Re: picture on page 8: I didn’t know we had choppers during the WWII period. Does anyone know if they were ever used in combat during that war, or if they were used at all for combat support?
I can vaguely remember some use of helicopters (maybe for moving troops?) during Korea, and of course they were critical in Vietnam, but I didn’t know they were even available during the mid ‘40’s.
As per wiki:
Wiki outline the very early history of helicopter development which was mostly experimental.
Birth of an industry
Heinrich Focke at Focke-Wulf was licensed to produce the Cierva C.30 autogyro in 1933. Focke designed the world’s first practical transverse twin-rotor helicopter, the Focke-Wulf Fw 61, which first flew on 26 June 1936. The Fw 61 broke all of the helicopter world records in 1937, demonstrating a flight envelope that had only previously been achieved by the autogyro. Nazi Germany used helicopters in small numbers during World War II for observation, transport, and medical evacuation. The Flettner Fl 282 Kolibri synchropter — using the same basic configuration as Anton Flettner’s own pioneering Fl 265 — was used in the Mediterranean, while the Focke Achgelis Fa 223 Drache twin-rotor helicopter was used in Europe.[citation needed] Extensive bombing by the Allied forces prevented Germany from producing any helicopters in large quantities during the war.
In the United States, Russian-born engineer Igor Sikorsky and W. Lawrence LePage competed to produce the U.S. military’s first helicopter. LePage received the patent rights to develop helicopters patterned after the Fw 61, and built the XR-1. Meanwhile, Sikorsky settled on a simpler, single rotor design, the VS-300, which turned out to be the first practical single lifting-rotor helicopter design and potentially the best-flying one since the Soviet TsAGI 1-EA, which had flown nearly a decade before. After experimenting with configurations to counteract the torque produced by the single main rotor, Sikorsky settled on a single, smaller rotor mounted on the tailboom.
Developed from the VS-300, Sikorsky’s R-4 was the first large-scale mass-produced helicopter, with a production order for 100 aircraft. The R-4 was the only Allied helicopter to serve in World War II, when it was used primarily for rescue in Burma, Alaska, and other areas with harsh terrain. Total production reached 131 helicopters before the R-4 was replaced by other Sikorsky helicopters such as the R-5 and the R-6. In all, Sikorsky produced over 400 helicopters before the end of World War II.
While LePage and Sikorsky built their helicopters for the military, Bell Aircraft hired Arthur Young to help build a helicopter using Young’s two-blade teetering rotor design, which used a weighted stabilizing bar placed at a 90° angle to the rotor blades. The subsequent Model 30 helicopter showed the design’s simplicity and ease of use. The Model 30 was developed into the Bell 47, which became the first helicopter certified for civilian use in the United States. Produced in several countries, the Bell 47 was the most popular helicopter model for nearly 30 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter