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By Stanislav Tsalyk
Culture and History
KyivWeekly - News from Ukraine in English!
September 13, 2002
There is a small three-story house tucked away in a cozy courtyard nook at
15 Yaroslaviv Val, not far uphill from the famous Golden Gates of Kyiv. This
house is special, for it was within its walls that the very first
helicopter in the world was invented, while the yard was witness to the
helicopter's first test flights. This was a l l thanks to one Igor
Sikorsky, the renowned American aviation engineer, who was born in this
house and lived there for the first 23 years of his life. Incidentally,
the founding and success of the famous Pan-American Airways company is
grounded in Sikorsky's aviation achievements.
Sikorsky was first to fly his spiralled wings into aviation history books!
The inventor-to-be was born on May 25, 1889 in the abovementioned
three-story house in Kyiv. At the time of his birth, the building was a huge
estate owned by his father Ivan Sikorsky, a doctor and psychology professor
at Kyiv University. Ihor, influenced by his father and mother (a medical
school graduate), took an interest in science, particularly aviation.
Indeed, the young Sikorsky built and flew model aircraft and became
fascinated with Leonardo da Vinci's theory of the flying screw. He was 14
when the Wright brothers made their historic flight at Kitty Hawk, North
Carolina.
He was later sent to study at the Naval College in St. Petersburg for three
years. Upon graduation, the 17-year-old young man returned to Kyiv, where
entered the Mechanical Engineering College at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute
instead of becoming a naval officer. Sikorsky simultaneously began designing
aircraft, hiring carpenters, metalworkers, and other guys like him willing
to work for peanuts. Truth be told, from time to time Ihor was forcibly
distracted from his favorite past time to invent other things. For example,
when winter set in and urban transport in Kyiv could not cope with the
frosts and winds, the creative and resourceful young student invented a
snowmobile, which he used to get around from his dacha (summer house) in the
suburbs of Kyiv to his classes at the institute.
In July 1909 Sikorsky built the first helicopter in the courtyard of his
house at 15 Yaroslaviv Val. However, the lifting power of the rotor blades
was not sufficient to make the craft airborne. In the spring of the
following year the inventor built a new helicopter and tested it again, on
the picturesque meadow behind his house. As it turned out, this was the
first helicopter in the Russian Empire to be able to lift its own weight and
take off into the sky!
Despite this achievement, Sikorsky deemed his invention unsuccessful because
the helicopter's vibration was too severe. In his frustration Sikorsky took
to building airplanes and learning to fly them at the same time. He crashed
four times in a span of two years, but did not sustain any serious injuries.
Sikorsky built his first plane at the Kurenivka airfield in Kyiv in
workshops he rented together with Fedir Bylinkin. Their first aviation
brainchild - the BiS-1, which stands for Bylinkin and Sikorsky, was created
in April 1910. Much to their dissatisfaction, BiS-1 could only jump off the
ground, but several months later the BiS-2 lifted Sikorsky into the air.
Then Bylinkin pulled out of the project and Sikorsky independently designed
the S-5 plane. Not only did he pass the pilot's test in his newest model,
but also set four Russian Empire records, performed some demo flights and
participated in military maneuvers in September 1911, proving the advantages
of his model over foreign planes the Russian army had in its fleet. At the
end of the same year, the 22-yearold inventor developed the S-6, on which he
set the world record for flight speed with two passengers on board. The S-6A
won him First Place in the Moscow Aircraft Competition in 1912.
In the period of 1909-1917, Sikorsky designed 25 types of planes and two
helicopters. He had in his portfolio the Russkiy Vityaz (Russian Knight) -
the predecessor to all modern-day multi-engine aircraft, including passenger
jets, heavy bombers and cargo transport planes. The achievements of the
young airplane designer were so impressive that Russian Emperor Nicolas II
personally climbed up the plane's boarding stairs to inspect the first
four-engine, super luxurious 4-tonne Sikorsky S-9 Grand airplane. This super
plane, in addition to a cockpit, had a salon with four upholstered chairs, a
sofa and even a toilet, nearly twenty years ahead of its time!
The violence of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 led Sikorsky to
abandon his native land for France. However, Paris was not very hospitable
to the immigrant from Kyiv - the project for which the inventor almost got
approval in the French capital was never executed.
The next and most exciting chapter of Sikorsky's life and career in aviation
began when he arrived in New York on Mar. 30, 1919. There he was faced with
two problems - the first was that the newly arrived immigrant did not know
any English and the second nobody in America knew who Igor Sikorsky was.
Going through tough times, Sikorsky got a real taste of immigrant life,
including giving private lessons in mathematics and aviation to
Russian-speaking youngsters and bean lunches for 20 cents.
