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American Airways, but the planes were never
profitable, and they were no longer built after
1938.
Sikorsky's work on helicopters proved far
more successful. During the 1920s and 1930s a
number of designers in the United States and
abroad had experimented with helicopter
design. It was not until 1939, however, when
Sikorsky tested his VS-300, that the helicopter
became truly practical. By 1945, the final year of
World War II, the U.S. army was using Sikorsky-
designed helicopters. In the 1950s their use
became more widespread, both for military and
peaceful purposes. By that time, Sikorsky's com-
pany was one of the leading manufacturers of
helicopters.
Simonov, Konstantin Mikhailovich
(1915-1979)
poet and journalist
A widely published Soviet author whose
wartime fiction and journalism gained him an
important place in the world of Soviet letters.
Simonov was born on November 28, 1915, in St.
Petersburg. The son of a military instructor who
sided with the
BOLSHEVIKS
during the civil war,
Simonov traveled with his father's unit, growing
up mostly in the provincial towns of Saratov and
Ryazan. In 1930 he entered a factory school in
Saratov, but his studies there were interrupted in
1931 when the family moved to Moscow, where
he worked as a factory mechanic while pursuing
part-time university studies. In 1934 he entered
the prestigious Gorky Institute of Literature,
from which he graduated in 1939. During these
years he began to write poetry, and his verses
first appeared in journals such as
Molodaya
Gvardiia
(Young guard) and
Oktiabr
(October). In
1940 his first volume of poems,
Verses, 1939,
was
published, based mostly on his yearlong experi-
ence as a military correspondent in Mongolia.
During World War II, however, Simonov made
his mark on Soviet literature. In 1941 he was
called up for army duty and spent most of the
war as a correspondent for the army newspaper
Igor I. Sikorsky
(Library of Congress)
building aircraft. In 1919 he moved to the
United States, where he remained for the rest of
his life, taking American citizenship in 1928. In
1923, after several years of hardship, he joined
other Russian refugees in forming the Sikorsky
Aero-Engineering Company, of which the com-
poser Sergei
RACHMANINOFF
was a large investor
and vice president. The firm soon became a part
of the United Aircraft and Transport Company,
one of the early giants of American aviation. In
the late 1920s Sikorsky invested a lot of his time
and resources in the development of multi-
engine “aerial yachts,” or flying boats. In 1929
he sold 56 such aerial yachts to wealthy
investors, but with the crash of the stock market
in October 1929 Sikorsky was never paid for
them. United continued to support Sikorsky's
work on aerial yachts, which culminated in the
construction of the S-42 Clipper Ship for Pan
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