov created the 1–5 fighter (1930), as well as the first PI-1 fighter with retractable landing gear and cannon armament (1930–33).