[2][5] Known by the military designation Seversky P-35, it was the first modern US Army fighter, incorporating a metal fuselage, low-set wings, retractable landing gear and a radial engine.

At the end of the war Kartveli designed a sleek flying photo lab called the Republic XF-12,[7][8] initially planned as a four-engine postwar transport; American Airlines canceled its orders and only two prototypes were built for the US Air Force.

[2] He was also 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.

[2][5] The radical turboramjet-powered XF-103 was another stillborn Kartveli design, a victim of the propulsion community not being able to produce a suitable engine to power the Mach 3 interceptor.

[16] A contract was awarded by the USAAC in November 1939, and for an even lighter XP-47A, but as intelligence was coming back from the war in Europe, it was becoming apparent that the performance goals of the XP-47 program were already inadequate.

Kartveli then took the Seversky AP-4, a daring concept with the exhaust-driven turbocharger in the rear fuselage belly, and quickly prepared a rough sketch of a new XP-47B prototype.

The new design would incorporate eight 0.50 inch machine guns, additional ammunition, increased fuel capacity, and armor protection for the pilot.

Despite the fact that the supercharger was in the tail and the engine was in the nose, the arrangement worked quite well, providing a system that was durable and less susceptible to battle damage.

The initial attempts to redesign the P-47 to accommodate a jet engine proved futile due to the large cross-section of the early centrifugal compressor turbojets.

Instead, Kartveli and his team designed a brand-new aircraft with a streamlined fuselage largely occupied by an axial compressor turbojet engine and fuel stored in rather thick unswept wings.

Since the design promised superior performance to the P-80 Shooting Star and Republic had extensive experience in building single-seat fighters, no competition was held for the contract.

Meanwhile, wind tunnel testing by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics revealed longitudinal instability and buckling of stabilizer skin at high speeds.

The fifteen YP-84As delivered to Patterson Field (present-day Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) for service tests differed from XP-84s in having an upgraded J35-A-15 engine, carrying six 0.50 inch (12.7 mm) Browning M2 machine guns (four in the nose and one in each wing root), and having the provision for wingtip fuel tanks holding 226 US gallons (870 L) each.

[20] Intended to be a replacement for the F-84 Thunderjet, the F-105 was created as a supersonic, low-altitude penetrator capable of delivering a nuclear weapon to a target deep within the Soviet Union.

To counter these issues Republic replaced the engine with the more powerful Pratt & Whitney J75, altered the arrangement of the air intakes, and redesigned the F-105's fuselage.

The largest single-engine fighter built for the US Air Force, the production model F-105B possessed an internal bomb bay and five external weapons pylons.

[22] The announcement by the Fairchild Republic Company, where Mr. 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.