Sikorsky Stood Pratt & Whitney, Hamilton Standard Research Laboratories and a Wind Tunnel, on a Low Hill on Long Island Overlooking Propeller, and Chance Vought
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it was not an auspicious beginning . Transport Corporation, which had just craft factory, with first-class machinery, At the crack of dawn of September 21, formed from the combination of Boeing, equipment, offices, drafting rooms, 1926, 37-year-old Igor I. Sikorsky stood Pratt & Whitney, Hamilton Standard research laboratories and a wind tunnel, on a low hill on Long Island overlooking Propeller, and Chance Vought. “At the was planned and ... erected,” Sikorsky the thousands of people who crowded a time there were other alternatives but my wrote. As United Aircraft president narrow runway below. A biplane embla - associates and I were strongly in favor of Eugene Wilson later recalled it, Sikorsky zoned with his own name had a French United Aircraft Corporation, because we was soon running “the strangest factory World War I ace at the controls and car - felt that this fine, progressive and substan - on earth,” its plant floor crowded with ried more than 2,500 gallons of gas as it tial organization which combined engine, Russian immigrants. Sikorsky had origi - attempted to take off on a 3,600-mile propeller and aircraft manufacturers and nally launched his airplane company with flight to Paris. at that time even airline operation, were a encouragement and financial backing The weight of the fuel collapsed the group which would permit us to develop from fellow Russian immigrants in New landing gear of the Sikorsky S-35, causing to the best extent our inherent York City, having eventually landed there it to careen over an embankment at the possibilities,” Sikorsky explained in after fleeing the chaos of the Russian end of the runway. The pilot and copilot The Story of the Winged-S. Revolution. Born May 25, 1889 in Kiev, managed to escape the ensuing fireball, but the two other crewmembers perished. At stake that grim morning was the very survival of the Sikorsky Manufacturing Corporation, founded in 1923 as the Sikorsky Aero Engineering Corporation and now leveraged to the hilt in the now-charred hulk of the smolder - ing S-35. “The financial situation of the company was obviously deplorable,” Sikorsky recalled in his autobiography The Story of the Winged-S (Dodd, Mead & Co., 1938). “At that time there was no possibility of insuring the ship and it was a total loss, the major part of which fell on our organization. All our capital was spent, and in addition there was an By Alexander Soule indebtedness many times in excess of our assets.” Sikorsky, however, succeeded in scraping together enough cash to start work on a new plane. Within two years, Sikorsky had built an amphibious aircraft SikorSky: (one that could take off and land on In 1929, Sikorsky moved to a new plant in Stratford, Connecticut and became a United Aircraft subsidiary. water), and his fortunes turned a corner. Igor I. Sikorsky Historical Archives, Inc. The aircraft’s performance would secure Stratford was chosen as the site for a he had honed both his craft and his Sikorsky a U.S. Navy contract and a deal new Sikorsky factory, both because of the reputation in Russia building the first-ever Still Revolutionary with Pan American Airways. new airport under construction nearby multi-engine plane, which would evolve In 1929, with more business than his and its waterfront location on Long Island into land-based bombers that saw action Long Island site could handle, Sikorsky Sound, providing the company both in World War I. accepted a $5-million buyout from the runway and waterway takeoff capabilities. The amphibious Sikorsky-built Pan Am Hartford-based United Aircraft and In July 1929, the new plant was ready Clipper became an icon at the outset of for its tenant. “An excellent, modern air - transoceanic flight, but Sikorsky did not Alexander Soule is an independent writer and Redding resident. CT Explored / 20 Igor Sikorsky in his later years. Igor I. Sikorsky Historical Archives, Inc. (c) 2014 CONNECTICUT EXPLORED. Vol.12 No.2, Spring, 2014. www.ctexplored.org CT Explored / 21 Copying and distribution of this article is not permitted without permission of the publisher. Pan American Airways Clipper , John Amendola. Sikorsky’s success with fixed-wing aircraft peaked with the S-40. New England Air Museum Sikorsky had two more things going fo r Helicopter design entails addressing six As chronicled by the Stratford-bas ed him: a patron in United Aircraft’s Wilson, major factors, according to J. Gordon Igor I. Sikorsky Historical Archives, those who had a war chest bursting with excess Leishman, professor of aerospace trials included the pilot’s spearing a 10- cash and a willingness to bet on an engineering