Sikorsky, Igor

Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky

ACHIEVEMENTS: Developed the helicopter

NICKNAME/ALIAS: None

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: May 25, 1889, Kiev, Russia

DATE/PLACE OF DEATH/AGE AT DEATH: October 26, 1972, [Easton, CT. Aged 83

DISCIPLINE: Helicopter designer

FIELD: Engineering

EDUCATION: Elementary school, St. Petersburg; Naval Academy, St. Petersburg; Polytechnic Institute, Kiev.

MAJOR WORK: ["The Story of the Winged-S"; "Recollections and Thoughts of a Pioneer"

LIFE AND TIMES:

Sikorsky's mother introduced him to the work of Leonardo Da Vinci 2*, whose scientific notebooks stimulated his interest in flight. Verne*'s science fiction novel "Clipper of the Clouds", made him wonder whether a flying machine could ever really take off and land vertically, as it did in the book. When he was 12, he made a rubber-band-powered flying model helicopter(https://app.thebrain.com/brain/f3e16344-7cd9-4fa3-ae1d-59876e128474/26798af4-3af8-5700-9419-a6e29da63f51).

The Wright* brothers' first powered flight in the United States inspired him.On a trip to Paris, in 1908, when he was 19, Sikorsky set out to learn all he could about flying and was told that Anzani engines were the "least bad". He visited the Anzani factory, where he met French flier Louis Bleriot, who later that year would fly across the English channel in a monoplane fitted with an engine similar to the 25-hp three-cylinder Anzani engine that Sikorsky had bought and taken back with him to Kiev.

Sikorsky built a helicopter(https://app.thebrain.com/brain/f3e16344-7cd9-4fa3-ae1d-59876e128474/26798af4-3af8-5700-9419-a6e29da63f51) in the garden of his parents' home, but after two months of testing realized he would need more than 25-hp to achieve vertical flight. With the help of a group of Kiev Polytechnic Institute students, he designed two biplanes -- the S-1 and the S-2 -- which they built outside Kiev.

The S-1 did not get off the ground, but provided valuable lessons about control. The S-2 took off and stayed in the air for eight minutes of straight-and-level flight. In August, 1911, when Sikorsky was 22, he flew a 50-hp S-5 for 52 minutes over a distance of 52 miles, reaching an altitude of 1,640 feet and a speed of 77 mph. With this feat, Sikorsky got his pilot's license and broke four Russian flying records in one day.

He was invited to take part in army maneuvers and flew from Kiev to Fasova, a distance of 35 miles, cruising at 1,500 feet for more than an hour. Tsar Nicholas II was in Fasova to watch the display and Sikorsky was introduced to him.

In late 1911, the engine of the S-5 failed immediately after take-off and the plane crashed and disintegrated. Sikorsky's more streamlined 100-hp plane, the S-6A, set a record of 66 mph, carrying two passengers. For this feat, he was awarded the Great Gold Medal at the Moscow Aeronautical Exhibition in 1912.

Highly impressed, the Russian Baltic Railcar Factory offered Sikorsky a job as Chief Engineer at their new aircraft division in St. Petersburg. The directors agreed to let Sikorsky build at least one experimental aircraft a year at company expense, and Sikorsky agreed to give the company the rights to any aircraft he designed for the next five years. Shortly after he accepted the job, he won a Russian military aircraft competition with the S-6B. An improved version of the S-6B (the S-10) was put into service with the Russian Baltic fleet.

Soon after he joined the Railcar Factory, company chairman Mikhail Shidlovsky gave Sikorsky carte blanche to build his dream project, a multi-engined plane. The result was the S-21 Great Baltic, known popularly as Le Grand (The Great One) and the first four-engined plane in the world. Sikorsky made the first take-off in May, 1913 and landed in front of a cheering crowd. Tsar Nicholas inspected Le Grand and presented Sikorsky with a gold watch, emblazoned with the Imperial Russian Eagle.

During the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, company chairman Shidlovsky was shot, and a year later, Sikorsky was advised to leave Russia. He offered to work for the French, but since bomber production had been canceled when the First World War ended in 1918, there was no job to be had. So Sikorsky emigrated to the United States. After a few weeks employment as a technical assistant to the U.S. military, Sikorsky settled in to teaching mathematics to Russian immigrants, also lecturing on astronomy and aviation. In 1923, five years after leaving Russia, Sikorsky formed the "Sikorsky Aero Engineering Corporation".

He and his associates, some former Russian officers, took over an old barn on Long Island, New York. They were funded initially by small subscriptions, then Russian composer Rachmaninoff* took a keen interest and invested $5,000. The turning point came the company began making amphibious airplanes.

In 1929, after he had married and become an American citizen, Sikorsky and his company moved to a deep-water base near Stratford, Connecticut. Within months, the company had become a subsidiary of the United Aircraft and Transport Corporation. Sikorsky began selling his S-38s, called "flying boats", to Juan Trippe's* new PanAm* Airways and other airlines.

In 1931 aviator Lindbergh* piloted the inaugural flight of their first S-40, the "American Clipper". By 1937, Pam American was flying across both the Pacific and Atlantic with the first four-engined Clipper, the last of the Sikorsky S-series.

In 1939, Sikorsky's newest flying machine, the VS-300 helicopter, took off for a tethered flight with Sikorsky -- in his trademark fedora -- at the controls. (Sikorsky always insisted on being the pilot of the first test flight of a new design.) The VS-300 (video with Ford and Lindbergh) went through 18 stages of design development before Sikorsky was satisfied it was ready for production. The production version, known as the R4, was the only helicopter flown by the U.S. military during the Second World War.

Sikorsky retired from his company in 1957, but remained as consultant until he died in 1972. Honored in the United States and America, he also received the Cross of St. Vladimir from Russia, although he never returned to his homeland.

ASSESSMENT: Innovative aircraft designer best known for the development of the helicopter.

On to the last stop of the Mystery Tour

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Taylor, John W.R.,Images of America, Sikorsky, Tempus Publishing Ltd., Gloucestershire, England, 1998.

Igor Sikorsky - Wikipedia