EARLY RUSSIAN AVIATION
In the second public flight of an airplane in Russia, French aviator Albert Guillaud pilots a Bl´eriot XI monoplane at the Kolomianskoe aerodrome in St. Petersburg, November 1909.
Defined as the science and practice of powered, heavier-than-air flight, aviation made its first great strides in the early twentieth century, after decades of flights in lighter-than-air gliders and balloons had been achieved in several countries. As acknowledged in reference books worldwide, including those of Soviet Russia, the first successful flight of an airplane was performed one hundred years ago by Orville and Wilbur Wright on December 17, 1903. Throughout the nineteenth century, however, designers and engineers in many countries were working on plans for powered human flight.
In Russia, Sergi Alexeyevich Chaplygin (1869–1942) and Nikolai Yegorovich Zhukovsky (1847–1921) made major contributions in their study of aerodynamics, founding a world-famous school in St. Petersburg, Russia. In 1881, Alexander Fyodorovich Mozhaisky (1823–1890) received a patent for a propeller-driven, table-shaped airplane powered by a steam engine, which crashed on takeoff in 1885.
The heady excitement generated by word of Bl´eriot’s flight was transformed into tangible reality for Russian citizens in the fall of 1909. Eager to display the capabilities of their airplanes in the months that followed the Channel crossing, French aviators undertook public demonstrations across the European continent. Less than eight weeks after French spectators flocked to bid farewell to Bl´eriot, Russian audiences gathered to greet the arrival of western pilots and their flying machines. On 15 September 1909, the inhabitants of Moscow saw for themselves the miracle of heavier-than-air flight as French aviator Georges Legagneux organized a public display of his Voisin biplane. Thousands of curious Muscovites flocked to Khodynka field just outside the city to witness this first-ever flight of an airplane in Russia.
Although none of the five flights made by Legagneux on the 15th lasted more than a few minutes, his demonstration was a great success. He repeated his performance with an encore presentation on the 19th. Subsequent demonstrations in St. Petersburg and Odessa attracted even greater numbers of spectators and generated further excitement.
While French fliers entertained Russian audiences with feats of aerial daring, the Russian Ministry of War moved to establish a national aviation program. On returning from France, Grand Duke Aleksandr Mikhailovich assumed a leading role in mobilizing support for Russian aviation. As honorary chairman of the state’s Special Committee for the Strengthening of the Military Fleet by Means of Voluntary Subscriptions, the grand duke had been instrumental in raising donations to rebuild the nation’s navy following the disastrous losses of the Russo–Japanese War (1904–5). Hoping to capitalize on the work of the existing Committee, the grand duke petitioned Tsar Nicholas II for permission to transfer funds from the Naval Committee to a newly formed Special Committee for the Establishment of the Air-Fleet. He also requested that the tsar approve the circulation of a series of decrees intended to mobilize support for aviation construction.
Overcoming the scepticism of some members of the Russian military hierarchy, the grand duke secured the tsar’s approval. On 6 February 1910, Nicholas announced that 900,000 rubles of the Naval Committee’s treasury be used for the development of a military air wing. The tsar subsequently proclaimed the inauguration of a nationwide voluntary subscription to support the Committee’s goals of training military officers to fly airplanes and establishing a reserve of fully equipped aircraft for military use. In March, following the proclamation of the voluntary subscription, the Committee for the Establishment of the Air-Fleet sent six military officers to France, where two each enrolled in the pilot schools run by Henri Farman, Louis Bl´eriot, and the Antoinette Company. Six enlisted men, who were to be trained as airplane mechanics, accompanied the officers.
In addition to preparing cadres to serve in the future air corps, the Committee moved to secure necessary equipment and infrastructure. Concomitant with the decision to send officers abroad for training, the Committee placed orders with leading French airplane manufacturers for the delivery of eleven airplanes by June 1910. The Committee also established training facilities in Russia. At Gatchina, southwest of St. Petersburg, hangars were constructed to house the military’s aircraft. A flight school, to be run by the French-trained Russian officers, was also established on the grounds. Unfortunately, the site proved to be a poor location. Owing to harsh winters and the region’s swampy soil, training flights were limited to the summer months. As a result, having already invested a considerable sum of money to construct the Gatchina facilities, the Committee was compelled to find a new site capable of sustaining year-round training. A more temperate location in the Crimean city of Sevastopol’ was chosen, and, following a delay in the arrival of the airplanes ordered from France, training began there in November 1910.
