Post by Dave Homewood on Mar 18, 2023 22:02:24 GMT 12
HIS DREAM BECAME REALITY
Amazing Experiences of Igor Sikorsky Who Created The Pan-American Clippers
WE talk figuratively of "realising a dream," of "seeing a dream come true." This happened literally to Mr. Igor I. Sikorsky, pioneer aircraft builder, creator of the mighty Pan-American Clippers, writes Trevor Allen in John O'London's Weekly.
In 1900, at the age of eleven, he dreamt he was walking along a narrow, luxuriously decorated passageway with walnut doors on both sides, an attractive carpet, a spherical bluish electric light in the ceiling. Walking slowly, he felt a slight vibration under his feet, different from that experienced on a steamer or in a train, and knew he was on board a large flying ship in the air. As he reached the end of the corridor and opened a door he awoke. The impression of the dream remained with him for several days.
In the autumn of 1931 his firm, Sikorsky Aircraft, delivered to Pan-American Airways the S-40 four-engined flying-boat, christened the American Clipper: first of a series used for long-distance flights to South America and to found the transpacific and transatlantic routes. After a trial flight over New York with members of the Airways on board and a few other guests, the ship descended to a lower altitude on its way back to Bridgeport; it became dark; the air was calm, the 'plane moved very smoothly with engines running at reduced power.
He was in the front cabin, Mr. Sikorsky writes in a true craftsman's autobiography, "The Story of the Winged-S" (Robert Hale), and decided to see what was going on in the other cabins. As he walked toward the smoking lounge the cabin steward turned on the lights and he stopped with a feeling of surprise. Some twenty feet ahead he saw the walnut trimmings and elegant entrance to the lounge. The bluish electric lights in the ceiling seemed bright and attractive.
But he was surprised by another thought:— "I realised at that very moment, that I had already seen all this a long time ago, the passageway, the bluish lights, the walnut trimmings on the walls and doors, and the feeling of smooth motion, and I tried to recall when and how I could have received such an impression, until finally I remembered the details of my dream of some thirty years before. This book tells the story of how a dream of early youth finally became a reality."
It is an inspiring story of a Kiev youth reading of a flight made by the Wright brothers and resolving to build a flying machine. During a summer holiday in Germany in 1908 he began experimenting with a twin screw helicopter in his room in a small hotel. Back in Kiev he continued research, then felt an urge to go to Paris, at that time the cradle of European aviation. Afterwards he learned that some of his family's friends and relatives "thought it almost outrageous to permit a boy to go to Paris with a huge sum of money which, they predicted, would be spent not on machinery but for totally different purposes."
In Paris he met pioneers like Captain Ferber, studied in the new aeronautics school, acquired a three-cylinder 25 h.p. Anzani engine of the type Bleriot subsequently used for his cross-Channel flight, ordered other aeroplane parts, made to his sketches; then returned to Kiev to begin constructing his first helicopter.
His first real production, however, proudly named the S-1, was a small, light, pusher biplane with 15 h.p. Anzani motor which consented to leave the ground only for a few seconds. His next, the S-2, flew for about 200 yards, twelve seconds, at a height of two to four feet.
"Having never before been in the air, even as a passenger," he says, "I had to learn quickly the necessary movements which were familiar in imagination but not yet in reality. . . . With reverence, and almost with tenderness, my boys put the S-2 back in the hangar."
Small, romantic beginnings for the creator of the great Clippers! Persevering, overcoming countless technical obstacles, and personal dangers, he designed and built no fewer than seventy-five larger four-motored bombers for the Russian Government during the war years, 1914-1918. In 1918 he was commissioned by France to design military machines, but the Armistice cut short production.
He crossed to the United States, and there evolved the massive amphibians which have made him world-famous. This work, he states, actually began in 1912; twenty-five years later, in the summer of 1937, his S-42, with large tanks which enabled it to cruise about 3200 miles, made successful commercial crossings of both the Pacific and Atlantic. Steadfast, indefatigable worker, he nevertheless attributes to intuition many important decisions during the pioneering period:—
"Intuition works even when one does not recognise it as such. In other cases it works with a surprising speed and brilliance, when, in a moment, a solution of a difficult and complicated problem comes in with remarkable clarity, and so convincingly that no doubts are left as to its correctness. Quite often it is possible to select one out of a dozen sketches of proposed solutions and state positively that one is the best, when it is still not yet possible to say why. The reverse also happens once in a "while, and it is possible to predict that certain solutions will not be satisfactory even when they appear to be correctly designed and calculated."
Fifty Staterooms
Looking into the future, he foresees Clippers carrying a hundred passengers and crew of sixteen, with a flying range of 5000 miles at not less than 200 miles per hour, a gross weight of 85 to 100 tons, engines totalling 10,000 or more brake h.p., a wing span exceeding 200 feet. Pan-American Airways recently suggested the study and eventual construction of such a ship. Flying-boats of 500 or even 1000 tons carrying several thousand passengers could be successfully designed and built; but a larger number, of 100 to 250 tons, with frequent departures, would probably render better service.
The 100-tonner, crossing the Atlantic in less than twenty hours, will have some fifty comfortable staterooms, large dining saloon, promenade decks, smoking lounges, library and good quarters for the crew. The stratosphere airliner, travelling between 25,000 and 40,000 feet, with enclosed supercharged cabin, will come in the immediate future. Mr. Sikorsky's is the story of the machine rather than the man, but an exemplary one for air-minded youth.
