Igor Sikorsky

Early life

Igor Sikorsky was born in Kiev, Russian Empire (now Kyiv, Ukraine), on May 25, 1889. He was the youngest of five children. His father, Ivan Alexeevich Sikorsky, was a professor of psychology in Saint Vladimir University (now Taras Shevchenko National University), a psychiatrist with an international reputation, and an ardent Russian nationalist. Igor Sikorsky was an Orthodox Christian.

When questioned regarding his roots, he would answer: 'My family is of Russian origin. My grandfather and other ancestors from the time of Peter the Great were Russian Orthodox priests.' Sikorsky's mother, Mariya Stefanovna Sikorskaya (née Temryuk-Cherkasova), was a physician who did not work professionally. While homeschooling young Igor, she gave him a great love for art, especially in the life and work of Leonardo da Vinci, and the stories of Jules Verne.

In 1900, at age 11, he accompanied his father to Germany and through conversations with his father became interested in natural sciences. After returning home, Sikorsky began to experiment with model flying machines, and by age 12, he had made a small rubber band-powered helicopter. Sikorsky began studying at the Saint Petersburg Maritime Cadet Corps in 1903 at the age of 14. In 1906, he determined that his future lay in engineering, so he resigned from the academy, despite his satisfactory standing, and left the Russian Empire to study in Paris.

He returned to the Russian Empire in 1907, enrolling at the Mechanical College of the Kiev Polytechnic Institute. After the academic year, Sikorsky again accompanied his father to Germany in the summer of 1908, where he learned of the accomplishments of the Wright brothers' Flyer and Ferdinand von Zeppelin's rigid airships. Sikorsky later said about this event: 'Within twenty-four hours, I decided to change my life's work. I would study aviation.'

Aircraft designer

With financial backing from his sister Olga, Sikorsky returned to Paris, the center of the aviation world at the time, in 1909. Sikorsky met with aviation pioneers, to ask them questions about aircraft and flying. In May 1909, he returned to Russia and began designing his first helicopter, which he began testing in July 1909. Powered by a 25 hp Anzani engine, the helicopter used an upper and lower two-bladed lifting propeller that rotated in opposite directions at 160 rpm.

The machine could only generate about 357 lbf of lift, not enough to lift the approximate 457 lb weight. He finally disassembled the aircraft in October 1909, after he determined that he could learn nothing more from the design. In February 1910, he undertook to build a second helicopter, and his first airplane. By the spring, helicopter No. 2 could lift its weight of 400 lb, but not the additional weight of an operator.

Sikorsky's first aircraft of his own design, the S-1, used a 15 hp Anzani 3-cylinder fan engine in a pusher configuration, that could not lift the aircraft. His second design, called the S-2, was powered by a 25 hp Anzani engine in a tractor configuration and first flew on June 3, 1910, at a height of a few feet. On June 30, after some modifications, Sikorsky reached an altitude of 'sixty or eighty feet' before the S-2 stalled and was completely destroyed when it crashed in a ravine.

Later, Sikorsky built the two-seat S-5, his first design not based on other European aircraft. Flying this original aircraft, Sikorsky earned his pilot license; Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) license No. 64 issued by the Imperial Aero Club of Russia in 1911. During a demonstration of the S-5, the engine quit and Sikorsky was forced to make a crash landing to avoid a wall. It was discovered that a mosquito in the gasoline had been drawn into the carburetor, starving the engine of fuel.

The close call convinced Sikorsky of the need for an aircraft that could continue flying if it lost an engine. His next aircraft, the S-6 held three passengers and was selected as the winner of the Moscow aircraft exhibition held by the Russian Army in February 1912. In early 1912, Igor Sikorsky became Chief Engineer of the aircraft division for the Russian Baltic Railroad Car Works (Russko-Baltiisky Vagonny Zavod or R-BVZ) in Saint Petersburg. His work at R-BVZ included the construction of the first four-cylinder aircraft, the S-21 Russky Vityaz, which he initially called Le Grand when fitted with just two engines, then the Bolshoi Baltisky (The Great Baltic) when fitted with four engines in two 'push-pull' pairs, and finally Russki Vityaz in its four engine all tractor-engined configuration.

He also served as the test pilot for its first flight on May 13, 1913. In recognition of his accomplishment, he was awarded an honorary degree in engineering from Saint Petersburg Polytechnical Institute in 1914. Sikorsky took the experience from building the Russky Vityaz to develop the S-22 Ilya Muromets airliner. Due to the outbreak of World War I, he redesigned it as the world's first four-engined bomber, for which he was decorated with the Order of St. Vladimir.

Life in the United States

After emigrating to the United States in 1919 because of the Russian Revolution, Sikorsky founded the Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation in 1923 and developed the first of Pan American Airways' ocean-crossing flying boats in the 1930s, including the Sikorsky S-42 'Flying Clipper'. In 1939, Sikorsky designed and flew the Vought-Sikorsky VS-300, the first viable American helicopter, which pioneered the single main rotor and a single antitorque tail rotor configuration used by most helicopters today. Sikorsky modified the design into the Sikorsky R-4, which became the world's first mass-produced helicopter in 1942.

Legacy

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