Igor Sikorsky: From S-42 Clipper Flying Boats to the VS-300 Helicopter

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

Igor Sikorsky was born in Kiev in the Russian Empire, where he designed aircraft from the S-1 through the S-27 before the Russian Revolution drove him to the United States. On March 5, 1923 he founded the Sikorsky Aero Engineering Corporation near Roosevelt Field in New York. His projected S-28, a four-engine, 32-passenger biplane, never left the drawing board, so his first American aircraft was the S-29A, a twin-engine cargo biplane. He then bet on amphibious aircraft that could use harbors, lakes and coastlines as runways. The eight-seat S-38, built from 1928 to 1933, helped airlines such as Pan Am set up regular routes, and in 1929 the company reorganized with $5 million in capital as Sikorsky Aviation Corporation, moved to Stratford, Connecticut, and joined United Aircraft and Transport. The 28-passenger S-40 and the four-engine S-42 Clipper followed.

By the late 1930s new concrete runways made heavy, draggy flying boats obsolete, sales collapsed, and United Aircraft merged his division with Vought. Sikorsky turned to rotary-wing flight. His 1939 VS-300, which he flew himself as test pilot, was the first U.S. single lifting rotor helicopter, using a tail rotor on a long boom to cancel the main rotor's torque. In 1942 the R-4, with cyclic pitch control, became the first stable, fully controllable single-rotor helicopter in full-scale production. His company marked its 100th anniversary in 2023.

• Earlier inventors' prototypes would lift off and spin out of control from rotor torque.
• Cyclic pitch changes each blade's angle as it rotates, letting the pilot tilt thrust in any direction.
• Sikorsky has supplied Marine One presidential helicopters since 1957.
• Lockheed Martin bought Sikorsky for $9 billion in 2015.
• The $250,000 AHS Sikorsky Prize for human-powered helicopter flight went in 2013 to a University of Toronto team whose AeroVelo Atlas hovered for 64 seconds.