Nevertheless, within a few years Sikorsky was on track and on Mar. 5, 1923
he founded the Sikorsky Aero Engineering Corporation, which he dedicated to
building the S-29A (Sikorsky type 29, America). Manufactured in 1924, this
was the world's first twinengine airplane capable of flying on one engine
and first all-metal aircraft. Later in 1929 the S-38 twinengine passenger
plane was used in pioneering Central and South American air routes by Pan-
American Airways, which was only starting at the time and later became world
renowned. With the increasing business of Pan-American Airways, their fleet
of S-38's became inadequate. Upon the company's request, the big flying boat
idea became a reality. Plasing a large order for the S-42, the world's first
twin-engine passenger production aircraft with wing flaps and the world's
first long-distance amphibian or flying boat. These amphibious planes were
the only solution for passenger transportation to cities in North and South
America that did not have airfields. As such, any passengers that needed to
get to small cities in the Americas readily used Pan Am airlines. The S-42
later pioneered commercial air flights across the Pacific and Atlantic
oceans and established an amazing ten world records that put the U.S. in
first place in terms of world aviation records!
Despite his success in pioneering the oceans, Sikorsky's heart told him to
return to the field of vertical lift. In 1939 the VS-300 became the first
single main rotor helicopter successfully produced. The VS-300 was first
flown (tethered) on Sept. 14, 1939 and the first untethered flight was on
May 13, 1940.
Testing continued and on May 6, 1941 Sikorsky piloted the VS-300 to a new
world helicopter endurance record of 1 hour, 32 minutes and 26 seconds. The
VS-300 underwent several major configuration changes until Dec. 8, 1941,
when it was flown in its final configuration; a single main lifting rotor
with full cyclic-pitch for both roll and pitch control and a single tail
rotor for both directional control and antitorque. On Oct. 7, 1943 the
VS-300 was presented to Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan.
Prior to that honor, in May, 1942, Sikorsky directed the world's attention
toward accomplishing a delivery flight of the Sikorsky XR-4 helicopter to
Wright Field. After successful delivery [See handshake photo], this became
the world's first delivery of a production helicopter. The R-4 that followed
was the first mass produced helicopter in the world and proved itself in
active service in WWII.
Sikorsky's S-42 flying boat made Pan Am oceanbound After the war, Sikorsky
Aero Engineering Corporation was renamed to Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation.
Revenues came from sales of patents for new models of the Sikorsky
helicopter. For example, the serial production of helicopters in Great
Britain started with the purchase of a patent for the S-51 (incidentally,
the first civilian rescue helicopter equipped with a threeaxis automatic
flight-control system or auto-pilot).
In the last week of November 1945, the East Coast of the United States was
besieged by a violent storm of rain, snow and exceptionally high tides, all
whipped into a frenzy by near hurricane force winds. In New York, all planes
were grounded at LaGuardia field, many of them sitting like giant ducks in
water that had washed in from Flushing Bay and made half the field a lake.
And near Fairfield, Connecticut, on a bleak and windtortured reef in Long
Island Sound, something wonderful happened.
Two men stranded on an oil barge and in peril of being washed overboard were
lifted to safety by a hoist on a Sikorsky S-51 helicopter piloted by Dimitry
"Jimmy Viner" in the first civilian rescue.
On that day, Thursday, November 29, 1945, the helicopter entered a new and
promising age.
In 1952 the S-55 became the first helicopter to fly across the Atlantic
Ocean and establish a world record. Since then, the helicopters built by
Sikorsky Aircraft have set a myriad of world records in flight speed and
distance. Even today Sikorsky Aircraft remains the leader in world
helicopter production.
Sikorsky played with helicopters until the end of his life, which came at
the age of 83 in October 1972 in his adopted town of Easton, Connecticut.
Unfortunately, Sikorsky did not survive to witness another momentous and
record-setting event in the history of mankind. This achievement in vertical
architecture came on June 26, 1976, when after 40 months of construction,
the CN Tower built by Canadian National was opened to the public on the
waterfront of downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The steel-reinforced,
lost-tension concrete structure is currently the world's tallest building
and freestanding structure at 553.33 meters (1,815 feet and 5 inches). What
the late Sikorsky did not know is that a giant Sikorsky Skycrane helicopter
named Olga and manufactured by his very own Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation
flew into Toronto to lift the 44 pieces of the antenna into place. On Apr.
2, 1975, when Olga lifted the 44th and final piece to crown the CN Tower
above the Space Deck at 1,465 feet, the structure joined the ranks of 17
other structures in the world that had previously held the title of the
World's Tallest Free-Standing Structure in the Guinness Book of World
Records and in 1996 was included on the list of the Seven Wonders of the
Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers. In his lifetime,
Sikorsky had conferred upon him over 80 awards, accolades, and diplomas,
including the John Fritz Honorary Medal for Scientific and Technical
Achievements in the sphere of fundamental and applied sciences, which was
previously only awarded to Orville Wright in the sphere of aviation. It
remains only to recall that Sikorsky's spectacular achievements in aviation
out on the airfields near 315 Morehouse Rd. in Easton, Connecticut can be
traced all the way back to the courtyard of Yaroslaviv Val 15 in Kyiv,
Ukraine. God bless his soul in the sky!
Helicopter: an aircraft whose support in the air is derived chiefly from the
aerodynamic forces acting on or more rotors turning about substantially
vertical axes
Etymology: French helicoptere, from helico- (from Greek helikohelic- from
helik-, helix, spiral) + ptere (from Greek pteron wing)
Literally: spiral or helical wings
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