Vertol Aircraft
| Industry | Aerospace |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1940 |
| Headquarters | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
|
Key people
|
Frank Piasecki, Don R. Berlin |
| Products | Helicopters |
| Website | www |
Piasecki Helicopter Corporation was a designer and manufacturer of helicopters located in Philadelphia and nearby Morton, Pennsylvania, in the late 1940s and the 1950s. Its founder, Frank Piasecki, was ousted from the company in 1956 and started a new company, Piasecki Aircraft. Piasecki Helicopter was renamed Vertol Corporation in early 1956. Vertol was acquired by Boeing in 1960 and renamed Boeing Vertol.
The Piasecki Helicopter Corporation was founded in 1940 by Frank Piasecki as the P-V Engineering Forum. It first became known as Piasecki Helicopter in 1946. The PV-2 was the second helicopter flown in the United States (following Igor Sikorsky's VS-300), and was designed and flown by Frank Piasecki in 1943.
Piasecki designed and successfully sold a series of tandem rotor helicopters to the United States Navy, starting with the HRP-1 of 1944. The HRP-1 was nicknamed the "flying banana" because of the upward angle of the aft fuselage that ensured the large rotors did not hit each other in flight, and because the Coast Guard painted the aircraft yellow. The name would later be applied to other Piasecki helicopters of similar design.
In 1949, Piasecki provided the H-21 Workhorse to the United States Air Force, an improved, all-metal derivative of the HRP-1. Piasecki's tandem-rotor helicopters flew higher than competing single rotor designs, and offered a smoother ride.
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Wikipedia