“"He built the first successful helicopter in America. Then he made it useful."”
Igor Sikorsky had already designed and built four-engine bombers for the Russian Empire in 1913 when he emigrated to the United States in 1919. He founded the Sikorsky Aero Engineering Company in 1923 with financial backing from composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. After years of experimentation, the VS-300 first flew on September 14, 1939. It was a skeletal machine with a single main rotor and a small vertical tail rotor to counteract torque. Sikorsky developed the single main rotor with tail rotor configuration that became the dominant helicopter design. The VS-300 could hover, fly forward, and even tow a small boat. In 1943, the R-4 became the first mass-produced helicopter and the first used by the U.S. military for rescue operations—including the first helicopter rescue of a downed pilot in the China-Burma-India theater. Sikorsky's vision was not military dominance but humanitarian: he believed the helicopter's greatest purpose was search and rescue.
The single main rotor with anti-torque tail rotor configuration remains the standard for light and medium helicopters, and understanding autorotation—a descent with the engine at idle—is a core skill for helicopter pilots that traces directly to Sikorsky's original designs.