A pioneer of helicopter design and construction in America in the 1940s and 1950s, Frank Piasecki is particularly remembered for developing the twin-rotor helicopter that has played such an important role in troop transport.
He flew his first helicopter, the PV2 - only the second American-built helicopter to be flown publicly - in 1943, three years after the celebrated Russianborn pioneer Igor Sikorsky had flown his.
But it was through his tandem-rotor helicopters - beginning with the PV3 “Flying Banana” of 1945, and progressing through the ubiquitous H21 “Workhorse” - that he brought his company, Piasecki Helicopter, to prominence in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when its rotary-winged aircraft were used by the armed forces of a number of countries.
In the mid-1950s he left the company, which became successively Vertol before being bought by Boeing to become Boeing Vertol. But his work laid the basis for the development of the most famous twin-rotor helicopter of them all - Boeing Vertol’s Chinook, made iconic through its widespread deployment in the Vietnam War and still widely used. Piasecki meanwhile continued refining various aspects of vertical takeoff through a new company, Piasecki Aircraft Corp.
Frank Piasecki was born in 1919 in Lansdowne, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, the son of an immigrant Polish tailor who was determined that he should grow up with an analytical mind. He attended the University of Pennsylvania from which he graduated with a degree in engineering.
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Piasecki was immediately involved in the field of rotary-winged aircraft, pioneered by Igor Sikorsky in the US. Sikorsky had already demonstrated his VS300 helicopter, and
the title he gave it, “the automobile of the future”, seemed to throw out a challenge to all young engineer-inventors.
Piasecki founded his own company, Piasecki Helicopter Corporation, with himself as chief executive, chief engineer and test pilot, and on April 11, 1943, flew its first helicopter, the PV2. This was a single-seat affair and Piasecki hoped it would lead to a personal vehicle capable of being put into production, with a wide appeal to individual customers.
This did not happen, and Piasecki’s company was in danger of being crippled by lack of funds. However salvation was at hand. The US Navy, which had been criticised by Congress for showing insufficient interest in helicopters, asked for a demonstration, having surveyed the available Sikorsky products and found them unsuitable.
In truth, it was a far cry from the tiny one-man PV2 runabout to the navy’s requirement for a large helicopter that could carry heavy sonar gear or pick up downed crewmen from the sea. But while Sikorsky was stretched to the limit to meet US Army Air Force orders, Piasecki had plenty of time to think creatively, and spare capacity on his hands, and he used both.
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He was able to persuade the navy to fund a prototype that featured two rotors mounted in tandem, and could perform the designated heavy-lift tasks. The PV3 protoype was successfully demonstrated in March 1945, its sobriquet “Flying Banana” deriving from a boomerang-shaped fuselage which kept the rear rotor well clear of the forward one.
An order for ten machines was soon forthcoming and the PV3 (designated HPR1 by the navy) was eventually to see service with the US Navy, Marine Corps and US Coastguard. Among its successors was the H21 Workhorse that was eventually to be supplied to the USAF, the US Army, the Royal Canadian Air Force, the French Navy and the nascent West German Defence Force.
With the Piasecki Workhorse, the troop carrier capable of assault airlift as we know it today had well and truly been born, and the H21 also demonstrated its aptitude for rescue in extremely low temperatures and heavy weather.
The Piasecki HUP Retriever was a naval helicopter designed for shipboard operations and plane guard duty (doing away with the need to position a destroyer close to the carrier for this). An army version, the H25 Mule was adapted for both cargo carrying and medevac, and the US Army bought 70 of them.
But while Piasecki’s investors understandably wanted him to continue to manufacture profitable products, he wanted to keep pushing the frontiers of helicopter technology. In 1956 he gave up control of the company, which became the Vertol Aircraft Corporation, and left to found Piasecki Aircraft. Vertol was later bought by Boeing to become Boeing Vertol, many of whose early products were developments of Piasecki designs. “He’s the father of Boeing Rotorcraft,” conceded Boeing’s director of advanced rotorcraft of Piasecki, in an interview in October.
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At Piasecki Aircraft he continued to refine aspects of helicopter technology and dream up new projects, one of the most spectacular of which was his “World’s Largest Aircraft”, of the 1980s, which aimed to use four modified helicopters and a helium airship as a vehicle for lifting extremely heavy loads. Among more recent projects was the Speed Hawk helicopter, which replaces the conventional sideways-facing tail rotor with a rear-facing ducted propeller, which is designed to improve stability and increase forward speed.
Piasecki, a forthright and seemingly indefatigable man, was still chief executive of the company when he died. In 1986 he was presented with America’s highest technical honour, the National Medal of Technology, by President Reagan. In 2005 he received the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Piasecki is survived by his wife, Vivian, and by two daughters, one of whom is president of Boeing’s operations in Tokyo, and five sons, two of whom are vice-presidents of Piasecki Aircraft.
Frank Piasecki, helicopter designer, was born on October 24, 1919. He died on February 11, 2008, aged 88