Igor Sikorsky
In the cockpit.
Igor Sikorsky at the controls of his BIS-1. The first aircraft of trio Bylinkin, Iordan, Sikorsky, so BIS. Powered by two cylinder 15hp Anzani engine. Used for taxi tests (April 1910) but was too underpowered to fly. Direct predecessor of BIS No.2.
Date: Born on May 25, 1889, in Kiev, Russia; died on October 26, 1972, in Easton, Connecticut
Definition: Russian-American aeronautical engineer, aircraft manufacturer, and inventor best known for
developing the helicopter.
Significance: Sikorsky’s introduction of controlled-pitch rotor blades was instrumental to the development of the modern helicopter.
Pioneer aviator and innovative designer of fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft. The son of a pre-Freudian psychiatrist in Kiev in imperial Russia, Igor I. Sikorsky studied math and engineering at the Russian Naval Academy in St. Petersburg and the Polytechnic Institute of Kiev. Science fiction by Jules Verne and European flight demonstrations by Wilbur Wright sparked his interest in an aviation career.
Sikorsky traveled to Paris in 1909 and learned aeronautical principles from French pioneers such as Louis Blériot. In late 1909, he returned to Paris, then the aeronautical center of Europe, to learn about the fledgling science. While there, he became acquainted with some of the men who would become well known in the field of aviation. Against their advice, Sikorsky decided to build a helicopter. He purchased a 25-horsepower (18.6-kilowatt) Anzani engine and returned to Kiev to begin building a rotary-wing aircraft.
The helicopter failed, as did its successor due to a lack of power and understanding of the aerodynamics of vertical flight. Undeterred, Sikorsky turned his attention to fixed-wing aircraft. After his two unsuccessful attempts to build helicopters before designing the first of his Winged-S airplanes.
His first fixed-wing plane, the S-1 failed, because its 15-horsepower (11.2-kilowatt) engine was inadequate. His second plane, the S-2 was a success. In 1911, he set a record by flying for thirty minutes at 70 miles per hour in the S-5, a plane he had designed himself. The S-5, won him international recognition. With its 50-horsepower (37.3-kilowatt) engine, he could stay aloft for more than an hour, reach heights of 1,500 feet (457 meters), and make short trips. He also earned license number 64 from the Federation Aéronautique Internationale. His S-6-A received the highest award at the 1912 Moscow Aviation Exhibition, and later that year, won first prize in the military competition at Petrograd. Sikorsky also began supplying aircraft to the Russian army.
His triumph led to financial rewards and a contract with the Russo-Baltic Wagon Company, which subsidized his design (1912-1913) of a four-engine behemoth, the Grand. "Le Grand," featured innovations such as an enclosed cabin, a lavatory, upholstered chairs, and an exterior catwalk atop the fuselage where passengers could get some fresh air. Its successor, the "Ilya Muromets," broke world records and flew in the summer of 1914 on a 1,500-mile round-trip between St. Petersburg and Kiev. The outbreak of World War I overshadowed the spectacular cross-country flight. Nevertheless, Russia's military appreciated Sikorsky's accomplishment and ordered the "Ilya Muromets" into production as the world's first four-engine bomber-reconnaissance aircraft.
The 1917 Russian Revolution interrupted Sikorsky's career as well as Russia's participation in the war. Bolshevik ascension to power during the revolution's second phase prompted Sikorsky to flee Soviet Russia and travel first to France (1918) and then to the United States (1919).
In France he was commissioned to build a bomber for Allied service. But the war ended and Sikorsky, after searching in vain for a position in French aviation, immigrated to the United States in 1919.
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