As a Ukrainian, Igor Sikorsky founded a company in the US worth $ 7,1 billion

Igor Sikorsky left for the USA at the beginning of the 20th century. There, together with a group of enthusiasts, he created his own aircraft manufacturing company, Sikorsky Aero Engineering Corporation. After 100 years after its foundation, the Ukrainian company was valued at $ 7,1 billion.

Monument to Igor Sikorsky in Kiev, on the campus of the Kiev Polytechnic Institute. Photo: Depositphotos

Редакция MC Today tells the story of the legendary Ukrainian.

Once Sikorsky was asked: “Do you know when helicopters will fly faster than airplanes?” “Yes, I know,” he responded. “Never!” “Do you know when a helicopter will be able to transport more people than a plane?” Was another question. “Yes, I know,” answered Sikorsky. “Never!”

Despite this, Igor Sikorsky felt that a vertically taking off vehicle could serve to save people. His main task was to make this dream a reality.

Igor Sikorsky in the 1914 year. Photo by Karl Bulla. Source: Wikimedia Commons, public domain

First helicopter

Igor Sikorsky was born in 1889 year in Kiev. As a child, his mother told him about Leonardo da Vinci and about the idea of ​​creating a flying machine that was supposed to take off into the air under the influence of a powerful screw without any acceleration. His first primitive helicopter, Igor Sikorsky, began building at the age of 20 years, while a student at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute.

In the backyard of his father's house, the guy pulled off the details for the future flying machine. Then the helicopter did not take off. A year later, he created a second helicopter. Again, did not take off: not enough engine power. Sikorsky temporarily put off work on the helicopters and set about creating an airplane.

Already in 1913, he created the first four-engined Russian Knight aircraft. Then - the passenger plane “Ilya Muromets”, on which he personally flew from St. Petersburg to Kiev and back with three passengers on board. It was the spring of 1914.

Just two years later, with the advent of the Bolsheviks to power, the aviation industry in the country began to be turned off. And Igor Sikorsky himself was under the threat of arrest and repression. Aviakonstruktor was forced to leave their homeland. He never came back here again.

Aviators Sikorsky, Genner and Kaulbars aboard the Russian Knight aircraft, 1913 year. Photo by Karl Bulla. Source: Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Flight to america

In March, 1919, with several hundred dollars in his pocket, Igor Sikorsky arrived in America. He settled in the Manhattan area. Got a job at night school for immigrants like him. He taught mathematics, read lectures on aviation. In the same school, he met his future wife Elizabeth Semenova.

Igor Sikorsky founded his company four years after his arrival in America. Behind the big name Sikorsky Aero Engineering Corporation was a small group of enthusiasts, former immigrants, who volunteered to help Sikorsky design a new aircraft.

Details were collected in landfills. In the course were old car bumpers, corners of metal beds. The workshop was organized on Long Island, on a chicken farm that belonged to one of the former Russian pilots. They lived there too.

Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky on the front platform of the first copy of Ilya Muromets, winter 1913 — 14 Source: Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Once a Russian composer Sergey Rakhmaninov appeared on the farm.

“He was very interested in his father’s work. Rakhmaninov walked around, looked at the plane, talked with Sikorsky for a few minutes, and then said: “I trust you” and wrote a check for five thousand dollars, ”one of Sikorsky’s sons shares his memories.

A few weeks later, Rakhmaninov accepted the position of vice president of the company.

With this help, enthusiasts managed to remove a more comfortable working space - a real hangar at a nearby airfield.

Igor Sikorsky finished building his first plane in America in 1924. A few years later, the device was sold to a Hollywood film studio, which smashed it in one of the scenes of a film about the First World War.

In 1929, the company moved to Stratford. There was a small airport and a strait, which made it possible to test airplanes, including on the water. In July of the same year, the company became part of the United Aircraft and Transport Corporation (now United Technologies Corporation).

Igor Sikorsky. Photo: SDASM Archives / Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Tests and failures

At first, Igor Sikorsky focused on the development of multi-engined aircraft, and then the amphibian. But at the end of 1930, the demand for amphibious aircraft fell, and United Aircraft teamed up with Vought Aircraft.

Sikorsky used this opportunity to begin work on the development of the helicopter. Before Sikorsky, designers believed that it was impossible to build a vertically flying machine with one screw. Sikorsky objected: two screws at the helicopter - like two women in the kitchen.

In 1939, he flew his first single-rotor helicopter.

“I not only developed, but also tested helicopters myself, when they began to acquire a visible outline,” said Sikorsky.

Eyewitnesses recall that the designer always conducted tests in a business suit and hat. During one of the tests the helicopter overturned.

Sikorsky miraculously survived. Screw did not even hurt his hat. Nowadays, this famous hat is in the former office of Igor Sikorsky and serves as a kind of talisman for good luck for the pilots.

Igor Sikorsky hoped that over time, helicopters will become the same familiar machine as cars. By his order, even a commercial was filmed, in which the husband arrives home from work on a helicopter. His wife meets him and asks him to fly to the grocery store. For their transportation by helicopter there is even a basket.

In each family, the helicopter did not survive because of its high cost. But these aircraft became one of the main means of transportation for the White House and the Queen of England. They also fulfill the main task, for the sake of Sikorsky and he worked, helicopters save lives. Designer's dream really came true. Only in the 20th century more than 1 million people were saved by single-rotor helicopters.

Фото: Depositphotos

Igor Sikorsky retired in 65 years.

“The only thing that has changed is that he began to come to work an hour later,” says his son Nikolay.

Igor Sikorsky died in 1972 year. As early as November 2015, the company was sold to Lockheed Martin, an American military-industrial corporation. The amount of the transaction amounted to 7,1 billion dollars.

One of the last major orders of the company Sikorsky was a contract with the US Department of Defense, signed last summer. The deal involves the supply of 257 combat and evacuation helicopters worth $ 3,8 billion.

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