Gazda Helicospeedser

A successful helicopter is a lot harder to create than a successful airplane. Although the Wright Brothers first flew in 1903, the first reliable helicopter didn’t take to the air until 36 years later when Igor Sikorsky created the VS-300 in 1939. Both aircraft are affected by the same forces acting upon them that allow them to fly, otherwise known as the Four Forces of Flight: lift, weight, thrust and drag. But despite this, engineers and inventors lacked the knowledge and materials to build a working helicopter for many years.

Early helicopters were often too heavy with engines too weak for success. By the 1930s, tubular steel offered a stronger, lighter alternative to wood for airframes and small engines could produce almost 100 horsepower while only weighing around 200 pounds. By comparison, the Wright Brothers’ engine weighed 170 pounds but only produced 12 horsepower.

Igor Sikorsky, already a successful airplane manufacturer, combined these improved materials with a new rotor design: a large horizontal rotor on top of the helicopter to lift and steer the helicopter, with a small tail rotor to prevent the helicopter from spinning like a top. The Sikorsky VS-300 first flew in September 1939, proving vertical flight was possible. Over the next four years, Sikorsky improved and refined the design so the company could manufacture and sell helicopters.

In 1943, Austrian pilot and entrepreneur Antoine Gazda attempted to improve on Sikorsky’s design. At the time, he owned Gazda Engineering and was selling 20mm anti-aircraft cannons to militaries around the world. Gazda believed that he could make a high-speed helicopter by powering it with a jet engine instead of a piston one. If he could control the direction of the jet exhaust, Gazda could prevent the helicopter from spinning and eliminate the tail rotor.

Although few people in the world at the time worked on helicopters, Gazda was in the right place to encounter the experienced ones. His factory was in Pawtucket, R.I. and Sikorsky worked closely with the aeronautical engineering department at Rhode Island State College,now known as University of Rhode Island. Among them was engineer Hal Lemont, who worked for both Sikorsky and Gazda in the early 1940s. When Gazda realized Lemont had worked on Sikorsky’s VS-300, he hired Lemont to work on his own helicopter design. Lemont’s experience with Sikorsky explains many of the structural similarities between the Gazda Helicospeeder and the VS-300.

Gazda’s dream of a jet-powered helicopter immediately derailed since no small jet engine existed in 1943. As in the VS-300, Lemont installed a Franklin aircraft engine on the helicopter. Where Lemont did innovate was by combining all the helicopter controls into a single steering wheel, instead of separate controls for direction and rotor blades. Unlike helicopters seen today, Lemont also designed the entire tail rotor to swivel so that it could help propel the helicopter forward. be To reduce drag, he moved the swash plate from outside the helicopter body to inside the more streamlined body. The swash plate controls the rotor’s tilt, which is partially responsible for the helicopter’s flight direction. Gazda also asked Lemont for some unusual elements like raising the cabin ceiling so the pilot could wear taller hats.

Things went awry for Gazda and Lemont in testing. Despite Gazda’s primary flight experience having been during World War I, he decided he would be the helicopter’s test pilot. Overconfident, Gazda did not learn the finer points of flying helicopters before testing his own. In the first two tests, Gazda destroyed a cooling fan by using too much power and damaged the rotors with a hard landing. After repairs, the third test was successful when he hovered the helicopter for 30 seconds. When Gazda wanted to fly around the field, Lemont resigned because he felt it was too risky so early in the test process. Gazda himself soon abandoned the project and the Helicospeeder never flew again.

While the Gazda Helicospeeder failed, Hal Lemont did not. Over the next 60 years, he worked for many major helicopter manufacturers.