P-V Engineering Forum
What was the official name of Piasecki Helicopter from 1940 to 1946?
Piasecki Helicopter 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 . History . The Piasecki Helicopter Corporation was founded in 1940 by Frank Piasecki and fellow aeronautics student Harold Venzie as the P-V Engineering Forum ( shortened from Piasecki-Venzie ) ; the other partners were F.J . Kosloski , Donald N . Meyers , Elliott Daland , and Walter Swartz . The first design from P-V Engineering was the PV-1 , a rotorless-tail design that used a tapering tail cone and pressurized air to suppress main rotor torque . Venzie left the firm in 1943 . The PV-2 ( NX-37061 ) was a more conventional design and became the second helicopter flown in the United States ( following Igor Sikorskys VS-300 ) . It was designed and flown by Frank Piasecki on April 11 , 1943 . Piasecki had limited pilot experience ; the PV-2 was tethered to the ground as a safety measure , but the clothesline he used broke . He towed the helicopter behind his car in October 1943 to Washington , DC to demonstrate it to federal government officials ; because the wheels had no bearings , he had to stop every 10 to 15 minutes to cool them . When asked to show his pilots license following the demonstration in Washington , Piasecki admitted he did not have one and he was issued the first helicopter pilots license on October 20 , 1943 , by the Civil Aviation Administration . Tandem rotor designs . With the successful demonstration of the PV-2 , Piasecki convinced the United States Navy to fund the development of a follow-on prototype , signing a contract on January 1 , 1944 ; this marked the start of the design and sale of a series of tandem rotor helicopters to the Navy . The resulting PV-3 became the worlds first successful tandem rotor design . The PV-3 first flew on March 7 , 1945 and bore the Navy designation XHRP-X ; it was larger and capable of lifting more than the contemporary Sikorsky designs . Because P-V Engineering lacked the capital to fund production , the company was reorganized and renamed to the Piasecki Helicopter Corporation in 1946 , with Laurance Rockefeller and A . Felix du Pont Jr . taking a controlling interest of 51% interest in exchange for $500,000 . After constructing two more prototypes ( designated XHRP-1 ) , the PV-3 would go into production as the HRP-1 in 1947 . The HRP-1 was commonly nicknamed the flying banana because of the upward angle of the aft fuselage which ensured the large rotors did not hit each other in flight , and because the United States Coast Guard , which used the HRP-1 for long-range rescue operations , painted their units yellow . The name would later be applied to other Piasecki tandem-rotor helicopters of similar design . An evolutionary follow-on design to the HRP-1 , designated HRP-2 , used an all-metal skin and switched crew seating to side-by-side instead of tandem ; however , the limited power meant only five were built , all for the Coast Guard . In 1949 , Piasecki provided the H-21 Workhorse to the United States Air Force , an improved version of the HRP-2 with a more powerful Wright R-1820 Cyclone radial engine . Piaseckis tandem-rotor helicopters flew higher than competing single rotor designs , and offered a smoother ride . At approximately the same time the HRP-1 and HRP-2 were being developed , the Navy commissioned Piasecki to design a smaller tandem-rotor utility helicopter ; the resulting prototype , which Piasecki called the PV-14 , was designated XHJP-1 . These went into production as the HUP-1 ( PV-18 ) , with the first variants delivered to both the Navy and the United States Army ( as the H-25 ) in 1949 ; in total , 339 were delivered to the militaries of the United States , Canada , and France by 1954 . The HUP was designed with overlapping main rotor blades , which reduced the size so they could be carried on aircraft carrier elevators . Piasecki is forced out . Don R . Berlin was brought in as president and director of Piasecki Helicopters in 1953 , while Frank Piasecki was chairman of the board . Under Piasecki , the company began the PV-15 large transport tandem helicopter project ( designated H-16 ) . The prototype PV-15 was first flown in 1953 , but a fatal crash in January 1956 led to the cancellation of the project . The majority owners eventually lost faith in Frank Piaseckis leadership and by May 1956 he was forced out of the company . He had formed a new company , Piasecki Aircraft Corporation to pursue the development of compound helicopters and other rotorcraft . In two successive special stockholders meetings the board then changed the name of Piasecki Helicopter to Vertol ( for vertical take-off and landing ) Aircraft Corporation and amended the bylaws to bar Piaseckis re-election as a director , on the grounds that he was running a rival company . Acquisition by Boeing . In 1956 , Vertol began developing a successor to the HUP with improved lift capacity by using turboshaft engines . The project was designated Vertol Model 107 ( V-107 ) , and a prototype first flew on April 22 , 1958 . Impressed , the Army awarded a contract for ten production aircraft ( then designated YHC-1A ) in June and later asked Vertol in March 1959 to produce a larger version , which was designated V-114 . With the pressure to produce two relatively new designs , Vertol again ran into financial pressure and was acquired by Boeing on March 30 , 1960 , who renamed it Boeing Vertol . It became the Boeing Helicopter Division in 1987 .