The activity of the nation’s military authorities was paralleled by that of private Russians who enlisted in the battle for the skies through participation in the ever-increasing number of aeronautical clubs, circles, and societies that blossomed in the wake of the Channel crossing. By the end of 1909, such major cities as St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa, and Kiev boasted their own private aeronautical organizations. Similar to automobile societies, literacy circles, and other voluntary associations, air clubs provided private enthusiasts with a forum for pursuing a common interest while facilitating the public assembly of civic-minded citizens.21 In addition, organizations like the Moscow Society of Aeronautics and the Odessa Aero-Club produced regular journals for the nation’s reading public, and, as interest increased and resources grew, they established flight schools of their own, turning the possibility of flight into a daily reality for those wealthy enough to afford the expensive training. Through generating interest in aviation and training private citizens to master mechanical flight, aeronautical clubs hoped to create a consumer demand for airplanes, thereby subsidizing the growth of the few Russian factories that could reproduce the Farman and Bl´eriot models popular in Europe. By the fall of 1910, Russia possessed three factories capable of manufacturing airplane chassis and one enterprise equipped to build aircraft motors. The factories were the “First Russian Association of Aeronautics” (St. Petersburg), the “Russo–Balt Carriage Factory” (St. Petersburg), the company “Aviata” (Warsaw), and the “Motor” factory (Riga).
Russians’ passion for flight intensified during the early spring of 1910 as newspapers reported on an initial landmark in the nation’s infant aviation program: the first exhibition of an airplane in Russia piloted by a native Russian. Undertaken in the Black Sea port of Odessa on 8 March before a select crowd of citizens and military representatives, Mikhail Efimov’s aeronautical display aboard a Farman IV biplane was heralded as a transcendent event by the capital’s journalists. Although the longest of his five demonstration flights lasted only twenty minutes, the courageous Russian aviator was credited with having “already surpassed the skill of his instructor,” the pioneering French aviator and airplane designer Henri Farman.
According to one delirious reporter, Efimov’s accomplishment had proven beyond doubt that “Russia was now poised to assume the world’s lead in the subjugation of the heavens.” Like fellow countrymen Sergei Utochkin, Nikolai Popov, and the circus strongman-turned-pilot Ivan Zaikin, Efimov was a prominent early member of the emerging ranks of “sportsmen–aviators” who had honed their skills in French aviation schools before setting out to earn a living as flight instructors or participants in the Continent’s burgeoning aerial shows and competitions. A former locksmith and telegrapher, Efimov had borrowed money to finance flight training in Paris. Earlier in the year he had scored a spectacular coup when he set a new world record for altitude on a flight with a passenger. In keeping with all early aviation records, Efimov’s mark was rapidly eclipsed. Still, it earned him considerable fame at home as an exemplar of Russian bravado and skill in the new art of flying.
Popular excitement over Russia’s very own aviator–heroes and the airplane in general was quickly manifested in the everyday customs and habits of the Empire’s citizens. A reflection of producers’ new efforts to market modernity to the growing ranks of the Russian middle class, “Bl´eriot” cigarettes, “Aeroclub” matches, “Aviator” candies, and “Aeronautics” chocolates appeared as brand names offered for sale to air-minded consumers. Hoping to inspire interest in the development of aeronautics among Russia’s far-flung inhabitants, the journal Vestnik vozdukhoplavaniia [Herald of Aeronautics] and the First Russian Association of Aeronautics jointly sponsored a mobile exposition that embarked on a fourteen-month, fifty-city tour of European and Asian Russia. Journeying as far as the Far Eastern port city of Vladivostok to “broaden provincial awareness of the successes of aeronautics,” the exposition brought aviation to the nation’s hinterlands. Meanwhile, in Russia’s urban centers, cultured residents demonstrated their own fascination with the airplane by hosting fashionable “aeronautical balls” (complete with floating dirigibles and plane-shaped confetti) for air-conscious party goers. Others satiated their curiosity by flocking to the nation’s new cinema halls. Featuring documentaries filmed from the air as well as fictional reels bearing such titles as Experiments of the Aviator-Genius and Air Pirates, cinema helped ensure the rapid dissemination of the airplane’s image to audiences throughout the Empire. By 1910 aviation had taken so rapid and complete a hold on the public’s imagination that one leading journal could claim “interest in the question of aviation has spread like fire throughout the whole [of Russia] and throughout all classes of society . . . it has become fashionable and, as such, knowledge of [aviation] is now essential to every person who would consider himself to be a ‘middling intelligent’ [srednii intelligent].” To meet the growing demand of the “aeronautical intelligentsia,” leading publishers produced countless histories and studies of flight, while major newspapers sponsored special brochures and supplements devoted to aeronautics. Aviation had become so popular that “the windows of almost every bookstore were peppered with the most enticing titles and covers and new books on flight appeared every week. . . .”
