Your Flying Flivver 65 



der. He is, however still working to make the helicopter more 

 efficient. In May, 1943, United States patents were issued on 

 two more designs by Mr. Sikorsky. 



War Duties of the Helicopter 



The helicopter already has taken over several jobs in this 

 war, and may prove a decisive weapon against Axis subma- 

 rines. In April, 1943, Captain Leland P. Lovette, Director of 

 Public Relations of the Navy, announced that the five-hun- 

 dred-mile "gap" in the mid- Atlantic where the German sub- 

 marines have been particularly successful was being patrolled 

 by ship-based helicopters. This craft can stop in the air 

 motionless to scout for surfacing U-boats, zigzag around easily 

 to avoid gunfire, and then drop depth charges on undersea 

 raiders. Or it can fly at one hundred miles per hour in mak- 

 ing a patrol from a ship. 



In a demonstration on Long Island Sound, May 6-7, 1943, 

 Colonel H. F. Gregory, of Wright Field, Ohio, made twenty- 

 four landings and take-offs (some of them backward) from 

 the deck of a tanker traveling at various speeds. The take-off 

 space was seventy-eight by forty-eight feet. As a result of 

 these tests, Rear Admiral Howard L. Vickery, vice-chairman 

 of the Maritime Commission and Deputy War Shipping 

 Administrator, said a small deck would be installed on Lib- 

 erty ships which "will permit helicopters to be used at sea, 

 thus giving the ships added protection from submarines." 



Postwar Tasks of the Helicopter 



The Army has ordered three hundred helicopters from the 

 Sikorsky Division of the United Aircraft Corporation. Officers 

 believe these rotary-wing craft can serve to spot targets for 

 the artillery, lay telephone wire over impassable ground, hover 



