Elie Carafoli

Elie Carafoli (September 15, 1901, Veria, Salonica Vilayet, Ottoman Empire–October 24, 1983, Bucharest, Romania) was an accomplished Romanian engineer and aircraft designer.

In 1928, Carafoli returned to Bucharest, where he joined the faculty at the Polytechnic University, and founded the Aerodynamics chair; later in 1936 he was promoted to full professor.

It was here that he built the first wind tunnel in South-Eastern Europe, and elaborated some of the theory on which calculations of wing profiles of supersonic aircraft are based.

Together with Lucién Virmoux from Blériot Aéronautique, he designed the IAR CV-11, a single-seat, low-wing monoplane fighter aircraft.

A prototype was flown in 1931 by Captain Romeo Popescu, in an attempt at breaking the flight airspeed record, but the plane crashed, and the pilot lost his life.