In virtually every field of human activity you can find people whose talent,
selflessness and hard-working perseverance wins them a place in the hearts
of future generations. Life is often hard on these people, and if they
manage to withstand its rigors, the day inevitably comes for the
human race to realize that one more step has been made in its eternal movement
towards perfection. One of such trailblazers was Igor Sikorsky
whose contribution to the development of world aviation can hardly be exaggerated.
 Igor
Sikorsky was born on May 25, 1889. His father was a professor of psychology
at Kiev University. Ever since his mother told him about the great 15th
century thinker Leonardo da Vinci and the flying machine he invented, the
boy dreamed about airplanes and flight. When Igor was 11 years old he had
a dream: he was walking down a corridor, like on a steamship, and there
were walnut-paneled doors on both sides of the passageway… There was a
carpet runner on the vibrating floor and the whole place was awash in gentle
light evenly spread by beautiful lamps overhead… The boy walked all the
way down the corridor and opened the door leading into a luxuriously furnished
salon and... at this point he woke up… The dream was etched so deeply
in the boy's mind that he remembered it all his life. 30 year later he
saw this in reality, on board a plane of his own design…
Igor Sikorsky grew up at a time when aviation technology was up and coming
and Russian engineers were working hard following in the footsteps of the
Wright brothers who built the world's first flying aircraft.
Sikorsky decided he would be an engineer too. In 1907 he enrolled at a
technical school in France and getting back to Russia, continued his education
at Kiev polytechnic institute. But he never managed to get a diploma because,
preoccupied with designing airplanes, he virtually dropped out of college.
He turned the family's little garden house
to a full-scale design bureau. Igor Sikorsky originally planned to build
a helicopter but nothing came out of that and he switched to building an
airplane. In 1910 he teamed up with a merchant named Fyodor Bylinkin who
financed his projects. The result of that joint effort was a really fine
aircraft which climbed well and was easy to fly. It was on this plane that
Igor Sikorsky made his first flight and set a world speed record of 111
kilometers per hour.
Sikorsky was becoming a celebrity… He was awarded a medal by the Russian
Imperial Technical Society, the military liked his plane and ordered the
construction of three more such planes. In 1912 the Russo-Baltic factory
which was building railway cars, invited the young engineer to be the head
of their aircraft-designing department. At the age of 23 Sikorsky became
the plants's chief aircraft designer and, thanks to his and his friends'
efforts Russia was quickly turning into one of the world's leading aviation
powers. They built Russia’s first airplane which was better than anything
else the world's aviation industry could offer at the time, and it was
immediately adopted by Russia's fledgling air force.
Sikorsky's bureau designed the world's first hydrofoil plane and the giant
four-engine Russian Knight airplane. Sikorsky dreamed of building long-distance
jumbo planes for passenger and cargo transportation. These dreams eventually
became a reality but, unfortunately, very far away from Russia…
Sikorsky's life turned around after the 1917 revolution followed by the
Civil War which ruined the country's economy. The plant where he worked
stopped building airplanes and, heartbroken, Sikorsky decided to
leave Russia. In 1918 he briefly settled down in France and eventually
moved on to the United States.
After years of hardship and struggling to keep afloat, Sikorsky finally
managed to get back to what he really loved doing - designing airplanes.
His talent coupled with hard work and perseverance paid off in making him
one of America's leading aircraft designers. His work in America was as
versatile as it had been in Russia. He was building different types of
aircraft, most of them civilian which gave him a chance to realize
his lifetime dream of building airplanes that would link together cities
and continents.
What made Sikorsky really famous, however, was his breakthroughs in designing
helicopters whose founding father he is rightfully considered. The famous
Sikorsky choppers made a hefty contribution to allied victory over Nazi
Germany and the Japanese militarists during World War Two. Russia takes
pride in the fact that the name of its talented aircraft designer, Igor
Sikorsky, has gone down in the history of world aviation.
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