Young Polish aircraft designer, inventor, engineer and entrepreneur Frank Piasecki moved to the United States in the 1930s.
In 1940, at the age of 21, he opened the PV Engineering Forum, which later became the Piasecki Helicopter Corporation (since 1946). With his PV-2 helicopter, he took it into the air on April 11, 1943. This single-seat single-rotor helicopter impressed the US Navy and Pyasetsky received his first official military contract.
It was he who developed the longitudinal propeller layout for helicopters, where the rotors are located in the nose and tail of the fuselage.
His helicopters such as the Piasecki HRP Rescuer, Piasecki H-21, CH-46 Sea Knight, CH-47 Chinook and their receivers are widely used both by the US Army and even by the President of the United States of America.
After a conflict with the Board of Directors, he left Piasecki Helicopter in 1955 and founded the Piasecki Aircraft Corporation.
In 1960, his firm was bought by Boeing and became its Boeing Vertol Division (renamed Boeing Helicopters in 1987).
In 1986, US President Ronald Reagan presented Pyasetsky with the country’s highest technical award – the US National Medal for Technology and Innovation, and in 2005 he received a lifetime award from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Aviation Museum.