Alexander P. de Seversky and the Quest for Air Power

6. The Russian Inventor Becomes an American Designer

80 6 The Russian Inventor Becomes an American Designer At first, Alexander P. de Seversky’s life in the early fall of 1923 appeared to be no more than an extension of his previous activities. He returned to his office at Sperry Gyroscope Company and finished a variable speed drive mechanism for his calculator, filing an application with the U.S. Patent Office on November 23. On some weekends, he drove his car from Brooklyn to Mitchel Field to see his friend Lt. John F. Whiteley, who had been assigned after the bombing experiments to a tactical unit of the U.S. Army Air Service on Long Island. On one of these weekend visits, the pair flew the short distance to Roosevelt Field, where Igor I. Sikorsky completed building his first (but #29 overall) American airplane, a twin-engine transport, out in the open. “We landed close by,” the lieutenant remembered five decades later, “and taxied up to the spot. The two were good friends and had quite a conversation before we returned. Seversky evidently wanted to tell Sikorsky what he was doing and how he was getting along.”1 On another weekend, Whiteley spent a day and evening at the de Seversky apartment off Flatbush Avenue. He noted that Alexander’s mother, Vera, was a gracious hostess who knew very little English. In fact, Whiteley heard a great deal of Russian during his brief stay. Moreover, he described the interior of the residence as resembling what he imagined the decor of a prerevolutionary Moscow apartment must have looked like. Fascinatingly, he noticed a picture of Vera’s former husband, Nicholas, hanging on the wall. Whiteley had the impression that Nicholas was some type of entertainer, which was correct, and deceased, which was incorrect. Nicholas would die in the Paris suburb of Asnières in 1941 and be buried in the Russian Orthodox 81 The Russian Inventor Becomes an American Designer Courbevoie Cemetery near the French capital. Why is this so interesting? It seems that eighteen years after Vera and Nicholas had divorced, both mother and son preferred to consider their husband/father to be dead.2 The Hiatus Later that fall, de Seversky went to Washington, D.C., to submit a patent application and discuss his future with staff members in the office of Gen. Mason M. Patrick, chief of the U.S.A.A.S. In essence, the Russian had completed his assignment on the bombsight and would soon be unemployed. In fact, to enhance his future opportunities, he had recently applied for, and wouldsoonbegranted,aprofessionalengineeringlicensefromtheUniversity of the State of New York. Moreover, as the head of Seversky Aero Corporation , he now negotiated a sum of money from the U.S. War Department. Technically, because he worked for the government when he designed the original bombsight, the only rights he could “sell” were those assigned to his corporation for the calculator. Along with a nice letter from General Patrick on November 26, he received a check, probably in the range of $10,000, that would enable him to live comfortably and travel widely during the next year.3 When the Russian failed to receive the $50,000 he apparently hoped for, he decided to implement “Plan B,” which began as a bargaining chip to secure more funds from the army. That plan would take him to Europe to deposit patent applications and enter negotiations with various militaries in the quest for additional financial compensation for his inventions. The U.S. Army, however, found its own bargaining chip and negotiated a compromise. It discovered that de Seversky had an interest in becoming a citizen of the United States. In return for help in securing citizenship through the Immigration and Naturalization Service, then housed in the Labor Department, de Seversky promised to limit his bombsight discussions to the British. Hence, Secretary of War John W. Weeks sent Secretary of Labor James J. Davis a letter requesting favorable and timely consideration of de Seversky’s application for citizenship.4 The secretary went on to explain, The War Department is peculiarly interested in this proceeding due to the fact that the applicant has been employed by and associated with the War Department for a period of more than five years, has rendered highly 82 The Russian Inventor Becomes an American Designer valuable technical service to this Department, has invented a bomb sighting device of peculiar interest to this Department, which...