Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "Dragon - The First Helicopter to Cross the English Channel" video.

  1. The US had operational Sikorsky R-4 helicopter squadrons in 1943, and they operated from ships and land. They were in Burma, the South Pacific, Burma, Britain, and Europe as the allies advanced. The Coast Guard gained a lot of experience flying the Navy version, HNS-1, on rescue and patrol flights along the US East Coast in 1944-45. The USN and RN flew R-4s from shipboard landing decks as early as 1944, and the USN was regularly flying the first vertical replenishment flight in the Pacific by late 1944. United Aircraft, Sikorsky's parent company, had built 100 R-4's by November of 1944. They were already building the R-5 (also named Dragon), a much larger and more powerful machine, by March, 1944, and the first went into service by February, 1945. So, just to be clear, the Germans were not ahead of the allies when it came to helicopters in general. What they were ahead on what was the first heavy lift helicopter, the Fa 223. Even the Fa 223 was a dead end in terms of heavy lift birds as the the widely separated rotors required a plethora of chains, wires, and gears shafts, a fatal flaw that caused most of the Fa 223 crashes. Some of the design details were used in experimental US helicopters that led the CH-37 Mojave, largest helicopter in the world at the time of the first flight in 1953, and the first large enough a vehicle could drive onboard.
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