By the start of World War I in 1914, Sikorsky's airplane research and production business in Kyiv was flourishing, and his factory made bombers during the war. After the Bolshevik revolution began in 1917, Igor Sikorsky fled his homeland, because the new government threatened to shoot him. He moved to France where he was offered a contract for the design of a new, more powerful Muromets-type plane. But in November 1918 the war ended and the French government stopped subsidizing military orders, he decided to move to the United States. On March 24, 1919 he left France on the ocean liner "Lorraine" arriving in New York City on March 30, 1919.