at the University of Maryland: inch ring using a projecting tube and unproven technology, and a made-to- weight, engine power, rotor torque, “handing” the ring to Igor Sikorsky while order engineering shop with proven vibration, stability, and the basic theories hovering. In another demonstration, the success solving knotty aeronautical prob - of lift as applied to rotors. Sikorsky’s result - pilot maneuvered the helicopter to lower a lems and converting theory to working ing VS-300, a Tinker Toy-like contraption bag of eggs suspended from a rope to the prototypes. that underwent so many rebuilds workers ground, keeping the shells intact. In 1939, airplane production dominat - called it “Igor’s nightmare,” suffered from Pilot Charles “Les” Morris recalled the ed the attention of Wilson and his cohorts extreme vibration on its first flight on event in a memoir published by the at United Aircraft, which moved its September 14, 1939. That year, wearing Sikorsky Archives, providing a glimpse of Chance Vought airplane manufacturing his trademark fedora hat and seated in an his boss’s penchant for engineering detail. division to Sikorsky's Stratford plant. open cockpit, Sikorsky managed short Mr. Sikorsky hovered near, nerv - During the war years, the U.S. govern - “hops” of up to a few minutes’ duration, ously chewing at the corner of his ment ordered 10,000 F4U-Corsair fighters, with lines tethering the aircraft to the mouth. His keen gray-blue eyes overwhelming the production capabilities ground. In May 1940, the VS-300 took its flashed out from under the familiar of the rechristened Vought-Sikorsky first untethered flight, and the following gray fedora as they searched every facilities in Stratford. (Other companies January, the U.S. Army signed a contract detail of the craft to detect any sign took up the slack at other sites.) Vought- for Sikorsky to build the R-4 Hoverfly of flaw. I knew the capacity of those Sikorsky employed more than 12,000 helicopter. eyes from experience—that time people at the peak of the war years, Over six days in mid-May 1942, a pilot they had seen from twenty-five feet making it among the largest manufactur - flew the R-4 more than 750 miles from the strut that was so slightly bent foresee the short-lived era of the ing sites in New England. Stratford to Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, that I had to sight along it at close flying boat. Airports soon sprouted to Even as the Vought name was elbow - for trials with the U.S. Army. By the time range to notice it... The time when, accommodate larger, land-based planes. It ing aside that of Sikorsky, Igor was hard at it arrived, the helicopter had already without apparently looking at the was a strategic blunder deftly sidestepped work designing a helicopter. He’d secured proven itself in April trials in Stratford ship at all, he had commented on a by Sikorsky’s former United Aircraft peer his first patent in 1931 but had not further before an audience of military brass. tail-rotor blade whose tip had an Boeing, which had been spun back out as developed the idea or tested the concept eighth-of-an-inch nick in it. an independent company in the Air Mail until late in the decade. In Europe and Act of 1934. Boeing produced a dozen big Russia, several men had already pioneered Pan Am Clippers, but it also built on its helicopter designs, but in the United States experience building cross-country mail Sikorsky had a head start in terms of actu - carriers to create the first all-metal passen - al work done and the viability of his ger airliner in 1933, and in 1938, the first design. (It was still more than a year before airliner with a pressurized cabin. Douglas Arthur Young would show up at Bell Aircraft, meanwhile, won a contract in Aircraft in Buffalo, New York with blue - 1932 to build a fleet of DC-1 passenger air - Even as Sikorsky began producing its newest VS-44 flying boats in the early 1940s (including Excambian , prints for a helicopter.) planes for TWA (then Transcontinental now on view at the New England Air Museum), the era of the flying clippers was grounded by a new generation of passenger planes flying in and out of the burgeoning array of commercial airports. and Western Air, Inc., later named Trans New England Air Museum With no airplane contracts on the horizon, World Airlines). With the California Igor Sikorsky built and flew the first practical company progressing in 1936 to the wrote in a 1956 Reader's Digest article about manufacturers on a war footing, and helicopter in the United States, the VS-300. iconic DC-3, the writing was on the wall Sikorsky. “By 1938 we had a factory full of Sikorsky’s longtime fascination with the Igor I. Sikorsky Historical Archives, Inc. for Sikorsky’s flying boats. wonderful people, but no orders.” possibilities of vertical lift.