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 On this day in engineering history, Igor Sikorsky made his first public helicopter flight. Thirty years after his third vertical-lift machine had failed to carry a load, the Russian-born inventor soared 15 - 20 ft. above the ground in the VS-300, a single-rotor vehicle that one aviation historian has called "America's first practical helicopter". While a crowd gawked at what mechanics called "Igor's nightmare", Sikorsky moved the helicopter's control stick forward and flew 200 ft. along the tarmac at the municipal airport in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Hovering in mid-air, the VS-300 then backed up a few feet and stopped again. After setting the helicopter down carefully, Sikorsky went aloft again before completing a second and final landing.
Igor Sikorsky's VS-300 featured a single main rotor that measured 28-ft in diameter and turned freely on a steel shaft. Originally, three tail rotors were used for anti-torque and directional control purposes; however, to avoid sudden nose-up pitching problems at low speeds, subsequent models used only a single rotor. The engine of choice, a 75-hp air-cooled Franklin, was badly underpowered by today's standards, but still able to provide the high power-to-weight ratios needed for vertical flight. The helicopter's fuselage was made largely of welded steel tube and contributed to the vehicle's total weight of 1,290 lbs. Built at a cost of $60,000 (USD) the VS-300 that Sikorsky flew on May 24, 1940 was manufactured by the Vought-Sikorsky Aircraft Co., a division of United Aircraft Corp. of Stratford, Connecticut.
"The idea of a vehicle that could lift itself vertically from the ground and hover motionless in the air", Igor Sikorsky once explained, "was probably born at the same time that man first dreamed of flying." Although the history of the helicopter has many fathers, Sikorsky deserves a place alongside aviation pioneers such as Juan de la Cierva, Louis Breguet, Heinrich Focke, Raoul Hafner, Arthur Young, and Henry Berliner.
Resources:
http://www.glue.umd.edu/~leishman/Aero/history.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,789824,00.html
http://www.thehenryford.org/museum/heroes/inventors/sikorsky.asp
http://www.sikorskyarchives.com/vs-300.html
http://www.asme.org/Communities/History/Landmarks/Sikorsky_VS300_Helicopter.cfm
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