TRAILBLAZERS
the $72 subsistence monthly was ade- quate to live reasonably well in postwar Italy.”
He decided to “kill one or two years” in
Italy where he studied art, art history, and architecture, ending up in an anatomy class being taught by the local hospital’s chief surgeon.
“I darn near changed professions and ...
was seriously considering taking up sur- gery, becoming a surgeon in the academy and going through the training,” Sergei says. “I decided later on that it was not quite what I wanted to do.” He returned to the United States, having graduated from the University of Florence “with a smatter- ing of German and French, and very fluent in Italian.” “I have lots of wonderful memories of my time in Italy,” Sergei says, “such as
flying surplus US Army Piper Cubs liber- ated by Italian flying clubs, the first genera- tion of post-war Italian sport aircraft ... the Macchi, the Fiat, and the Piaggio designs. And last, but not least, the beautiful Italian models in art class.”
Aviation in a Postwar World In 1952, Sergei returned to the United States and took a job with United Aircraft Export Corp., which sent him to post-war West Germany to support Pratt & Whitney/ Hamilton Standard in Europe and establish links with the recovering German aviation and manufacturing industries. Because of the war, West Germany was barred from aviation at that time. However, because of tensions with the
Soviet Union, United Aircraft executives predicted—correctly, as it turns out—that
West Germany would be allowed to join NATO and restart its aircraft industry. During this period, Sergei established links with Germans who went on to high posi- tions in Lufthansa and the West German Defense Ministry. His work also took him to Asia. With political issues threatening the new Mitsubishi license for the S-55/H-19 Chickasaw, he was reassigned to Japan, an assignment that grew to include Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and the Philippines. Sergei later returned to West Germany
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after France agreed to German rearmament and as Lufthansa was permitted to buy Convair 440 prop-driven airliners. Meanwhile, the West German army was creating an aviation branch, historic aircraft companies reemerged, and the country began to bring in US, French, and British aircraft. “I was an office manager. My job was to monitor the well-being of a company of 21 H-34 helicopters being tested against an equal number of then Piasecki H-21 heli- copters,” Sergei says. His reassignment to West Germany was lengthened “as the Sikorsky H-34 won against the H-21 and an additional 140 H-34s were procured.” During his time in Germany, the West German government began funding a new type of helicopter, the Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane. “Not too many people know that the Skycrane program actually was funded by the German government and not by the US government,” Sergei says. He eventually became involved in numerous marketing campaigns in Europe. “These included the NATO-wide heavy- lifter, which resulted in the S-64 Skycrane program, the German coproduction pro- gram of 112 CH-53 cargo helicopters to replace the H-34s, and smaller numbers of various CH-53 versions for Israel, Iran, and Austria,” Sergei says. The world was changing, though, and in
the late 1960s he began to visit the Soviet Union, where, he says, his father’s name
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