From 1909 to 1914, Russia made significant strides in airplane design. Progress included several successful test flights of innovative aircraft. For instance, the Russian aircraft designer Yakov M. Gakkel (1874–1945) achieved worldwide attention among aviation experts for developing a single-seat, motor-powered biplane. In 1910, Boris N. Yuriev (1889–1957) designed one of the world’s first helicopters, which were known in aviation’s earlier days as autogyros.
A major breakthrough in world aviation occurred in 1913, with the development of the four motored heavy Russian aircraft, the Ilya Muromets. This huge airplane far outstripped all other planes of its time for its size, range, and load-carrying capability. Russian ice- and hydroplane development was also outstanding in the years 1915 and 1916. One of the world famous Russian aircraft designers of this period, and the one who built the Muromets, was Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky (1889–1972), who emigrated to the United States in 1919 and established a well-known aircraft factory there in 1923.
Before and during World War I, Russian military aircraft technical schools and aviation clubs blossomed. In the war, the Russians deployed thirty-nine air squadrons totaling 263 aircraft, all bearing a distinctive circular white, blue, and red insignia on their wings. With the coming to power of the Communists in late 1917, Lenin and Stalin, who stressed the importance of military production and an offensive strategy, strongly supported the development of the Red Air Force. Civilian planes, too, were built, for what became the world’s largest airline, Aeroflot.
Source:
Dictatorship of the Air By Dr. Scott W. Palmer
In Russia, Sergi Alexeyevich Chaplygin (1869–1942) and Nikolai Yegorovich Zhukovsky (1847–1921) made major contributions in their study of aerodynamics, founding a world-famous school in St. Petersburg, Russia. In 1881, Alexander Fyodorovich Mozhaisky (1823–1890) received a patent for a propeller-driven, table-shaped airplane powered by a steam engine, which crashed on takeoff in 1885.
The heady excitement generated by word of Bl´eriot’s flight was transformed into tangible reality for Russian citizens in the fall of 1909. Eager to display the capabilities of their airplanes in the months that followed the Channel crossing, French aviators undertook public demonstrations across the European continent. Less than eight weeks after French spectators flocked to bid farewell to Bl´eriot, Russian audiences gathered to greet the arrival of western pilots and their flying machines. On 15 September 1909, the inhabitants of Moscow saw for themselves the miracle of heavier-than-air flight as French aviator Georges Legagneux organized a public display of his Voisin biplane. Thousands of curious Muscovites flocked to Khodynka field just outside the city to witness this first-ever flight of an airplane in Russia.
Although none of the five flights made by Legagneux on the 15th lasted more than a few minutes, his demonstration was a great success. He repeated his performance with an encore presentation on the 19th. Subsequent demonstrations in St. Petersburg and Odessa attracted even greater numbers of spectators and generated further excitement.