New Zealand Herald, 6 April 1940.
Amazing Experiences of Igor Sikorsky Who Created The Pan-American Clippers
WE talk figuratively of "realising a dream," of "seeing a dream come true." This happened literally to Mr. Igor I. Sikorsky, pioneer aircraft builder, creator of the mighty Pan-American Clippers, writes Trevor Allen in John O'London's Weekly.
In 1900, at the age of eleven, he dreamt he was walking along a narrow, luxuriously decorated passageway with walnut doors on both sides, an attractive carpet, a spherical bluish electric light in the ceiling. Walking slowly, he felt a slight vibration under his feet, different from that experienced on a steamer or in a train, and knew he was on board a large flying ship in the air. As he reached the end of the corridor and opened a door he awoke. The impression of the dream remained with him for several days.
In the autumn of 1931 his firm, Sikorsky Aircraft, delivered to Pan-American Airways the S-40 four-engined flying-boat, christened the American Clipper: first of a series used for long-distance flights to South America and to found the transpacific and transatlantic routes. After a trial flight over New York with members of the Airways on board and a few other guests, the ship descended to a lower altitude on its way back to Bridgeport; it became dark; the air was calm, the 'plane moved very smoothly with engines running at reduced power.
He was in the front cabin, Mr. Sikorsky writes in a true craftsman's autobiography, "The Story of the Winged-S" (Robert Hale), and decided to see what was going on in the other cabins. As he walked toward the smoking lounge the cabin steward turned on the lights and he stopped with a feeling of surprise. Some twenty feet ahead he saw the walnut trimmings and elegant entrance to the lounge. The bluish electric lights in the ceiling seemed bright and attractive.
But he was surprised by another thought:— "I realised at that very moment, that I had already seen all this a long time ago, the passageway, the bluish lights, the walnut trimmings on the walls and doors, and the feeling of smooth motion, and I tried to recall when and how I could have received such an impression, until finally I remembered the details of my dream of some thirty years before. This book tells the story of how a dream of early youth finally became a reality."
It is an inspiring story of a Kiev youth reading of a flight made by the Wright brothers and resolving to build a flying machine. During a summer holiday in Germany in 1908 he began experimenting with a twin screw helicopter in his room in a small hotel. Back in Kiev he continued research, then felt an urge to go to Paris, at that time the cradle of European aviation. Afterwards he learned that some of his family's friends and relatives "thought it almost outrageous to permit a boy to go to Paris with a huge sum of money which, they predicted, would be spent not on machinery but for totally different purposes."
In Paris he met pioneers like Captain Ferber, studied in the new aeronautics school, acquired a three-cylinder 25 h.p. Anzani engine of the type Bleriot subsequently used for his cross-Channel flight, ordered other aeroplane parts, made to his sketches; then returned to Kiev to begin constructing his first helicopter.
His first real production, however, proudly named the S-1, was a small, light, pusher biplane with 15 h.p. Anzani motor which consented to leave the ground only for a few seconds. His next, the S-2, flew for about 200 yards, twelve seconds, at a height of two to four feet.
"Having never before been in the air, even as a passenger," he says, "I had to learn quickly the necessary movements which were familiar in imagination but not yet in reality. . . . With reverence, and almost with tenderness, my boys put the S-2 back in the hangar."
Small, romantic beginnings for the creator of the great Clippers! Persevering, overcoming countless technical obstacles, and personal dangers, he designed and built no fewer than seventy-five larger four-motored bombers for the Russian Government during the war years, 1914-1918. In 1918 he was commissioned by France to design military machines, but the Armistice cut short production.
He crossed to the United States, and there evolved the massive amphibians which have made him world-famous. This work, he states, actually began in 1912; twenty-five years later, in the summer of 1937, his S-42, with large tanks which enabled it to cruise about 3200 miles, made successful commercial crossings of both the Pacific and Atlantic. Steadfast, indefatigable worker, he nevertheless attributes to intuition many important decisions during the pioneering period:—
"Intuition works even when one does not recognise it as such. In other cases it works with a surprising speed and brilliance, when, in a moment, a solution of a difficult and complicated problem comes in with remarkable clarity, and so convincingly that no doubts are left as to its correctness. Quite often it is possible to select one out of a dozen sketches of proposed solutions and state positively that one is the best, when it is still not yet possible to say why. The reverse also happens once in a "while, and it is possible to predict that certain solutions will not be satisfactory even when they appear to be correctly designed and calculated."
Fifty Staterooms
Looking into the future, he foresees Clippers carrying a hundred passengers and crew of sixteen, with a flying range of 5000 miles at not less than 200 miles per hour, a gross weight of 85 to 100 tons, engines totalling 10,000 or more brake h.p., a wing span exceeding 200 feet. Pan-American Airways recently suggested the study and eventual construction of such a ship. Flying-boats of 500 or even 1000 tons carrying several thousand passengers could be successfully designed and built; but a larger number, of 100 to 250 tons, with frequent departures, would probably render better service.
The 100-tonner, crossing the Atlantic in less than twenty hours, will have some fifty comfortable staterooms, large dining saloon, promenade decks, smoking lounges, library and good quarters for the crew. The stratosphere airliner, travelling between 25,000 and 40,000 feet, with enclosed supercharged cabin, will come in the immediate future. Mr. Sikorsky's is the story of the machine rather than the man, but an exemplary one for air-minded youth.
New Zealand Herald, 6 April 1940.
