AVIATION: Triumph of the Egg Beater

“The helicopter is in its babyhood,” said Igor Sikorsky last week. “It’s not much beyond the airplane in the Kitty Hawk days.” But even Sikorsky, who is the father of all U.S. helicopters, is amazed at how fast his baby is growing. Last week the Sikorsky Aircraft Division of United Aircraft Corp. announced it will increase its factory floor space by one-third to 500,000 sq. ft. The Civil Aeronautics Administration approved’ Sikorsky’s new, fast (111 m.p.h.), four-place YH-18; the armed services jammed his production lines with orders for the older and bigger S-55, which can carry eight soldiers plus a crew of two.

United is not the only one to feel the speedup. Some $300 million is being spent by the military for 600 helicopters (as many as were made in all of World War II), and for research and development of new models.

The boom in helicopters was set off by their breathtaking rescue work in Korea. In eight months, the “flying egg beaters” plucked 1,700 wounded and stranded men off the battlefield, saving them from death or capture. Commanding officers have found helicopters a smooth, swift substitute for the jolting jeep for front-line tours. Last week the helicopters found another customer. The Army, hitherto restricted to small craft (under 4,000 pounds), got permission to fly the big copters, will form transport companies with 23 helicopters each, specially equipped to carry troops in amphibious, mountain and jungle warfare.

Clippers & Copters. Igor Sikorsky, now 61, has been working 42 years to win such recognition for the egg beater. He designed his first helicopter in Russia in 1908, but it never got far off the ground. Sikorsky turned to plane design, turned out the first four-engine ship for the Czar’s air force in World War I.

Later, he set up his own plane company in the U.S. After it was merged into United Aircraft, he designed Pan American Airways’ famous “Flying Clippers” which established the first regular air routes across the Atlantic and Pacific. But Sikorsky kept on experimenting with helicopters; in 1939 he built the VS-3OO, the first successful rotary-winged craft in the Western Hemisphere. During World War II, United Aircraft’s Sikorsky Division made all the helicopters produced for the military; almost all the 100-odd ships now seeing service in Korea are Sikorsky-built.

Young Wings. Other U.S. helicopters now in Korea are four different types made by Bell Aircraft Corp., which has been making copters since 1945, has sunk $12 million into research and development. Bell tried to tap the commercial market for helicopters as executive transports, crop-dusters, mail-carriers, etc., but lost money. At $23,500 a ship, there were not enough buyers. The company now has a $75 million military backlog, is developing the tandem-rotored experimental XHSL-i helicopter. The Navy wants to equip it with radar, use it to hunt submarines.

Aside from Sikorsky and Bell, most of the big work in helicopters is in the hands of young men and new companies:

Piasecki Helicopter Corp. was founded by Frank Piasecki, 31, with four helpers, ten years ago in a Philadelphia store. Last week he had 1,700 people working for him on more than $100 million in military orders, many of them for his HRP-2 “flying banana,” a 54-ft., twin-rotored machine which carries 16 combat soldiers and a two-man crew. Other Piasecki models: the 20-passenger H-21, equipped with pontoons for rescue work on snow, ice, water or marsh; the experimental XH-16, with a fuselage as big as a DC-4, and a detachable cargo “pod” the size of a Greyhound bus.

United Helicopters, Inc., founded by Stanley Hiller Jr., 26, is one of the few helicopter manufacturers to make money on commercial production. Hiller sold 81 of his two-passenger “Model 360” at an average $22,000 each, got into the black at the end of 1950, just before he got $18 million in military orders. Killers have been flying in Korea since January. Hiller has also produced an air flivver, a 356-lb., jet-propelled “Hornet” which he says he can sell for $2.500 in quantity production. But the Hornet, powered by two ramjet engines on the tips of the rotor is limited in range (only 50 miles with two passengers), is still a long way from the commercial production line and popular sale.

Kaman Aircraft was launched in a West Hartford, Conn, basement, where Charles H. Kaman, 31, worked out a design for a helicopter that won a naval competition in 1949. It was a liaison copter that could be converted to a flying ambulance. Last week Kaman had more than $2,000,000 in military orders for his four-placeHOK-i and the smaller HTH-i, both of which have twin rotors with inter-meshing blades.

So far, the helicopter boom has been military. Only two cities, Chicago and Los Angeles, use helicopters as certified mail carriers. But Igor Sikorsky thinks the speedup in production and research is fast bringing the day when jet-powered helicopters will carry 50 passengers at 150 m.p.h. When that day conies, he expects the helicopter to come of age and be the short-haul bus that the airways have always needed.