While French fliers entertained Russian audiences with feats of aerial daring, the Russian Ministry of War moved to establish a national aviation program. On returning from France, Grand Duke Aleksandr Mikhailovich assumed a leading role in mobilizing support for Russian aviation. As honorary chairman of the state’s Special Committee for the Strengthening of the Military Fleet by Means of Voluntary Subscriptions, the grand duke had been instrumental in raising donations to rebuild the nation’s navy following the disastrous losses of the Russo–Japanese War (1904–5). Hoping to capitalize on the work of the existing Committee, the grand duke petitioned Tsar Nicholas II for permission to transfer funds from the Naval Committee to a newly formed Special Committee for the Establishment of the Air-Fleet. He also requested that the tsar approve the circulation of a series of decrees intended to mobilize support for aviation construction.
Overcoming the scepticism of some members of the Russian military hierarchy, the grand duke secured the tsar’s approval. On 6 February 1910, Nicholas announced that 900,000 rubles of the Naval Committee’s treasury be used for the development of a military air wing. The tsar subsequently proclaimed the inauguration of a nationwide voluntary subscription to support the Committee’s goals of training military officers to fly airplanes and establishing a reserve of fully equipped aircraft for military use. In March, following the proclamation of the voluntary subscription, the Committee for the Establishment of the Air-Fleet sent six military officers to France, where two each enrolled in the pilot schools run by Henri Farman, Louis Bl´eriot, and the Antoinette Company. Six enlisted men, who were to be trained as airplane mechanics, accompanied the officers.
In addition to preparing cadres to serve in the future air corps, the Committee moved to secure necessary equipment and infrastructure. Concomitant with the decision to send officers abroad for training, the Committee placed orders with leading French airplane manufacturers for the delivery of eleven airplanes by June 1910. The Committee also established training facilities in Russia. At Gatchina, southwest of St. Petersburg, hangars were constructed to house the military’s aircraft. A flight school, to be run by the French-trained Russian officers, was also established on the grounds. Unfortunately, the site proved to be a poor location. Owing to harsh winters and the region’s swampy soil, training flights were limited to the summer months. As a result, having already invested a considerable sum of money to construct the Gatchina facilities, the Committee was compelled to find a new site capable of sustaining year-round training. A more temperate location in the Crimean city of Sevastopol’ was chosen, and, following a delay in the arrival of the airplanes ordered from France, training began there in November 1910.
The activity of the nation’s military authorities was paralleled by that of private Russians who enlisted in the battle for the skies through participation in the ever-increasing number of aeronautical clubs, circles, and societies that blossomed in the wake of the Channel crossing. By the end of 1909, such major cities as St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa, and Kiev boasted their own private aeronautical organizations. Similar to automobile societies, literacy circles, and other voluntary associations, air clubs provided private enthusiasts with a forum for pursuing a common interest while facilitating the public assembly of civic-minded citizens.21 In addition, organizations like the Moscow Society of Aeronautics and the Odessa Aero-Club produced regular journals for the nation’s reading public, and, as interest increased and resources grew, they established flight schools of their own, turning the possibility of flight into a daily reality for those wealthy enough to afford the expensive training. Through generating interest in aviation and training private citizens to master mechanical flight, aeronautical clubs hoped to create a consumer demand for airplanes, thereby subsidizing the growth of the few Russian factories that could reproduce the Farman and Bl´eriot models popular in Europe. By the fall of 1910, Russia possessed three factories capable of manufacturing airplane chassis and one enterprise equipped to build aircraft motors. The factories were the “First Russian Association of Aeronautics” (St. Petersburg), the “Russo–Balt Carriage Factory” (St. Petersburg), the company “Aviata” (Warsaw), and the “Motor” factory (Riga).
Russians’ passion for flight intensified during the early spring of 1910 as newspapers reported on an initial landmark in the nation’s infant aviation program: the first exhibition of an airplane in Russia piloted by a native Russian. Undertaken in the Black Sea port of Odessa on 8 March before a select crowd of citizens and military representatives, Mikhail Efimov’s aeronautical display aboard a Farman IV biplane was heralded as a transcendent event by the capital’s journalists. Although the longest of his five demonstration flights lasted only twenty minutes, the courageous Russian aviator was credited with having “already surpassed the skill of his instructor,” the pioneering French aviator and airplane designer Henri Farman.
