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1939 – In the 1930s Igor Sikorsky (d.1972) turned his attention again to helicopter design and on this day flew the VS-300 on its first test flight.
Sikorsky, scientist, engineer, pilot and businessman, was a pioneer in aircraft design who is best known for his successful development of the helicopter. He was fascinated with flight even as a child in Russia, and a 1908 meeting with the Wright brothers determined the course of his life in aviation. After two early helicopter designs failed, Sikorsky turned his attention to fixed-wing aircraft. By 1913 he had developed the Il’ya Muromets, four-engine passenger aircraft that were converted to bombers for use in WWI.
The Bolshevik Revolution forced Sikorsky and his family to emigrate to America in 1919 where he established the Sikorsky Aero Engineering Corporation in New York. Over the next 20 years, Sikorsky’s company built passenger planes and flying boats, including the S-40 American Clipper that was used to open new air routes across the Pacific.
https://thisdayinusmilhist.wordpress.com/2014/09/14/september-14/
Sikorsky, scientist, engineer, pilot and businessman, was a pioneer in aircraft design who is best known for his successful development of the helicopter. He was fascinated with flight even as a child in Russia, and a 1908 meeting with the Wright brothers determined the course of his life in aviation. After two early helicopter designs failed, Sikorsky turned his attention to fixed-wing aircraft. By 1913 he had developed the Il’ya Muromets, four-engine passenger aircraft that were converted to bombers for use in WWI.
The Bolshevik Revolution forced Sikorsky and his family to emigrate to America in 1919 where he established the Sikorsky Aero Engineering Corporation in New York. Over the next 20 years, Sikorsky’s company built passenger planes and flying boats, including the S-40 American Clipper that was used to open new air routes across the Pacific.
https://thisdayinusmilhist.wordpress.com/2014/09/14/september-14/
Helicopters
Aviation
Military History
Posted >1 y ago
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The beginnings of glorious vertical envelopment as a combat doctrine. Or at least the tech behind it. Wonder what old man Sikorsky, or the Wright brothers for that matter, would think of tilt rotor aircraft? I know one of the Wright brothers lived to see the sound barrier broken. Just goes to show how fast we develop as a species technology wise. The first human flight to jet engines, breaking the sound barrier and more importantly, mass commercial air travel, happened in under a century.
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