Gu Songfen

Gu was born 4 February 1930 in Suzhou, Jiangsu, Republic of China.^[1] He is the youngest son of Gu Tinglong (顾廷龙), a well known sinologist and calligrapher. His given name "Songfen" comes from a passage of the 3rd-century treatise Wen fu written by Lu Ji.^[2]

In 1935, Gu Tinglong accepted a job at the Yenching University library, and moved the family to Beijing. Two years later, the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out and Japanese warplanes bombed the Xiyuan Barracks of the Chinese 29th Army on 28 July 1937. As the Gu family lived near the barracks, their house was shaken by the explosions.^[2][3] Songfen recalled watching the bombs fall out of the planes, before adults urged him to hide under the dining table. He attributes this experience as the main reason he decided to become an aircraft designer.^[2][3]

To escape Japanese occupation, in 1938 Gu Tinglong moved the family to the Shanghai French Concession, where he helped establish the United Library (合众图书馆). After the end of the war, Songfen graduated from high school in 1947 and entered National Chiao Tung University, Shanghai to study aeronautical engineering.^[2][3]

Gu graduated from university in 1951, and was assigned to work for the newly established Aviation Industry Bureau of the Ministry of Heavy Industry, under China's top aircraft designers Xu Shunshou and Huang Zhiqian.^[2] The People's Republic of China (PRC), which had just been founded two years earlier, was still establishing its aviation industry, and in the early years Gu mostly worked on servicing Soviet-made aircraft.^[2]

In August 1956, the Aviation Industry Bureau established the PRC's first airplane design office in Shenyang, with Xu Shunshou as its director, Huang Zhiqian and Ye Zhengda as deputy directors. Gu, then 26 years old, was appointed head of the aerodynamics group.^[1][2] The office's first task was to design and build a jet trainer, the Shenyang JJ-1. The plane took its first flight on 26 July 1958, which marked a new era of China's aviation industry.^[2]