A helicopter on a washing line

Frank Piasecki was born in Philadelphia in 1919, the son of a Polish immigrant tailor, and worked for autogyro makers while still at school. In 1940 he and a former University of Pennsylvania classmate, Harold Venzie, set up the P-V Engineering Forum with a handful of partners. Their PV-2 was a single-seat helicopter, and on 11 April 1943 Piasecki flew it himself, making it the third helicopter to fly in the United States after Sikorsky’s VS-300 and R-4. He had little flying experience, so he tethered it to the ground with a clothesline. The clothesline broke.

Towed to Washington

In October 1943 Piasecki towed the PV-2 behind his car to Washington to show federal officials. The wheels had no bearings, so he had to stop every ten or fifteen minutes to let them cool. After the demonstration someone asked to see his pilot’s licence. He admitted he had none, and on 20 October 1943 the Civil Aeronautics Administration issued him the first helicopter pilot’s licence. The display won a Navy contract on 1 January 1944 for something much bigger.

The flying banana

The PV-3, known to test crews as the Dogship, first flew at Morton on 7 March 1945 and became the world’s first successful tandem-rotor helicopter, lifting more than any contemporary Sikorsky. To fund production the company became the Piasecki Helicopter Corporation in 1946, with Laurance Rockefeller and A. Felix du Pont Jr. taking 51 per cent for 500,000 dollars. The production HRP-1, with its upswept rear fuselage to keep the rotors apart, was nicknamed the flying banana. The compact HUP followed, the first helicopter with an autopilot and the first to loop, then the H-21 Workhorse, of which 707 were built. One H-21, Amblin’ Annie, made the first non-stop helicopter crossing of the United States.

Ousted by his own board

The investors lost faith in their founder. Piasecki wanted to pursue compound helicopters and other advanced rotorcraft; the board did not. A big transport project, the PV-15, was cancelled after a fatal crash in January 1956. When Piasecki started a rival company, Piasecki Aircraft, to pursue his ideas, the board renamed Piasecki Helicopter as Vertol, for vertical take-off and landing, changed the bylaws to bar his re-election, and in May 1956 forced him out of the company he had founded. Meanwhile his H-21s went to war: some of the earliest US Army deaths in Vietnam came when a CH-21 was shot down in July 1962.

Vertol, Boeing and the Chinook

Vertol’s turbine-powered Model 107 first flew on 22 April 1958, and the Army soon asked for a larger version, the Model 114. The strain of two new designs was too much for Vertol’s finances, and on 30 March 1960 Boeing bought it and renamed it Boeing Vertol. The 107 became the CH-46 Sea Knight and the 114 the CH-47 Chinook, still in production. Frank Piasecki carried on at Piasecki Aircraft in Essington, Pennsylvania, building the Flying Geep, the PA-97 Helistat and the X-49 compound helicopter; he received the National Medal of Technology in 1986 and died in 2008. His sons run the company today.

Fabrieken

• Morton works · Morton, Pennsylvania — Where the PV-3 first flew in 1945; later Boeing Vertol
• Piasecki Aircraft · Essington, Pennsylvania — Frank Piasecki’s second company, from 1955–1956

Mensen

• Frank Piasecki · founder, designer and pilot — 1919–2008; National Medal of Technology 1986
• Harold Venzie · co-founder — Left in 1943
• Laurance Rockefeller · investor — With A. Felix du Pont Jr. took 51 per cent in 1946
• Don R. Berlin · president from 1953

Records en primeurs

• Frank Piasecki received the first helicopter pilot’s licence, 20 October 1943
• PV-3: world’s first successful tandem-rotor helicopter, 1945
• HUP: first helicopter produced with an autopilot and first to perform a loop
• H-21C Amblin’ Annie: first non-stop helicopter crossing of the United States, with inflight refuelling