Russian-American Aviation Pioneers

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The benefits of immigration on US aviation development.

 

Aleksandr Prokofiev de Seversky was an Imperial Russian Naval Aviation ace, with six confirmed kills. He had lost a leg after a crash due to anti-aircraft fire in 1915 but continued to fly combat. He emigrated to the United States after the Russian Revolution and invented the first gyrostabilized bombsight which he sold to the US Army. Using the proceeds, he founded the Seversky Aircraft Company.

 

80 years ago today (13-Oct-1939), after the Seversky AP-4, an improved P-35, loses a major contract with the US Army Air Corps to the Curtiss XP-40, financiers and the board force de Seversky out of the company he had founded and reorganize it as the Republic Aviation Corporation. The AP-4 will be developed into the P-43 Lancer but again fail to receive major contracts. Republic will struggle until the acceptance of the XP-47 (designed by Seversky’s Chief Engineer Aleksandre Kartvelishvili) in 1942.

 

De Seversky will publish Victory through Air Power in April, 1942, which will sell 5 million copies. He will consult and lecture for the rest of his life, and be a founder of the New York Institute of Technology.