A two-seat helicopter designed by Igor Sikorsky, first flown on 14 January 1942 and entering service in January 1943 as the world's first large-scale mass-produced helicopter. It was operated by the US Army Air Forces, US Navy, US Coast Guard, the Royal Air Force (as the Hoverfly) and the Royal Navy, and flew the first helicopter rescue, a January 1944 blood-plasma delivery after the USS Turner's explosion, and the first combat helicopter rescue, evacuating a downed pilot in the China-Burma-India theater in April 1944. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
SignificanceProved the helicopter as a practical rescue tool rather than a novelty: its January 1944 blood-plasma delivery is recognized as the first helicopter rescue, and by June-July 1945 R-4s and their successors carried out the largest combat helicopter evacuation before the Korean War, lifting 75 to 80 wounded soldiers near Manila. 1 Manufacturer or Builder FAQs
Why was the Sikorsky R-4 so hard to fly?
It had no rotor governor, vibrating fabric-covered blades and a shaking control stick, so pilots worked throttle and pitch constantly.
Pilots found the R-4 difficult. Its rotor blades were made of wood ribs around a steel spar and covered with doped fabric, and they were hard to keep rotating in the same plane and vibrated excessively. The cyclic control made continuous small orbits and vibrated continuously. There was no governor to control rotor speed, so the pilot had to correlate the throttle continuously with collective pitch inputs. A newspaper account quoted in the same source described the control stick as shaking like a jackhammer, so that a pilot had to hold it tightly at all times.
Connections
Invented By
Source Wikipedia: Sikorsky R-4
In the Other Atlases
Manufactured By
Also in Business Atlas: the manufacturer of this subject.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Sikorsky R-4
WikipediaLead section
The R-4 was the world's first large-scale mass-produced helicopter
Operational history
Following the explosion and sinking in January 1944 of USS Turner, U.S. Coast Guard Commander Frank Erickson flew the first U.S. helicopter rescue in a Sikorsky R-4 carrying life saving blood plasma for the casualties from New York City.
British service
In British service it was known as the Hoverfly.
In Group: Early Helicopters, Lead sentence
The Sikorsky R-4 is a two-seat light helicopter that was designed by Igor Sikorsky with a single, three-bladed main rotor and powered by a radial engine.
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