According to one delirious reporter, Efimov’s accomplishment had proven beyond doubt that “Russia was now poised to assume the world’s lead in the subjugation of the heavens.” Like fellow countrymen Sergei Utochkin, Nikolai Popov, and the circus strongman-turned-pilot Ivan Zaikin, Efimov was a prominent early member of the emerging ranks of “sportsmen–aviators” who had honed their skills in French aviation schools before setting out to earn a living as flight instructors or participants in the Continent’s burgeoning aerial shows and competitions. A former locksmith and telegrapher, Efimov had borrowed money to finance flight training in Paris. Earlier in the year he had scored a spectacular coup when he set a new world record for altitude on a flight with a passenger. In keeping with all early aviation records, Efimov’s mark was rapidly eclipsed. Still, it earned him considerable fame at home as an exemplar of Russian bravado and skill in the new art of flying.
Popular excitement over Russia’s very own aviator–heroes and the airplane in general was quickly manifested in the everyday customs and habits of the Empire’s citizens. A reflection of producers’ new efforts to market modernity to the growing ranks of the Russian middle class, “Bl´eriot” cigarettes, “Aeroclub” matches, “Aviator” candies, and “Aeronautics” chocolates appeared as brand names offered for sale to air-minded consumers. Hoping to inspire interest in the development of aeronautics among Russia’s far-flung inhabitants, the journal Vestnik vozdukhoplavaniia [Herald of Aeronautics] and the First Russian Association of Aeronautics jointly sponsored a mobile exposition that embarked on a fourteen-month, fifty-city tour of European and Asian Russia. Journeying as far as the Far Eastern port city of Vladivostok to “broaden provincial awareness of the successes of aeronautics,” the exposition brought aviation to the nation’s hinterlands. Meanwhile, in Russia’s urban centers, cultured residents demonstrated their own fascination with the airplane by hosting fashionable “aeronautical balls” (complete with floating dirigibles and plane-shaped confetti) for air-conscious party goers. Others satiated their curiosity by flocking to the nation’s new cinema halls. Featuring documentaries filmed from the air as well as fictional reels bearing such titles as Experiments of the Aviator-Genius and Air Pirates, cinema helped ensure the rapid dissemination of the airplane’s image to audiences throughout the Empire. By 1910 aviation had taken so rapid and complete a hold on the public’s imagination that one leading journal could claim “interest in the question of aviation has spread like fire throughout the whole [of Russia] and throughout all classes of society . . . it has become fashionable and, as such, knowledge of [aviation] is now essential to every person who would consider himself to be a ‘middling intelligent’ [srednii intelligent].” To meet the growing demand of the “aeronautical intelligentsia,” leading publishers produced countless histories and studies of flight, while major newspapers sponsored special brochures and supplements devoted to aeronautics. Aviation had become so popular that “the windows of almost every bookstore were peppered with the most enticing titles and covers and new books on flight appeared every week. . . .”
From 1909 to 1914, Russia made significant strides in airplane design. Progress included several successful test flights of innovative aircraft. For instance, the Russian aircraft designer Yakov M. Gakkel (1874–1945) achieved worldwide attention among aviation experts for developing a single-seat, motor-powered biplane. In 1910, Boris N. Yuriev (1889–1957) designed one of the world’s first helicopters, which were known in aviation’s earlier days as autogyros.
A major breakthrough in world aviation occurred in 1913, with the development of the four motored heavy Russian aircraft, the Ilya Muromets. This huge airplane far outstripped all other planes of its time for its size, range, and load-carrying capability. Russian ice- and hydroplane development was also outstanding in the years 1915 and 1916. One of the world famous Russian aircraft designers of this period, and the one who built the Muromets, was Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky (1889–1972), who emigrated to the United States in 1919 and established a well-known aircraft factory there in 1923.
Before and during World War I, Russian military aircraft technical schools and aviation clubs blossomed. In the war, the Russians deployed thirty-nine air squadrons totaling 263 aircraft, all bearing a distinctive circular white, blue, and red insignia on their wings. With the coming to power of the Communists in late 1917, Lenin and Stalin, who stressed the importance of military production and an offensive strategy, strongly supported the development of the Red Air Force. Civilian planes, too, were built, for what became the world’s largest airline, Aeroflot.
Source:
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